John Okello was a Ugandan immigrant and self-styled revolutionary, left an indelible mark on Zanzibar’s history as the leader of the 1964 Afro-Shirazi Revolution. Born in Uganda, Okello fled his homeland at age 15, working briefly in Kenya before settling in Pemba, Zanzibar, in 1959. There, he labored as a bricklayer and union organizer, secretly mobilizing disaffected African youths through the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). His radical rhetoric, rooted in a messianic belief that God had tasked him with liberating Zanzibar from Arab dominance, resonated with the islands’ marginalized majority. By 1963, Okello had built a small but determined army of unemployed Africans and ex-policemen, adhering to strict rules: sexual abstinence, no raw meat, and no alcohol.
On January 12, 1964, Okello orchestrated a surprise uprising, leading 600–800 poorly armed insurgents in a dawn attack on Zanzibar’s police stations and radio station. Armed with machetes and stolen rifles, they overwhelmed the Arab-dominated government, forcing Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah into exile. Okello declared himself “Field Marshal of Zanzibar and Pemba” and broadcast orders to kill Arab men aged 18–25, sparing only pregnant women and the elderly. The revolt spiraled into massacres, rapes, and looting, with estimates suggesting 2,000–20,000 deaths and thousands displaced. Despite his Ugandan origins and Christian identity—alienating him from Zanzibar’s Muslim majority—Okello briefly held power, appointing ASP leader Abeid Karume as president and socialist Abdulrahman Babu as prime minister.
However, his radicalism and instability soon clashed with Karume’s moderate faction. By March 1964, Okello’s paramilitary Freedom Military Force (FMF) was disarmed, and he was expelled from Zanzibar. Declared unwanted in Tanganyika, he drifted to Kenya and Uganda, destitute and forgotten. His legacy remains fraught: celebrated as a catalyst for ending Arab hegemony, yet condemned for unleashing racial violence that entrenched divisions. Okello’s story underscores the fragility of postcolonial revolutions, where liberation often bred new forms of oppression. He died in obscurity around 1971, a shadow of the man who once commanded Zanzibar’s fate.