The President arrived at ten in the afternoon. At the airport to greet him were his able Vice President (who combines the baleful glare of Sonny Listen with a Groucho Marx mustache) and the fat, 5-ft.-tall head of the Youth League (who wears mammoth gold stars and carries his money in bulging sacks). During his stay the President was entertained by native dancers who balanced pickaxes, shovels and barrels of mortar on their heads. He supped on cherry pop and sponge cake while solemnly touring a gallery hung with photographs of Mao Tse-tung, Lenin and Lyndon Johnson. He visited a poultry farm, later addressed a mass rally while cows grazed on a nearby golf course and goats gamboled on a cricket field.
Though the script read like a rejected passage from an Evelyn Waugh novel of black Africa, it did indeed happen-to Julius Nyerere, last week in Zanzibar.
Imperfect Merger. Eight months ago. President Nyerere signed the articles of confederation that united his mainland nation of Tanganyika with the tiny, troublesome offshore island state of Zanzibar. At the time, Zanzibar had just gone through a far-left coup against the ruling Arab minority. African Leader Abeid Karume had been installed as President, and his regime seemed about to slide under Peking domination. The union forestalled that, and Karume reluctantly agreed to serve under Nyerere as a mere Vice President of the newly formed nation known as Tanzania. Last week, as Nyerere paid his first state visit to the territories he had hoped to assimilate, it must have struck him that Tanzania could scarcely be zanier.
The island runs on Swahili time-a full six hours behind the mainland-hence it was still morning on the afternoon Nyerere landed. Vice President Karume is still known as President on Zanzibar. Island officials obstinately control their own customs and immigration affairs, maintain and jealously censor an independent cable and wireless network, and conduct external trade and finances through their own ministries. The tough, green-uniformed troopers of the People's Liberation Army-composed mostly of Communist-leaning hoodlums who had led the anti-Arab coup-still stalk the streets armed with Russian burp guns. They are backed by the 30-man Revolutionary council, a gang of malcontents led by Peking's pal Abdul Rahman Mohamed, better known as "Babu," probably East Africa's ugliest and brightest politician.
Delicate Balance. If the union's two components are having trouble balancing each other, Nyerere and Karume apparently are trying hard to balance East and West. In the receiving line welcoming Nyerere, U.S. Consul General Frank Carlucci was neatly played off against East German Ambassador Guenther Fritsch. To demonstrate their nonalignment, Nyerere and Karume spoke Swahili with both the American and the East German; Carlucci answered them fluently, while Fritsch, wincing behind his sunglasses, used an interpreter.