Zanzibar: 1963 Elections

Extracted from: "Zanzibar" IN Compendium of Elections in Southern Africa (2002), edited by Tom Lodge, Denis Kadima and David Pottie, EISA, 409-410.

The July 1963 elections had 31 seats being contested by three parties. These parties were ASP [Afro-Shirazi Party], ZNP Zanzibar Nationalist Party]and ZPPP [Zanzibar and Pemba People's Party]. The ZNP and the ZPPP had agreed that none of them will field candidate where the other was strong. On the other hand the ZNP suffered a minor set-back when a group of young militants under the leadership of Abdulahman Mohammed Babu pulled out of the ZNP to form the Umma Party. The Umma Party did not field any candidate during the election but its members supported the ASP. The outcome of this election was in favour of the ZNP-ZPPP alliance which won 18 as against the ASP's 13 seats. As was the case with the previous elections, the ASP polled more individual votes but less seats. While the number of votes won the ZNP declined from 35% in 1961 to 29.8% in 1963 the number of votes won by the ASP shot up from 49.9 in 1961 to 54.3% in 1963. ZPPP votes increased from 13.7% in 1961 to 15.9% in 1963. ZNP and ZPPP were invited to form a coalition government which was to be granted independence by the British. Independence was granted on 10 December, 1963 and one month later on 12th January 1964 there was a revolution which brought ASP into power. When asked by journalists as to when there would be elections in Zanzibar, the leader of ASP, Abeid Amani Karume, told them that there would be no elections in Zanzibar in the next 50 years.