Who was Ramadhan Haji Faki?

Dar es Salaam. That Brigadier (retired) Ramadhan Haji Faki was a key figure in the 1964 Revolution which led to the overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar is an open secret.

Brigadier Faki died in Dar es Salaam on Saturday at the ripe old age of 90 years, and was buried at his home village of Shingwi in Unguja North in Zanzibar.

The man held a number of high-profile positions in government in his lifetime.

In his youth, he worked as a police officer during the colonial period. But he, like many other African youths, was sacked by the colonial government of the day.

A member of the youth league of the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP, which later joined with the Tanganyika African National Union to form CCM in 1977), Faki was specifically tasked with leading a team of fellow youths in attacking the Mtoni Unit of the Police Mobile Force.

“They succeeded, but he was injured,” says Muhammad Seif Khatib, a CCM cadre and former cabinet minister.

With 13 others, Faki formed a Committee of Fourteen: a group of men who were responsible for organising and executing the Zanzibar Revolution of January 12, 1964.

When Zanzibar’s founding President Abeid Amani Karume was assassinated in 1972, Aboud Jumbe became president - and Faki was named the first chief minister of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar.

An opposition politician and former cabinet minister and First Vice President of the Revolutionary Government, Seif Shariff Hamad, says that was a good move by Jumbe.

“It was a wise move because Jumbe needed to show that he was not discarding those at the forefront of the revolution,” Seif Sharif Hamad writes in a book titled ‘Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar: The Memoirs of Ali Sultan Issa and Seif Sharif Hamad.’

Mr Hamad co-authored the book with G. Thomas Burgess and Ali Sultan Issa.

Despite being a member of the respected Committee of Fourteen in Zanzibar, Brig Faki was always willing to fight for Tanzania - so much so that, when the country went to war with Iddi Amin of Uganda in October 1978, he joined the warriors.

“When Tanzania went to war against Dictator Idd Amin’s Uganda, Brigadier Faki abandoned his position and went to the front line,” says the director for Information Services in Zanzibar, Dr Juma Mohammed.

Brig Faki and others - including a former Home Affairs minister for the Union Government, Muhidin Kimario - left their ministerial duties and went to the war front!

“The fighters nicknamed him ‘One man, One bomb’ for his prowess in fighting,” says Muhammad Seif Khatib.

Following what came to be commonly known as a tense political environment in Zanzibar in 1984, Jumbe had to resign from the position of Zanzibar President.

Brig Faki also decided to take political responsibility, and resigned from the position of chief minister who, by then, was the second most powerful person in Zanzibar after the president.

“He, however, remained an obedient leader and one who defended the 1964 Revolution,” Mr Khatib fondly recalls.