Nabwa: The man, the pen and the gun

By Ally Saleh

I am sitting before my computer a few minutes after the news of the tragicdeath of Ali Nabwa was conveyed to me. I did not know what to do and my firstgut reaction was to prop myself up before the screen to type what I knew of the man.This is the screen of which Nabwa was ignorant of, as he was not man ofcomputers and until his death he used to write his essays by the traditionalway, by scribbling his ideas on paper and we had to do the computer typing.

But such an irony does not represent this man in the larger picture of hislife, activities and writings. Apart from computers, Nabwa as I knew him wasnot afraid of crossing barriers. In fact he had crossed many more impediments than any one I personally know. At the end of such hurdles he graduated. As he was dying he had graduated into an institution. Nabwa was what I could describe as the man, the pen and the gun.

I was privileged to know Nabwa at the height of his writings and at the helm of his wisdom having seen it all and reaching the top and was now slowlygliding down a hill that became bumpier than what he originally thought andbelieved.
If Nabwa had written for the Tanganyika Standard in the early days of the Zanzibar Revolution and covering big stories that were made by late Presidentof Zanzibar, Abeid Amani, Karume, he was supposed to know that writing forDira between 2003-2004 would prove to be a bigger challenge to him. Many years had passed since Nabwa was on the limelight. The current generationknows Nabwa only after his one year editorship of Dira and columnist forAnnur of Dar es Salaam between 1964-2003. He was lost into other activities that either pulled him outside Zanzibar or if he was in the Isles there was noneed for public appearance.

Nabwa is also known to the current generation because of his fight against thegovernment order that stripped him of his citizenship. This story became so big that it overshadowed the whole life of Nabwa.The issue of citizenship became an issue. It entangled both the Union andZanzibar governments and at its height it took an international turn.Throughout his past troubles with the Government, no international human rights organization had raised a voice on his behalf.

But not this time. Many felt Nabwa was being victimized because of his stand.And what was his stand? His stand was to be critical of the Zanzibar Government. Nabwa felt he was the only person who knew very well what happened during thefirst 10 years after the Zanzibar Revolution. He would tell me so often thatthe atrocities that were committed here would never give him a sleep in his grave if he did not talk about it during his life.

He was thus engaged in a one man mission. He wanted and wished to expose allwhat he knew of arbitrary arrests, back knifing, torture and deaths. He knewthe names, times and places so well as if everything happened yesterday.As he was editing Dira he had a column called Siku Moja Itakuwa Kweli andthis became his forum where day in day out he kept on fiercely revealing what he knew so much that irked the Zanzibar Government which said he was "turningup the graves."A plot was here hatched on how to stop him. Someone remembered that there wasa shoddy past on his movements when he was in Comoro. While there he took a foreign passport and thus technically stripped him of his Tanzania citizenship.

Nabwa vehemently denied this until his death. He refused to make a freshapplication of citizenship on his stand that he never denied his citizenship. It was this issue of citizenship that frustrated Nabwa into many kind ofillnesses.For two years as he fought this battle, he suffered high blood pressure andhis earlier heart problems surfaced and kept him on the bed most of the time. He died while asking the Tanzania and Zanzibar Government for merely USdollars 10,000 that would have taken him to India for heart operation toinstall a pacer that would have probably prolonged his life. He was not even answered.

Nabwa traveled the world. He studied medicine in Romania and took journalismin England. Everywhere he went he was not shy of telling about his life. Hewould write in his columns how womanizer he was and how he liked his beer. He was not short of controversy and in fact he thrived in them. He wouldplunge himself deep into them and if comes out winner he laughed at it and ifhe came out bruised he never regretted it.He cheated death so many times. He was twice on death row. One time here at Keko Remand Prison when he was waiting treason charges and another time whenhe was already being led to face the firing squad in Moroni, Comoros.

When he talked about these incidents he was not sounding bitter. Fate, he said, is what he believed in and that he wrote about it into his column. Hesaid he climbed so much up that finding himself humbled down has taught him alesson: that a man is nothing in the bigger picture of the world. He worked as Chief Protocol Officer for Zanzibar Government for only one weekafter a controversy with Karume whom he challenged on many issues, including his style of leadership, vision of the government and disappearances of many politicians at that time.He went into publishing with East African Publishing House in Nairobi where heworked for a long time and from where he was picked in 1973 to be joined inthe long list of Zanzibaris accused in the treason trial. He believed his mistakes or folly was that he was associated with former UmmaParty members and he was an admirer of another political genius in Zanzibar politics, Abdulrahman Muhammed Babu.

Nabwa, I believe, died having completed his mission which, as eluded earlier, was to reveal all what he knew. I am sure of one thing, that Nabwa had never forgiven those who had mistreatedhim over the past four years. Those who hatched and sustained the plot to denyhim of his citizenship, which many believe to be the source of all his illnesses. And as he lies in peace now, he would wish the writers like me and Muhammed Ghassany whom he nurtured in his days in Dira, would continue the flame he setalive. He would not know that his shoes would be too big for us to wear. Frankly speaking, apart from that we are just too weak hearted as compared tohim and we can not be the one into three as he was throughout his life time. We can not be the man, the pen and the gun he was.

Lie in peace Nabwa…the struggle has just started.