John Okello

John Okello
Born	1937 Lango District, Uganda Protectorate
Died	1971

John Gideon Okello (1937 – 1971?) was an East African revolutionary and the leader of the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964. This revolution overthrew Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah and led to the proclamation of Zanzibar as a republic.

Little is known of Okello's youth: he was born in Lango District, in what was the Uganda Protectorate, and was baptized at age two, receiving the baptismal name of Gideon. He was orphaned at age eleven and grew up with other relatives. When he was fifteen, he left and set out on his own and found work in several places within East Africa. At various times, Okello was a clerk, manservant, gardener, and did odd-jobs as he drifted around British East Africa, living in various times in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika. He later went through training to become a bricklayer. He was arrested in Nairobi, Kenya for rape and was incarcerated for two years, an experience that left him with an intense hatred of the British. In 1959 Okello left for the island of Pemba, where he tried to find work on one of the farms. Okello joined the Afro-Shirazi Party of Sheikh Abeid Karume. This party opposed the dominant position of the minority Arabs on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. A charismatic man, Okello's speeches denouncing British imperialism, the South Asians from the Indian subcontinent who dominated the commercial life of Zanzibar and the Arabs who dominated the political life of the Sultanate of Zanzibar won a following amongst the African population of the sultanate. In 1961, the Arab-dominated Zanzibar Nationalist Party won a rigged election, which convinced Okello that only a revolution achieved by violence would give the African majority political power in Zanzibar.

Okello left for Zanzibar in 1963, where he contacted the leaders of the Afro-Shirazi Youth League, the youth organisation of the Afro-Shirazi Party. The Youth League strove for a revolution in order to break the power of the Arabs. On Zanzibar, Okello was also a member of the Painters Union, being a house painter, which gave a regular salary and allowed to move around the island, supposedly giving speeches at union branches, but in reality to organize a revolution to overthrow the sultan. In his free time, he built up a small army of determined African nationalists. This army was required to hold themselves to the strict rules of Okello: sexual abstinence, no raw meat, and no alcohol..

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