Painted Devils and the Land of Ordinary Men

Zanzibar’s brief and brutal revolution is almost forgotten. During the Cold War, the small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Tanganyika, became significant in the early ‘60s because of its vulnerability and position at the edge of Africa’s rotting Colonial corpse. As had the early Arab slavers, religious pioneers and Imperial European adventurers, so too the purveyors of Communism and Socialism used Zanzibar as a base for their ambitions in Africa. From here they made swift incisions into the carcass and White Southern African tribes began to show concern while the West shrugged. This book tells the story of a boy’s journey through the turbulent waters of his own young life during these urgent moments in Equatorial East Africa and Southern Africa. It is a tale of love and loss.