President of Zanzibar President of Zanzibar The President of Zanzibar is the head of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, which is a semi-autonomous government within Tanzania. The current President is Ali Mohamed Shein. The President is also the chairman of the Revolutionary Council, whose members are appointed by the President, and some of which must be selected from the House of Representatives. The President is elected by a plurality. Presidential terms are for five years, and a candidate may be re-elected only once. Following the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964, Abeid Karume became the first President of Zanzibar, as leader of the Afro-Shirazi Party.
Sultanate of Zanzibar ethnic groups were becoming mixed and the distinctions between them had blurred; according to one historian, an important reason for the general support for Sultan Jamshid was his family's ethnic diversity. However, the island's Arab inhabitants, as the major landowners, were generally wealthier than the natives; the major political parties were organised largely along ethnic lines, with Arabs dominating the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and natives the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). Sultanate of Zanzibar The Sultanate of Zanzibar (, ), also known as the Zanzibar Sultanate, comprised the territories over which the Sultan of Zanzibar was the sovereign. Those territories varied