John Okello was orphaned at age 11 and grew up with relatives.
14 Facts About John Okello
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2.
At various times, John Okello was a clerk, manservant, gardener, and did odd-jobs as he drifted around British East Africa, living at various times in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika.
3.
John Okello later went through training to become a bricklayer.
4.
In 1959, John Okello left for the island of Pemba, where he tried to find work on one of the farms.
5.
John 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.
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On Zanzibar, John Okello was a member of the Painters Union, being a house painter, which gave a regular salary and allowed him to move around the island, supposedly giving speeches at union branches, but in reality to organize a revolution to overthrow the Sultan.
7.
The highly religious John Okello was convinced he had been given orders in his dreams by God to break the powerful position of the Arabs and to found a revolutionary state on Zanzibar and Pemba.
8.
John Okello said that he received orders from God, when still in Uganda, by how he observed the position of stones in a stream.
9.
John Okello gave the Sultan an order to kill his family and to kill himself afterwards; otherwise, Okello would do so himself.
10.
John Okello created a Revolutionary Council and was named the leader of the Afro-Shirazi Party ; Abeid Karume was appointed president, and the leader of the Umma-Massa Party, Sheik Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu Prime Minister.
11.
John Okello formed a paramilitary unit, known as the Freedom Military Force, from his own supporters which is known to have patrolled the streets and become involved with looting.
12.
John Okello was denied access to the country when he tried to return from a trip to the mainland, and was deported to Tanganyika, and then to Kenya before returning, destitute, to his native Uganda.
13.
John Okello then stayed in Kenya, in Zaire, and in Uganda.
14.
John Okello was incarcerated multiple times and was last seen with the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1971; he vanished afterwards.