Richard Ashby was one of hundreds of people who moved to Zanzibar during the Covid pandemic to avoid the lockdowns. So is it a libertarian utopia or just a business opportunity?
It’s Sunday lunchtime in Paje, a small town on the eastern coast of Zanzibar, about an hour’s drive from the capital, Zanzibar City, and at the Ndame Paje Hotel — a collection of bungalows on the beach — the weekly pool party is in progress.
Teenage Danish girls in sarongs knock back free shots and a group of Slovakians gyrate in bikinis on the edge of the infinity pool to the DJ’s trance tunes. Influencers from Ireland, Latvia and Belgium attach their phones to tripods under palm trees to get the best possible shot of them posing against the background of cerulean waves dotted with dhows and kitesurfers.
On the alabaster sands below, men in Masai robes play football with a gang of Lithuanians. In the palm-roofed bar, sipping tonic water and nibbling on Greek salad, Richard Ashby sits in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt at his laptop thrashing out the details of a delivery of bifold doors and the replanting of lorryloads of 700,000 royal palms for the hundreds of villas he’s building for the lockdown avoiders who flocked to restriction-free Zanzibar three years ago and now never want to leave.
Ashby, 41, originally from Longstanton in Cambridgeshire, who’d been earning £200,000 (about NZ$410,000) a year selling multimillion-pound properties to the global super-rich in central London, quit his riverside flat in Chelsea for Zanzibar in August 2020.
“I’d never been to Africa — I thought Zanzibar was in Australia. Then I found out it was in Tanzania [of which Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous dependency], which I thought was pronounced Tan-ZAN-ia [not Tan-ZUH-nia]. But I could see there was something really sinister coming down the pipes if I stayed in the UK and I wanted no part of it.”
Before that, in May, Ashby, hugely sceptical of “government rhetoric” around coronavirus, had moved to Antibes, in the south of France, to wait out the lockdowns. “But then the local café where I enjoyed my coffee every morning began asking for masks.” When a friend, who’d already moved, assured him the archipelago had absolutely no restrictions, he boarded a flight to Zanzibar City via Zurich and Dar es Salaam, eating snacks continuously throughout the journey to circumvent wearing a mask. “They woke me up to tell me to put one on — that really annoyed me. I pulled it down over my nose and carried on sleeping.”
As promised, on arrival there was no need for masks, nor isolating, nor distancing, with John Magufuli, the president at the time, having asserted that Tanzania was Covid-free (according to government statistics only 846 people in this country of 63 million died of the disease, of whom 40 people lived on Zanzibar, with its population of around 1 million).
Thousands of others were also heading to east Africa. The Kenyan island of Lamu, nearly 300 miles (483 kilometres) north, where restrictions were similarly relaxed, attracted a trustafarian crowd. These included actor Dominic West, make-up tycoon Charlotte Tilbury and artist Marina Abramovic. In contrast, Zanzibar — cheaper and less established on the jet-set itinerary — drew in a younger, hipper, less moneyed and (in some cases) more paranoid gang, who saw lockdown as a harbinger of total state control and Zanzibar as the place to rebuild a free society.
While most of the world stayed home and did lateral flow tests, those with the means, who either didn’t “believe” in Covid-19 or didn’t care if it struck them, flocked to the beach in Paje for full-moon parties, mask-free bodies writhing against each other. As Boris Johnson announced the British Christmas was cancelled, 3000 people danced the night away at a nightclub at Kendwa Rocks on the main island Unguja’s north coast. “In Tanzania, the party beat goes on in every way imaginable,” reported Tanzania’s The Citizen newspaper.
“I was posting a lot on Instagram and Facebook and all my friends back home were asking, ‘You guys are going to clubs?’ So a lot more followed and they liked it,” Ashby says.
Initially, he’d considered moving to Sweden, which also imposed no lockdowns, but he was taken by Magufuli’s more vocal questioning that coronavirus even existed, an argument the president stood up by sending papaya and goat meat samples to be tested for Covid-19 (the results were negative and his detractors’ claims that Magufuli died from the virus in March 2021 have never been confirmed).
“Magufuli’s measures were so extreme, it was intoxicating to me. The idea of somebody who just completely rebelled against everything was fascinating. I thought, ‘Let’s go and check this out.’ I guess it was an arrogance of mine that liked flying in the face of everything. Once I arrived, I decided I could never go back to a country where they could close the high street again. I thought, ‘What’s going to happen? You’re going to open a restaurant and any time in the next three years, someone’s going to say, “Oh, sorry, we’re closing all businesses.” Sorry. No,’ " Ashby exclaims.
Ashby, who’s never taken a Covid test and certainly hasn’t been vaccinated (”When it moved to, ‘The unvaccinated are selfish sociopaths,’ I was like, ‘I’m out’ “), was one of many who might never have discovered Zanzibar without Covid, but who was anyway becoming increasingly disillusioned with his London existence — especially the already growing political polarisation, exacerbated by attitudes to masks and lockdowns.
“My brother, who lives in the US, was terrified of everything; he was lapping up every word of the BBC’s Covid case daily reports. I was completely the opposite and very vocal about that, so that relationship really started to go sideways.
“I didn’t quite get pulled into the ‘You’re killing Grandma’ debate; my parents were more like, ‘We have noticed in those warm countries it doesn’t seem so bad.’ But at that point you couldn’t debate it with anyone. Even now Covid’s over and I’m living here, I just don’t talk to mates at home or my family about it — it’s off limits. I’d rather have a relationship with my brother and parents.”
Expat boom
Now the pandemic has ended, many escapees have returned to their homes and jobs, some having become bored with the endless glorious sunsets, other fifty-something couples having had difficulties convincing the Tanzanian government they merited retirement visas. Many others found that supply issues and difficulties training local staff make it — as Ashby puts it — “much more stressful running a hotel here than in Blackpool”.
But many others have become so enamoured of Zanzibar’s lifestyle, with its like-minded “sceptic” community, that they’re staying, obtaining residence permits (from £458) that they extend every two years.
It’s a 21st-century version of the Sixties and Seventies counterculture boom, with arrivals hoping to form communes on an island with (as yet) little crime, a friendly population, average temperatures all year of 24-28C, just three hours’ time difference from GMT and boasting multiple cafés offering wi-fi with vegan pancakes and oat-milk lattes. (Even the loungers at Ndame, just one of dozens of boutique hotels along the beach, are equipped with chargers so your phone battery never dies.)
For entrepreneurs such as Ashby, it’s an untapped gold mine. “It is like discovering St Tropez as a quaint fishing village early last century before the whole world arrived, or Marbella in the Fifties when the Costa del Sol was just a few beach huts outside the main towns,” Ashby says. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? But having seen how overdeveloped those towns, as well as former hippy outposts — think Bali, Phuket or Tulum — have become, I’d agree.
The reason Zanzibar — perhaps best known to many as the birthplace of Freddie Mercury — still feels so unspoilt is first because it’s a hassle to reach, the quickest routes being either via Qatar or Ethiopia (although next year Air Tanzania will launch direct flights from London to Dar es Salaam, from where the island’s only a 20-minute plane or two-hour ferry hop), and second because the law only changed to allow foreigners to buy land there in 2021, meaning so far there’s been very little development.
Hence the attraction to Ashby, who — unlike many visitors “who come here with some fantasy about running a bar when they have no idea of what that will actually involve on a remote island with very basic infrastructure” — has long experience in the property game, allowing his new business, Byshivo, to rapidly find a development partner in Floton Africa, a huge company whose clients include Pepsi and the Zan Fast ferry group.
Now Ashby’s in the final stages of his three developments on the island. In Paje, he’s already sold off-plan more than 80 per cent of his 20 two- and three-bedroom chalets, plus bigger villas nearby — each with their own private pool, as well as a separate group of Indian Ocean-view flats, to buyers from all over the world. Another 200 beachside villas are for sale in the more established resort of Nungwi on the north coast (on Reddit someone compares Nungwi to a reliable SUV, while Paje is a hip Tesla). Prices start at a shockingly cheap £48,000 for a high-spec flat, rising to £175,000 for the swankiest three-beds, leaving Ashby in line for profits, it’s estimated, of £24 million.
‘Flat-earthers are just the beginning’
Many others have tried to make the archipelago (99 per cent Muslim but highly tolerant of other faiths) an off-grid haven for “awakened” people, who loathe the likes of 5G phone masts and Ulez traffic zones — all a long way from being introduced in Zanzibar.
“Well, someone’s always found some way of fleecing the hippies,” comments Jake Shapiro, 44, who moved to Zanzibar (via Crete, “as they began wearing masks”) in late 2020 and has stayed ever since, making his base in Paje, working remotely (sometimes) for the family business.
Now, as the sun sets he’s occupying a lounger at Ndame in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, inhaling a vape, an empty wine bottle in a cooler beside him. He says he isn’t political — “I don’t watch the news because it doesn’t make me happy” — but had long wanted to escape London, and Covid provided the impetus.
On Zanzibar he’s met plenty of “dodgy characters” from all over the world. “Extradition treaties with Poland and Romania don’t exist, so there’s that. Then there’s the conspiracy theorists: flat-earthers are just the beginning. There’s one German guy who believes we are living on a Truman Show disc and gravity is a hoax that was invented 250 years ago, though he’s never really been able to explain why — he just says Zanzibar represents some idea of freedom. He’s highly sensitive about it — there’s no point arguing and I don’t care. I just want to be left alone.”
A few metres away, over a beer, Per, 58 (he won’t give his surname), from Denmark, a former “businessman” who arrived in 2002, says he is disgusted by the island’s sudden popularity, yet claims he will never leave Zanzibar “because I am free here. The elites that control everything can’t touch me. I pay no tax because I am a visitor. I don’t have to subsidise the people back home who are too lazy to work. I’m not forced into handing over my DNA to Big Pharma every time I need a blood test.”
Many people were “so idealistic they didn’t think how to pay the bills”, Ashby says. “So many others were saying to me, ‘How do I get a job as a plasterer here?’ They didn’t think it through.”
Just a few hundred metres down the beach from Ndame sits the beachfront house of the Nest, a resort aimed at “conscious travellers” founded by two Bulgarian new arrivals, which promised a 100 per cent vegetarian menu, co-working spaces and sea-view yoga, plus sports, art and science activities for an “open-minded clientele”, and an intention to host TED Talks around beach campfires. But the night before we arrive, it’s razed to the ground by a kitchen fire. No one is hurt, but three neighbouring hotels and a residential home are also destroyed.
The owners commemorate this apparent disaster on Instagram with images of the inferno, a video of its team waving cheerily at the camera, accompanied by their bank details for those who wish to support their rebuild. “A couple of fire engines showed up, but they didn’t seem to be doing a lot,” says Shapiro, who was one of the many beach spectators.
Despite the Zanzibaris’ charm, business is often tough, meaning Ashby — who’s single and lives in one of his properties outside the capital with his four dogs — spends virtually no time sunbathing and most wrangling with suppliers and builders. “I run everything like a military operation.”
Yet he’s still relishing the challenge, having become increasingly disillusioned with his city existence. “In my twenties I thought it was so cool. Then I’d see a lot of these guys, 50-odd, hanging out in Brinkley’s in Chelsea every night, still talking about how they were going to become artists; or a bunch of loser 60-year-old men chasing 25-year-old Russian birds, saying, ‘Where are we going next? A house party at Monty’s!’ It was boring as hell. I’m done with that.”
He was also bored with constant political bickering with his brother “after I made some comments about American politics — gun control, Trump and some other things — and he went nuts”.
Money-making opportunities
Kristen Torres and her husband, Ryan, both 39, from Boston, Massachusetts, who are letting their US house to live in one of Ashby’s Nungwi villas, were similarly dispirited by the friction around them, and the way friends looked at them “like we were contaminated” when they learnt they’d travelled five times to Tanzania during the pandemic.
“In the US there’s a lot of political turmoil — it, like everything, is very different since Covid. The cost of living has rocketed and everyone is angry with each other all the time. Groups of friends are breaking up because they don’t have the same political views. It’s very difficult. We’re not huge Trump fans but we don’t like some of Biden’s views on finance, so we chose the lesser of two evils, but people have labelled us racists for that. It’s absurd,” she says. “My best friend wouldn’t talk to me for six months.
“We’ve even avoided going to things with family members,” she continues, “because it would just turn into political warfare. Every July 4, we would go to our friend’s annual barbecue for about 75 people, but this year she cancelled because so many people were angry with each other. It’s sad and we’re just so thankful to get as far away from this as possible.”
Like Ashby, the couple also spotted opportunities, noting that Tanzania is predicted to rival Kenya as east Africa’s largest economy within the decade, while heavy Chinese investment means roads (previously very basic) are being rapidly tarmacked. And while the antivax, QAnon crowd may have found liberty, a far more apolitical millennial and Gen Z crowd are posting TikToks of #leftmyheartinZanzibar and flocking to festivals featuring DJs such as Berlin techno king Ricardo Villalobos.
“We saw how much development was going on and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we need to get down with it,’ " explains Torres. They established a safari company on mainland Tanzania and an Airbnb on Zanzibar for guests to head to after the bush. “But people aren’t interested in the safari part — they just want to go to Zanzibar, even though it’s a 17-hour flight from the US. Everyone’s saying it’s the new Maldives. It’s grown into such a busy company, I’ve quit my job as an interior designer to run it full-time.”
Other delighted escapees are everywhere. “I have a much, much better lifestyle here than I ever did in London. It’s cheaper and the work is more fulfilling,” says Piotr Kozanow, 36, originally from Poland, who worked as a chef in London until made redundant during Covid, whereupon he moved to the island and founded a thriving drone business, Kozanow Productions.
Phil Walsh, 32, who’s opened Zanzibar’s first Irish pub, Swinging Micky’s, says he’d much rather bring up his baby daughter with his Tanzanian girlfriend here than in his hometown of Dublin, even if the average monthly salary is only £150. “There’s less crime and drugs. There’s more poverty, but if you’re poor you still won’t end up dying of cold on the streets: you can catch fish from the sea and take fruit from the trees.”
Back at the bar at Ndame, a group of leather-skinned expats are complaining an Irish pub serving bottled Guinness means the island’s on the verge of becoming “the new Faliraki”.
Ashby has no time for them. “These idiots have been sitting around here getting drunk for 20 years, doing nothing for Zanzibar. Right now, somebody’s actually bringing some money. The locals are broke. It’s the trust-funders who are trying to keep this place a secret. But it won’t stay that way.”
As for Ashby, he has no plans to move on. “I like the lack of road signs,” he says dreamily. “In London, it’s all ‘Stop’, ‘Turn left’, ‘No entry’. Here, you decide where you want to go, and you go…”
Written by: Julia Llewellyn Smith
© The Times of London