The fleet of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, passes the furthest spot northeast on the coast that was reached by an earlier Portuguese fleet of in 1488. Their journey is now into waters unknown to Europeans. In honour of the Christmas season marking Christ’s nativity, da Gama names the coast Natal.
Boer migrants entering Zulu territory in Southern Africa are attacked by the army of Zulu King Dingane seeking to halt the invasion of Zulu lands. 470 Boer men circle their 64 wagons against 15,000 Zulu warriors. The Zulu have no defense against guns and canons, and are easy targets in the open field and in the river, where their wounded bodies tint the water red. 3,000 Zulu men are killed, against no casualties for the Boers, in what will become known as the Battle of Blood River.
Rainy season in Nyasaland (Malawi) makes roads muddy and perilous even for ox-carts. Police offer to new and inexperienced motorists lessons on how to drive the slippery, rutted roads.
Nairobi National Park is established, 7 km south of Nairobi, British Kenya. Nature conservationists Merwyn Cowie is the driving force behind the area designed to protect wildlife that is now under threat from hunters and killings by colonial traders, prospectors, and settlers.
The opening to the public of the Voortrekker Monument, dedicated to Afrikaner colonists of the 1835-1854 Voortrekker migration in South Africa but specifically celebrating the Boers’ slaughter of 3,000 Zulu warriors today in 1838. A ring of life-sized bronze wagons erected on Monument Hill near Pretoria recreates the migrants’ defensive position against the Zulu men defending of their lands against invaders.
In South Africa, bombs explode in government buildings and electricity pylons in Johannesburg, Durban, and Port Elizabeth, while posters appear announcing that the apartheid government is facing a new militant resistance to its oppression of black Africans: Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the liberation party the African National Congress, “formed by Africans” but "within its ranks members of all races.”
Zanzibar becomes a member of the U.N. However, after joining Tanganyika to become the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964, Zanzibar’s U.N. membership will be backdated to 14 December, 1963, the date that Tanganyika joined the U.N.
South Africa’s liberation party the African National Congress holds its first Consultative Conference in 31 years, marking the end of its banning by the apartheid regime. (pic, left to right: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu)
The Ghana National Theatre building is completed, in Accra. Housing Ghana’s National Dance Company, the National Symphony Orchestra and the National Theatre Players, the soaring exterior suggests an arc taking the audience on an artistic voyage.
Kenya’s tourism sector once led Sub-Saharan Africa, but with political violence and the 1997 Nairobi terrorism attack, tourism growth has been a poor 1% since 1990. Kenya has lost its share of tourism receipts – US$308 million in 2001, down from US$443 million in 1990. In contrast, Uganda has seen an annual growth rate in tourist arrivals from 69,000 in 1990 to 205,000, and receipts of US$10 million in 1990 up 1480% to US$158 million. (pic: river cruise ship at Murchison Falls, Uganda’s most-visited waterfall)
The Gambia editor of The Point newspaper, Deyda Hydara is shot and killed after he says he will oppose new press restrictions imposed by the country’s dictator Yahya Jammeh. The assassination will cause thousands of Gambians to flood the streets in protest.
A 9-metre high statue of South Africa’s first president, Nelson Mandela, before the Union Buildings in Pretoria, is dedicated on today’s South African holiday Remembrance Day. Today ends the official mourning period for Mandela, which began when he died on 5 December.
Release of the Moroccan film Chaïbia, a biography of Morocco’s most family painter of the 20th century, Chaïbia Talala. Her colourful portraits of Moroccan women won her international fame, with exhibits of her work mounted in major museums throughout Europe. Talala died in 2004 at age 75.
Last Sultan of Zanzibar, in Unguja, Zanzibar. He was the briefest-serving Zanzibar Sultan, lasting only 195 days until he was deposed during the country’s January 1964 revolution.
Congolese singer and bandleader, in Matadi, Belgian Congo. The “Father of Congolese Music,” he was the creator of Soukous music that combines Latin and African beats. He formed one of the most influential and popular Congolese bands, L’African Jazz, in 1953. Saxophonist Manu Dibango was a band member. His popularity and prominence led to his appointment to the delegation that negotiated independence for the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960. That year he was the first African musician to form his own label, Subourboum Jazz, which would nurture the Congolese super-group TPOK Jazz.
Rapper, song writer and record producer, in Mahikeng, South Africa. He was one of South Africa’s most successful musicians in the 2010s. In 2014, he launch the influential record label, Family Tree Records.
