South Africa’s first apartheid polices are enacted to separate the races, in Bloemfontein. Black and mixed-race (Coloured) residents are segregated into neighbourhoods outside of town, without services but still subject to double taxation (a hut tax and a grazing tax).
King Mwanga II of the Buganda people of East Africa concludes his purge of Christian influences in this land, which he believe are corrupting traditional African culture. 22 converts to the Catholic religion are burned alive in Namugongo. In the 21st century they will be known as the Uganda Martyrs.
The Pretoria Boy’s High School is founded in South Africa by Lord Alfred Milner. The school will be racially segregated for 80 years, until the first black student, Stanley Netshituka, will be admitted in 1981.
Considered the most beautiful railroad station in Africa, the main railway station in Dakar is opened, serving the capital of French Senegal. Constantly in use for a century, it will be restored early in the 21st century.
A special custom-built Crosley Silver Tourer automobile is delivered to the British governor of Nyasaland (Malawi), Hubert Winthrop Young. Typical of open-air touring cars of this time, it has a canvas top for bad weather. Its cost is £550 (equal to £50,362 in 2023), excluding shipping.
The premier of The Naked Prey, an American movie filmed in South Africa. The bloody fantasy adventure set in the 19th Century depicts pre-Colonial era Africans with a complexity not seen before in Hollywood films. The movie will become a cult classic.
The Uganda-Tanzania War, which began in October 1978 when Ugandan dictator Idi Amin invaded Tanzania, is over, as Tanzanian troops secure the Sudanese border. Tanzania lost 373 soldiers during the war. Aiding Tanzania, 150 Ugandan rebels died, most when a boat transporting some rebels capsised on Lake Victoria. Uganda lost 1,000 soldiers. Aiding Amin, 600 Libyan soldiers were killed, as were 200 fighters from the Palestine Liberation Organization. Tanzanian civilians killed by the Uganda Army numbered 1,500, and 500 Ugandan civilians lost their lives. The conflict significantly harms the economies of both countries, increasing poverty.
The U.S. organisation Freedom House reports that 41 out of 48 African countries do not have a free press. This is an historic, post-Colonisation low, and reflects the prevalence of dictatorial governments, monarchies and autocratic regimes in Africa. However, with the Cold War concluding, non-democratic client regimes of both East and West will lose the support that has kept them in power. A wave of democratisation in the 1990s will see a freer media. In 1993, Freedom house will find 21 countries (out of 52) without a free press.
The Khartoum Massacre results in more than 100 Sudanese protestors, mostly youth demanding that the Transitional Military Government call democratic elections, are gunned down by security forces. As a result, Sudan is suspended from the African Union.
Ghanaian political leader, in Anomabu, Gold Coast. He was respected and awarded by the British despite his lifelong opposition to British colonial rule. As one of the six founders in 1897 of the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, he laid the groundwork for a nationalist movement that ultimately resulted in Ghana’s independence.
Nigerian world champion boxer, in Creek Town, Calabar, British Nigeria. The first Nigerian to win a world boxing champion, he had won 14 fights in Nigeria when he emigrated to Britain in 1951, where he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire after becoming the Empire Featherweight Champion in 1957.
South African TV talk show hostess and entrepreneur, in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, South Africa. The Felicia Show (entitled Top Level when it debuted in 1992) was one of South Africa’s first talk shows. After its end in 2004, she moved to the U.S. with a similar program, Conversations with Felicia, on The African Channel.
