One of the greatest victories of the U.S. Navy’s work to enforce the ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade comes with the capture of the American ship Martha by the U.S.S. Perry off the coast of Portuguese East Africa (Angola). Before capture, crewmen aboard the Martha are seen tossing a desk into the ocean, but it floats and is recovered. Inside is evidence that the ship was about to transport 1,800 enslaved Africans to Cuba. The Martha is sent to New York to be destroyed. The slaver captain is imprisoned, but escapes after bribing guards US$3,000 (equal to US$116,678 in 202)

The Great Journey, sponsored by Britain’s Royal Geographic Society, departs Zanzibar. Explorer-scholars Richard Burton and John Speke set forth in search of the source of the Nile River and to map Central Africa. They become the first Europeans to see Africa’s Great Lakes. (pic: The expedition at Lake Tankanyika)

The first edition of the Times of Swazieland (Eswatini) is published in Bremersdorp (Manzini), a white settlement in the Swazi kingdom of Bhunu V.

Pretoria, the capital of South Africa’s Transvaal Republic, surrenders to British forces during the Second Anglo-Boer War. The townspeople line up to watch the parade of British troops. The war will continue for another two years.

Fearing France will annex Morocco, Spain sends troops to occupy the towns of Alcazarquivir and Larache. France has already found an excuse to put its forces in the country after a rebellion against Sultan Abdelhafid broke out, and Paris offered its military assistance. On 1 July, another European power, Germany, will send a gunboat to Morocco in the name of protecting its own national interests there. Britain, fearful of a German naval base on the Atlantic, then sends a gunboat of its own. Only a financial crisis in Germany averts a war between European powers over Morocco.

The Broederbond is formed in South Africa. The white, male Afrikaner members of the quasi-secretive organisation will plan and implement the apartheid policies that will make South Africa a white supremacist terror state. Virtually every prominent white South African man in business and society and every government leader will be a Broederbond member from 1948 until South Africa becomes a multi-racial democracy in 1994.

The first public library in British Kenya is dedicated. Financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the McMillan Memorial Library is named after U.S-born adventurer and philanthropist William Northrup McMillan, who settled in Kenya. Complete with twin lions flanking the entrance staircase, the neo-classical building is a distinguished-looking addition to Nairobi. Africans will not be allowed to use the library until 1962. In 2023, the library will house more than 400,000 books and periodicals.  

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Tintin in Congo by cartoonist Hergé begins its serialisation in the French Catholic newspaper Cœurs Valliants. Set in Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo), the story of the African adventures of a young reporter and his dog Snowy is a huge hit, and establishes Tintin as a cartoon institution in Belgium and France. The story will not age well, and by the 1970s it will be criticised for its racist depiction of the Congolese and its colonial viewpoint.

The concept for the East African Community takes root at a meeting in Nairobi with a pledge made by Ugandan Prime Minister Milton Obote (pic: left), Kenyan Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta (centre) and Tanganyika President Julius Nyerere (right) to form an East African Federation.

Egypt closes the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping as the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel begins. Israeli ships will not be permitted to again use the canal until 1975. Hundreds of ships and thousands of crewmen from all over the world are stranded inside the closed 193-km long canal.

On the eighth anniversary of its closure in 1967 during the so-called Six Day War with Israel, Egypt officially reopens the Suez Canal.

Kenya political activist Wangari Maathi begins the Green Belt Movement that will win her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She leads the National Council of Kenyan Women to Nairobi’s Kamukunji Park to plant seven trees honouring historical community leaders.

The Second Sudanese Civil War begins. One of the most disastrous conflicts of the late 20^th century from a humanitarian point of view – up to 2.5 million people will die in the next 22 years, many from starvation and disease – the war will pit the Christian southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army against the Muslim-led northern federal government of Khartoum. Four million people will be displaced as the conflict spreads into the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile region. Warfare will conclude with the establishment of an independence process that will see a separate country, South Sudan, come into being in 2011.

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Botswana introduces its new Pula currency, in the denomination of P100. The banknotes have the unusual feature of not one but three persons sharing the note’s portrait space. They are the three dikosi (chiefs) Bathoen I, Khama III and Sebele I, who ensured national sovereignty by travelling to London in 1895 and successfully petitioning Britain’s Queen Victoria to keep their lands free of Cecil Rhodes’ company’s control.