Sahle Selassie, the King of the Shewa in Ethiopia, signs a treaty of friendship with Great Britain. Seeking to modernise his country, he will sign an identical treaty with France in November, and he encourages the settlement of Europeans in his country.
Elected government seems unlikely among the Yoruba in their West African capital Ibadan because the results would not be honoured by the competitive, powerful elite, concludes British missionary David Hinderer in an observation published today: “The jealousy of the principal men of the place seems not at present to admit of the election of a man invested with the power to rule.” (pic: Ibadan’s first church and missionary house, 1850s)
Africa’s first photographer, Augustus Washington, dies in Liberia, where he emigrated in 1853 from the U.S. with his skills as a daguerreotype maker – an early photographic process. He created an invaluable photographic record of the country’s growth, including portraits of all Liberia’s presidents and prominent political and social leaders. (pic: Washington’s daguerreotype of African-American leader Frederick Douglass)
In Sudan, the Battle of Farkeh gives a significant first victory to invading Egyptian forces led by British commanders. Britain and Egypt are aligned in a desire to rule Sudan. Mahdist Sudanese forces are defending their country. Attacking at dawn, Egyptian troops led by Britain’s Herbert Kitchener outnumber Sudanese three to one.
Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips, who will become renowned as “The Father of Nigerian Church Music,” is made organist and Master of the Music at the Cathedral Church of Christ in Lagos. He has just returned from London where he received a baccalaureate degree at Trinity College. He will compose two solo works based on local folk songs, and his 1953 book Yoruba Music will be the first study of African music written by a university-traded African musicologist. (pic: playing Cathedral organ in 1932)
The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway is inaugurated, boosting Ethiopian trade by offering a rail route to the sea.
After pioneering a 1,066-km air route from Leopoldville (Kinshasa) to Kisangani in the Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo), the experimental airline Ligne Aérienne du Roi Albert ceases operations. The first African airline to be set up by a European country, it has flown 80 round-trips in two years across 125,000 km, carrying a total of 95 passengers and two tons of mail.
The success of Voice of Namibia, the underground radio service of the liberation movement the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) that broadcasts from Zambia, is debated by the South African territory’s white minority parliament. One MP observers, “More and more natives today possess shortwave sets. They are using those sets to listen to the broadcasting services from elsewhere because the broadcasting service of South West Africa is so poor.”
In the worst act of scholarship destruction since the burning of Egypt's Library of Alexandria in 48 BC, members of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) set fire to the University of Algiers library, destroying 500,000 books, in protest against the end of French colonial rule, one month before the Algerian Independence Referendum. The outrage of the Arab world is symbolised by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Algeria issuing stamps commemorating the library burning.
Félix Houphouët-Boigny, President of Côte d'Ivoire who is beginning to be known in the West as the “Sage of Africa,” expresses his governance philosophy at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London: “We have always preferred negotiation in all circumstances, because we are convinced that a compromise acceptable to everybody can emerge from a confrontation of ideas and interests.”
As the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt continues, the Israeli Air Force drops paratroopers onto the Egyptian airport at Sharm el-Sheikh. Israeli helicopters and paratroopers also capture the El-Tor airport.
One of South African writer and anti-apartheid activist Nadine Gordimer’s most celebrated novels, July’s People, is published to positive international reviews. The novel envisions a white family taking refuge in their former servant’s rural homestead during a violent civil war against apartheid.
At a special Arab League Summit called in Algiers, Algeria, members votes their support of the Palestinian Uprising in the Occupied Territories (lands captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967). Africa’s Arab League members are Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
As “black on black” violence, inflamed by outside forces seeking to retain white minority rule, engulfs South Africa, the U.N. Special Committee Against Apartheid reports, “The prospects for a speedy end to apartheid and the establishment of a united, non-racial and democratic South Africa appear to be less promising now than a year ago.”
A new airline formed by the government of Mali and the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development begins operations out of Bamako: Compagnie Aérienne du Mali (CAM). It will become Air Mali in 2009 before suspending operations with the outbreak of hostilities in northern Mali in 2012.
President of Libya (1969-2011), in Qasr Abu Hadi, Libya. An Arab nationalist who pursued the goal of a united Arab republic in the years following his coming to power in a coup d’état, “Brother Leader” evolved into a Pan-Africanists before his death in the Libyan revolution against his domestic dictatorship.
South African musician and musicologist of indigenous South African music, in Bacup, UK. His Zulu dance foot-stomping performances and multi-racial band Juluka was a rebuke to apartheid’s separation of the race. An anti-apartheid campaigner, he earned international fame with his 1982 album Scatterlings of Africa.
