Malagasy rebels in the Menalamba Rebellion seek to block France’s colonisation of Madagascar. Their goal is to rid the island of Western religions and influences, and restore traditional beliefs. Today, rebels brutally murder Jacques Berthieu, one of five foreign missionaries and all Malagasy Christian religious officials who are also killed. Berthieu is tortured, castrated and shot. In 2012, he will be declared a Christian martyr and made a saint by Pope Benedict XVI.
The foundation stone for South Africa’s Palace of Justice is laid in Pretoria by Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic. Dutch architect Sytze Wierda designs the elaborate structure. In 2023, the Gauteng Division of the High Court of Justice is using the building.
Now that the Benguela Railway has reached the Belgian Congo from its origin at Portuguese Angola’s Atlantic Ocean port of Lobito, the company is advertising to travelers throughout the world that there is a shorter route available into the Central African interior than the previous long rail trip up from Cape Town.
The publication of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 in England. Set in a future dark ages of totalitarianism, the story accurately predicts the use of the African continent as a battle ground where Western and Easter superpowers fight perpetual proxy wars and wars of conquest.
Angolan independence activist António Agostinho Neto, President of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, is arrested by Portuguese authorities. His medical patients and political supporters stage a march to seek his release. Police open fire on the unarmed demonstrators, killing at least 30 in a milestone for the liberation struggle known as the Massacre of Icolo e Bengo.
Egypt cuts diplomatic relations with the U.S. and expels American citizens in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the Arab-Israeli War. (pic: Egyptian President Gamal Nasser)
South Africa’s most memorable public debate pits societal opposites Harry Oppenheimer (pic: left), the billionaire businessman who controls 60% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s assets, against Cyril Ramaphosa (right), founder of the National Union of Mine Workers and an activist who has been imprisoned for challenging apartheid. The debate proved that dialogue is possible across race, class and economic divides, and may be used to address South Africa’s divisions.
A four-year State of Emergency ends in South Africa as negotiations to end apartheid continue. Emergency measures continue temporarily in the violence-torn Natal Province.
General Sam Abaja, who seized control of Nigeria in a 1993 coup d’état, dies and is buried, on the same day according to Muslim custom, without an autopsy. U.S. intelligence will confirm the widespread belief held in Nigeria that he was poisoned.
Chwa II Kabalega, the Omukama (ruler) of the Bunyoro people from 1870-1899, is declared a National Hero of Uganda. Britain declared a war of conquest upon his nation in 1894. Even with the assistance of the nations of Nubia and Somalia, British forces required 5 ½ years to capture him. He was exiled for 24 years to Seychelles, where he died in 1923.
Gautrain, an express commuter light rail train, opens to the public. Travel time is 15 minutes from Sandton to O.R. Tambo International Airport, along an 80 kilometre system.
Mining magnet, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The beneficiary of centuries of colonialism and apartheid that concentrated South Africa’s enormous mineral wealth into the hands of a small white elite, he is Chairman of the De Beers diamond fortune, started by his grandfather. He is South Africa’s richest person, worth US$8 billion in 2020 as estimated by Forbes, and Africa’s third richest person. As a means to give back to South Africa, he contributes to conservation and philanthropic causes.
Ghanaian-Nigerian media personality and writer, in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The popular broadcaster died tragically at age 34 when the bus she was riding in Abia State, Nigeria was attacked by bandits, and she was fatally shot.
