Portugal has established Europe’s first slave market since ancient times, in Lisbon, and the Atlantic slave trade begins. The first enslaved Africans are brought up Africa’s West Coast for sale on six ships commanded by Lancarote de Freitas. They are 235 enslaved Berbers kidnapped from their homes in what will become Mauritania. Later this year, Prince Infante D. Henrique will begin selling enslaves Africans in Lagos.
One of South Africa’s worst railway accidents occurs at Mostertshoek, when a train’s cars transporting black South African passengers roll backward on a decline after they are detached from the locomotive. Eventually, the cars are struck by a speeding mail/passenger train, killing 27 in the cars and six people on the mail/passenger train.
The Maji Maji Rebellion that began in July 1905 in protest of German East Africa (Tanzania) colonial policy that is forcing the population to grow cotton, brings military victory to Matumbi warriors. They take a German outpost in Ifakara. However, several thousand warriors armed with spears are defeated by machine guns when they attack the German fortification at Maheng. Germany will put down the rebellion with reinforcements sent by Kaiser Wilhelm. To further end resistance, Germany will commit the war crime of enforced famine. Up to 300,000 Africans will die, mostly by starvation.
As British forces expand the African front against Germany at the start of World War I, they are joined by the Nyasaland (Malawi) Volunteer Reserve of about 200 white colonial soldiers (pic).
Newly-independent Algeria joins the Arab League.
Quick-witted King Hassan II of Morocco saves himself and others on the Boeing 727 he is traveling in when a rebel faction of the Moroccan military attempts to shoot down the plane. Although injured by gunfire from four attacking fighter jets, Hassan gets on the cockpit radio, and shouts to the pilots, "Stop firing you fools, the tyrant is dead!" The attacking pilots, under orders of General Mohamed Oufkir, think they've succeeded, and fly away. Hassan’s plane lands safely in Rabat, but with eight dead and 40 injured. Oufkir commits suicide.
The deadliest air disaster in South Sudan and the worst involving a Fokker F-27 aircraft occurs during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Militants from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army shoot down with a surface to air missile a Sudan Airways passenger jet on a scheduled domestic flight. All 60 people on board are killed.
South Africa’s liberation leader Nelson Mandela and apartheid state president F.W. de Klerk hold emergency talks in Pretoria over spreading violence in the black township Soweto, sparked when Zulu migrant workers attacked commuter trains with knives and spears. Ethnic violence spurred by “third force” agitators flares as groups seek to expand their influence in the run up to South Africa’s democratisation.
Although Namibia has been an independent country for three years, its main port at Walvis Bay has remained under South African control since the 1910, until Pretoria relinquishes its sovereignty today.
In the most lethal use of force by South African police against civilians since the 1976 Soweto Uprising, security forces open fire on striking mine workers at Marikana, killing 34. The Marikana Massacre traumatises the country.
Rwanda signs a development deal with Germany to encourage German investment in the country (like the recent VW assembly plant). The agreement is to assist Rwanda’s goal of creating one million new jobs by 2024.
Third president of Seychelles (2004-2016), in Mahé, Crown Colony of Seychelles. In the 1990s, he played a leading role in the democratisation of the country’s political system.
Zambia football player, coach and executive who was CAF’s Footballer of the Year 1988, in Mufulira, Northern Rhodesia. In 1996, he was the first footballer to be nominated for FIFA’s World Player of the Year, given to African footballers who play the entire year for a non-European club.
