Where river transportation is not possible, the human carrier is the means of transporting cargo in Southern Africa. The terrain and the load size carried determines distance covered, but a typical load weighing 27 to 36 kg can be carried from 24 to 32 km.
The Winter Solstice in Southern Africa finds three major Bantu states established after centuries of migration and nation building: Benin, Kongo and Zimbabwe. Bantu people continue to migrate to other locations.
Bloody clashes erupt between British Mauritius’ three Chinese clans – the Cantonese, the Fukienese and the Hakkas – over leadership of the Chinese community. The Pagoda Riots are concentrated at the Cohan Tai Biou Pagoda. The fighting ends when the colony’s Supreme Court rules that leadership is to be shared between the clans, rotating on an annual basis.
The first airplane flight across the Indian Ocean has taken two and a half weeks, and arrives today in Mombasa, British Kenya. The Guba II “flying boat” departed Australia on 4 June and stopped at Diego Garcia (Mauritius) and Seychelles.
In a major World War II defeat for Britain and the Allied Forces, Libya’s port city Tobruk falls to Nazi German and fascist Italian troops. Two complete infantry brigades as well as most of the supporting units of the South African 2nd Infantry Division are captured. Tobruk will be recaptured in November 1942.
The International Court of Justice reverses its 1966 decision that it has no jurisdiction over South Africa’s 50-year old League of Nations mandate to administer South West Africa. Today’s ruling finds South Africa’s occupation of the territory is illegal. The head of South Africa’s apartheid regime, Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, rejects the ruling.
Cape Town’s Market Theatre opens, seating integrated audiences despite South Africa’s apartheid polices requiring racial segregation in public facilities. By the 1980s, the venue will be known as the “Theatre of the Struggle.”
With the unbanning of previously illegal political parties in South Africa, it is now permissible to advocate for communism, for the first time since 1950.
As votes for today’s election in Togo are counted and President Gnassingbé Eyadéma falls behind in the count, one of his generals seizes all ballots and stops the counting. The military declares Eyadéma the winner. Soldiers open fire on Togolese who object to the hijacked election, killing hundreds.
A total solar eclipse is visible in Southern African in an arc from Angola through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, to Madagascar.
Morocco’s A3 Motorway is dedicated. The 453-kilometre north-south highway connects Casablanca with Agadir.
Somalia exported 77,000 camels in 2014, but the number is down to 2000 thus far this year because the war in Yemen has closed the Yemeni port used by Somali camel traders to access buyers in the Middle East. Of the world’s 14 million camels, half live in Somalia.
A rare Annular Eclipse of the sun, when the moon covers only the centre of the sun - creating a solar ring of fire - is visible in an arc from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Djibouti is Africa’s first country and one of the few countries in the world to make vaccination against the Covid-19 virus mandatory for all people. (pic: Djibouti President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh)
South Africans short story writer and journalist known as Can Themba, in Marabastad, South Africa. His collected works were published only after his death.
Kenyan political activist and writer, in Kiambu District, Kikuyuland, British Kenya. As a union activist in 1960, she was imprisoned by British colonial authorities for organising a strike of women’s workers. In prison, she was raped and impregnated by a British guard. She entered politics, and was one of the first women to run for office after Independence.
Kenyan film director, in Nairobi, Kenya. From her 2008 feature film directorial debut From a Whisper and continuing through later work and the authoring of children’s books, she has been at the among the filmmakers bringing a new vision to 21st Century African cinema.
Nigerian businessman, in London, England. He moved in and out of his father’s business, the Mike Adenuga Group, to amass his own fortune among the younger generation of Nigerian billionaires in companies dealing with the country’s oil wealth.
