A dispatch from the U.K.’s Secretary of State for War and the Colonies reaches Cape Town with word that Natal on South Africa’s east coast is to become a British colony. The dispatch was sent 13 December 1842 and took more than four months to arrive.
Lobengula, King of Matabeleland (Zimbabwe), meets his first visitors to his new kraal at KoBulawayo. They are local missionaries who wish to build a second mission station in Matebeleland. Lobengula grants permission for them to locate a suitable spot, and on 16 November he will grant his approval for the location they choose, a natural spring that inspires the name Hope Fountain Mission (pic). Impressed by the bricks being made for the church, he will have the same made to build the first structures of what will become the city of Bulawayo.
Sierra Leone is telegraphically connected with Ascension via a 1,117 nautical mile submarine cable.
Commercial agriculture in Nyasaland (Malawi) has never been more productive. Coffee, a “speculative crop” whose price depends on competition from other countries, is being replaced in favour of other crops. (pic: steam-powered tractor, Chicwawa, Nyasaland, 1909)
The British Empire Exhibition opens at Wembley Park in London. All of Britain’s African colonies and protectorates except Gambia participate, and have their own pavilions to showcase their culture and architecture. More than 27 million people will attend before the fair closes in October 1925.
British forces launch “Operation Anvil” against the Kenyan people who support the Mau Mau uprising against the colonial occupation of the country. The centre of Mau Mau activity, Nairobi, will have 50,000 residents evicted as suspected loyalists, and relocated elsewhere.
The first of the iconic South African fast food restaurants Steers opens, under the name Burger Ranch, in Benoni, South Africa. After a visit to the U.S., restaurateur George Halamandaris seeks to replicate the American fast-food restaurant concept in South Africa.
The “country” of KaNgwane is established from a section of South Africa along the border of Swaziland (Eswatini). As the “homeland” of 183,000 South African Swazis, it is part of the apartheid plan to make non-citizens of blacks, whose South African citizenship is to be transferred to their respective tribal “nations.” The international community does not recognize KaNgwane as an independent state. KaNgwane, which uses the flag of South Africa as its state flag (pic), will finally disappear with the end of apartheid in April 1994.
Tanzania’s coconut crop now being harvested will amount to 543,107 tonnes, making the country the world’s 10th biggest producer of coconuts.
Motswana lawyer, human rights activist, writer and member of Botswana’s parliament, in Mochudi, Bechuanaland. Raised in a poor rural village by parents who insisted that she and her siblings receive educations, she earned a law degree, opened Botswana’s first all-woman law firm and was the first woman to be appointed as a judge to Botswana's High Court, in 1997.
Nigerian poet, singer/songwriter and LGBTQ activist, in Anambra State, Nigeria. His first book of poetry was commercially published when he was 20, and subsequent volumes confirmed his importance among Africa’s youngest generation of poets. In 2020 he released his first record single. His art sometimes reflects his activism on behalf of Nigeria’s LGBTQ community.
