Emperor Gelawdewos of Ethiopia, having defeated the Adal Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire last month at the Battle of Wayna Daga, encamps his army on the shores of Lake Tana to wait out the rainy season. Once the rains stop, he plans to solidify his hold on the Horn of Africa.
The Dutch East India Company ship the Haerlem runs aground at Table Bay (South Africa). The crew builds a fort and awaits rescue. The last seamen will leave next year, and all of them will spread the news about a healthy climate and fertile land suitable for settlement. A permanent fort will be built there in 1652.
By act of the British Parliament, Britain abolishes the slave trade. British subjects are forbidden to trade in enslaved people, join the crews of slave ships, or financially invest in the slave ships of other countries.
Hundreds of homeless black people in Johannesburg establish a squatter’s camp in Orlando West, under the leadership of James Mpanza. Called Central Western Jabavu, the camp was originally allowed by city council as an “emergency settlement” to address the homeless crisis. The community will become the foundation the sprawling South Western Townships (Soweto).
Swazi Queen Mother Nkuwase Ndwandwa greets Britain’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (in pic left, behind King George) along with Swazi King Sobhuza II in southern Swaziland (Eswatini), at Geodgegaun. In honour of the event, the southern regional capital will be renamed to Nhlangano, SiSwati for “meeting place.”
The Catholic church of northern Uganda becomes the Diocese of Gulu, based in that city. The church will be instrumental in providing education and security to Gulu children when the Lord’s Resistance Army begins to a kidnap campaign to acquire child soldiers in 1987.
For the first time in history, a black Catholic Bishop uses his authority to elevate a white priest to the vicar apostolic (the role of a bishop who presides over an area with no established church hierarchy, where missionaries might work). In Ruanda (Rwanda), Bishop Aloys Bigirumwami consecrates André Parraudin’s elevation. The photo of Parraudin kneeling before Bishop Bigirumwami will appear in newspapers all over the world, symbolising a hoped-for non-racialism at a time of rising racial tensions in Africa and the West. Parraudin notes, “This is the first time perhaps in the history of the world when a black bishop has conferred the priesthood on a white priest.”
The third and final All-African People’s Conference opens in Cairo, with radical proposals and militant rhetoric that costs the conference support from both the international community and several African governments.
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh conclude a state visit to South Africa as guests of South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela. The visit is heavy with symbolism, and represents in the view of one commentator “this nation's final seal of acceptance into the international community and the Commonwealth of Nations.” Buckingham Palace considers the visit to be one of the most important of Queen Elizabeth’s long reign.
U.S. President Bill Clinton is the first U.S. president to visit South Africa. He addresses a joint session of Parliament. President Nelson takes him to the Robben Island prison cell where he was held for more than two decades.
Chad, the only country with Arabic as an official language that is not a member state of the Arab League, applies for membership, with the endorsement of Egypt. 12% of Chadians identify as Arab, and nearly a million speak Arabic. However, Chad will continue its observer status, granted in 2005, in 2023.
Liberian journalist and newspaper editor, in Cape Palmas, Liberia. His greatest impact was made in British Liberia, where he edited the influential newspaper Lagos Weekly Record from 1891 until his death in 1915. His anti-colonial editorial position infuriated British colonial authorities and disturbed Nigeria’s African elite who were enriched by colonialism.
Angolan poet and leading intellectual in Angola’s independence movement, in Luanda, Portuguese Angola. One of Angola’s most important poets, he formed the Movement for the New Intellectuals in Angola in 1948. Involved in liberation politics, he wrote the manifesto that guided the ultimately successful independence party, the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), and he devoted much of his poetry, written in Portuguese but with phrases in Bantu languages, to the theme of revolution.
Malawian poet, in Kadango Village, Mangochi District, Nyasaland. One of the poems in his collection of poems Of Chameleons and Gods contains an oblique criticism of Malawian President Hastings Banda, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in 1987 for four years. Upon his release, the University of Malawi dared not bring him back as a professor, so he immigrated, and continued writing and filmmaking abroad.
Senegalese poet, in Kaolak, French Senegal. Considered by Leopold Senghor the most talented poet of his generation, he dismissed punctuation in his free-verse poetry, and has been rewarded with honours from the French Academy, and translations into other languages of his several collections of poetry.
