Africa
Angola
Jonas Malheiro Savimbi (b. August 3, 1934, Munhango, Moxico Province, Angola – d. February 22, 2002, Lucusse, Moxico Province, Angola) was an Angolan political and military leader who founded and led the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
UNITA first waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule, 1966–74, then confronted the rival People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) during the decolonization conflict, 1974–75, and after independence in 1975, fought the ruling MPLA in the Angolan until his death in a clash with government troops in 2002.
The son of a railroad stationmaster, Savimbi was educated in mission schools and won a scholarship to study abroad. He studied medicine at the University of Lisbon in Portugal and then obtained a doctorate in political science at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1965. In 1961 Savimbi joined the Angolan independence leader Holden Roberto's Popular Union of Angola (UPA), the rival of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). He broke with the UPA’s leader in 1966 and formed the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which fought against Portuguese colonial rule.
Savimbi was the only Angolan guerrilla leader who continued fighting within Angola until the nation reached independence from Portugal in 1975; by this time he had expanded his initially small band of supporters into a guerrilla army numbering in the thousands. UNITA was based in southeastern Angola and relied for its support on the Ovimbundu people, the largest ethnic group in the country. At various times, Savimbi obtained support from China, South Africa, and the United States as a counter to the Marxist, Soviet-supported MPLA, which controlled the central government. Savimbi continued to wage a disruptive guerrilla war against the MPLA throughout the 1970s and ’80s. In 1991 he signed a peace agreement with the MPLA-led Angolan government that halted the civil war and resulted in free, multiparty national elections in 1992. After losing these elections, Savimbi and UNITA resumed their military struggle for control of the country, with UNITA dominating most of the countryside. Talks were held again, leading to the Lusaka Accord of 1994: hostilities were to cease and forces were to be disengaged. Jose Eduardo dos Santos, president of Angola, offered Savimbi one of two vice-presidential positions, and UNITA was also to be part of the government. Savimbi subsequently rejected the position and was officially designated leader of the opposition in 1997, a position that was rescinded in 1998. In 1996, Savimbi indicated that he would retain control of the lucrative diamond regions in northeastern Angola, although some were transferred to the government in 1998.
Savimbi faced opposition from within UNITA in September 1998 when a group calling itself UNITA-R suspended him and became the self-declared leadership. From that point UNITA was split into three factions. The Angolan government and the Southern African Development Community recognized UNITA-R as the official representative of UNITA. Nevertheless, Savimbi requested the renewal of negotiations in March 2001, and he further indicated a willingness to accept the terms of the Lusaka Accord. While the government demanded a cease-fire as a condition for initiating new talks and Savimbi called for the Roman Catholic church to mediate the dispute, fighting continued throughout 2001 and spilled into the neighboring countries of Zambia and Namibia. Government troops continued to pursue Savimbi and finally caught up with him in the eastern province of Moxico. After Savimbi’s death, a peace agreement between UNITA and the Angolan government was signed in April 2002.
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Cape Verde
*Pedro Pires, the third President of Cape Verde (2001-2011), was born in Fogo, Overseas Province of Cabo Verde, Portugal (April 29).
Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires (b. April 29, 1934, Fogo, Overseas Province of Cabo Verde) was the President of Cape Verde from March 2001 to September 2011. Before becoming President, he was Prime Minister from 1975 to 1991.
Pires was born in Fogo, Cape Verde. Later, he studied at the University of Lisbon, he was the father of future leaders of the struggle for independence during the Portuguese Colonial War.
Three days after the country became independent, he became the first president of the country and the nation at the time was a one-party state. After the ruling African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) decided to institute multiparty democracy in February 1990, Pires replaced President Aristides Pereira as General Secretary of PAICV in August 1990. The PAICV lost the multiparty parliamentary and presidential elections held in early 1991 and was left in opposition. At a party congress in August 1993, Pires was replaced as General Secretary by Aristides Lima and was instead elected as President of PAICV. As a candidate for the party presidency at PAICV's September 1997 congress, he faced Jose Maria Neves and prevailed with 68% of the vote. He stepped down as PAICV President in 2000 in preparation for a presidential bid in the next year's election and he was succeeded by Neves. He officially announced his candidacy for the Presidency of Cape Verde on September 5, 2000.
Pires was the PAICV candidate in the February 2001 presidential election, defeating former Prime Minister Carlos Veiga of the Movement for Democracy (MpD) in the second round by just 12 votes. Pires took office on March 22. The MpD boycotted his inauguration, saying that the election was marred by a "non-transparent process". As President, Pires appointed Neves as Prime Minister.
On April 22, 2002, Pires received the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry of Portugal.
When he was president, on October 2005, he visited Brazil, the capital city Brasília and met the president at the time Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
He ran for a second term in the presidential election held on February 12, 2006 and again prevailed over Veiga, this time winning in the first round by a 51%-49% margin.
In May 2008, he said that he favored a cautious, long-term approach to the formation of a United States of Africa, preferring that regional integration precede a continent-wide union. He attended the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD-IV) at this time.
Pires was awarded the 2011 Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. The prize was awarded in recognition of Pires role in making Cape Verde a "model of democracy, stability and increased prosperity".
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Ethiopia
(Abyssinia)
*In 1934 Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Fascist Italy, moved against Ethiopia in a border incident. His pretense, that of bringing civilization to a backward country, concealed Italian imperial ambitions for an African colony to supplement Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. In the diplomatic footwork that followed the border clash, the Emperor Haile Selassie referred the dispute to the League of Nations for mediation; but Britain and France gave Mussolini to understand that he could expect a free hand in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia became the target of renewed Italian imperialist designs in the 1930s. Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime was keen to avenge the military defeats Italy had suffered to Ethiopia in the First Italo-Abyssinian War (1895-1896), and to efface the failed attempt by "liberal" Italy to conquer the country, as epitomised by the defeat at Adowa (March 1, 1896). A conquest of Ethiopia could also empower the cause of fascism and embolden its rhetoric of empire. Additionally, the conquest of Ethiopia would provide a bridge between Italy's Eritrean and Italian Somaliland possessions. Ethiopia's position in the League of Nations did not dissuade the Italians from invading in 1935. The "collective security" envisaged by the League proved useless, and a scandal erupted when the Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935) revealed that Ethiopia's League allies were scheming to appease Italy.
*Italy and Ethiopia released a joint statement refuting any aggression between each other (September 29).
*An Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission discovered the Italian force at Walwal. British members of the delegation soon retired to avoid an international incident (November 23).
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*Tensions resulted in a border clash at Walwal. Italy invaded Ethiopia at Walwal, Ogaden Province (December 5), *Italy and Ethiopia released a joint statement refuting any aggression between each other (September 29).
*An Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission discovered the Italian force at Walwal. British members of the delegation soon retired to avoid an international incident (November 23).
The Italo–Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 stated that the border between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia was twenty-one leagues parallel to the Benadir coast (approximately 118.3 km [73.5 mi]). In 1930, Italy built a fort at the Walwal oasis (also Welwel, Italian: Ual-Ual) in the Ogaden, well beyond the twenty-one league limit.
On November 22, 1934, a force of 1,000 Ethiopian militia with three fitaurari (Ethiopian military-political commanders) arrived near Walwal and formally asked the Dubats garrison (Somali irregulars) stationed there (comprising about 60 soldiers) to withdraw from the area. The Somali NCO leading the garrison refused to withdraw and alerted Captain Cimmaruta, commander of the garrison of Uarder, 20 km away, to what had happened.
The next day, November 23, 1934, in the course of surveying the border between British Somaliland and Ethiopia, an Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission arrived at Walwal. The commission was confronted by a newly arrived Italian force. The British members of the boundary commission protested, but withdrew to avoid an international incident. The Ethiopian members of the boundary commission, however, stayed at Walwal.
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In November 1934, Ethiopian territorial troops, escorting the Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission, protested against Italy's incursion at Walwal. The British members of the commission soon withdrew to avoid embarrassing Italy. Italian and Ethiopian troops remained encamped in close proximity.
In early December 1934, the tensions on both sides erupted into what was known as the "Wal Wal incident." For reasons which have never been clearly determined, there was a skirmish between the garrison of Somalis, who were in Italian service, and a force of armed Ethiopians. According to the Italians, the Ethiopians attacked the Somalis with rifle and machine-gun fire. According to the Ethiopians, the Italians attacked them, supported by two tanks and three aircraft. In the end, approximately 107 Ethiopians and 50 Italians and Somalis were killed.
Neither side did anything to avoid confrontation. The Ethiopians repeatedly menaced the Italian garrison with the threat of an armed attack, and the Italians sent two planes over the Ethiopian camp and one of them even shot a short machine gun burst, that no one on the ground noticed, after the pilot, seeing Captain Cimmaruta in the midst of the Ethiopians, thought that he was taken prisoner by them.
*Abyssinia protested Italian aggression at Walwal (December 6).
*Italy demanded an apology for the Walwal incident (December 8).
*Italy demanded an apology for the Walwal incident (December 8).
*Italy demanded financial and strategic compensation for the Walwal incident (December 11).
*Mussolini ordered General Emilio De Bono to Eritrea to take command of the Italian forces there (December 24).
*Mussolini wrote a memorandum for Marshal Pietro Badoglio titled "Directive and Plan of Action to Solve the Abyssinian question" (December 30). "I decide on this war, the object of which is nothing more than the complete destruction of the Abyssinian army and the total conquest of Abyssinia", Mussolini wrote. "In no other way can we build the empire."
*Mussolini wrote a memorandum for Marshal Pietro Badoglio titled "Directive and Plan of Action to Solve the Abyssinian question" (December 30). "I decide on this war, the object of which is nothing more than the complete destruction of the Abyssinian army and the total conquest of Abyssinia", Mussolini wrote. "In no other way can we build the empire."
Guinea
(French Guinea)
*Lansana Conté (b. November 30, 1934, Dubreka, French Guinea – d. December 22, 2008), the second President of Guinea, serving from April 3, 1984 until his death in December 2008, was born in Dubreka, French Guinea (November 30). He was a Muslim and a member of the Susu ethnic group.
Lansana Conté, (b. November 30, 1934, Loumbaya-Moussaya, Dubréka prefecture, French Guinea — d. December 22, 2008, Conakry, Guinea), Guinean strongman who was the autocratic ruler of his country for almost 25 years after initially taking control as the head of the Military Committee for National Recovery (CMRN) that assumed power in April 1984, shortly after the death of President Ahmed Touré.
Conté, a member of the Susu ethnic group and a Muslim, received his military training in Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal before enlisting (in 1955) in the French army. He took part in the defense of Conakry during the attempted invasion from neighboring Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) in November 1970, though he fought with Guinea-Bissau nationalists in 1971 during their struggle for independence from Portugal. After taking a technical course (1974) in Minsk, U.S.S.R. (now in Belarus), he was made (in 1975) chief of staff of land forces, a post that he retained until Touré’s death.
As president, Conté promised the restoration of human rights and full democratic elections. He was re-elected three times (1993, 1998, and 2003) in ostensibly multi-party ballots, but Conte grew increasingly authoritarian amid growing accusations of fraud and intimidation of the opposition. During the last three years of his life, Conté, who was believed to be diabetic and possibly suffering from leukemia, sought medical treatment outside of the country.
Conté, a member of the Susu ethnic group and a Muslim, received his military training in Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal before enlisting (in 1955) in the French army. He took part in the defense of Conakry during the attempted invasion from neighboring Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) in November 1970, though he fought with Guinea-Bissau nationalists in 1971 during their struggle for independence from Portugal. After taking a technical course (1974) in Minsk, U.S.S.R. (now in Belarus), he was made (in 1975) chief of staff of land forces, a post that he retained until Touré’s death.
As president, Conté promised the restoration of human rights and full democratic elections. He was re-elected three times (1993, 1998, and 2003) in ostensibly multi-party ballots, but Conte grew increasingly authoritarian amid growing accusations of fraud and intimidation of the opposition. During the last three years of his life, Conté, who was believed to be diabetic and possibly suffering from leukemia, sought medical treatment outside of the country.
Malawi
(Nyasaland)
*Bingu wa Muthanka, the President of Malawi from 2004 to 2012, was born in Thyolo, Nyasaland (Malawi) (February 24).
Bingu wa Mutharika (b. Brightson Webster Ryson Thom, February 24, 1934, Thyolo, Nyasaland (Malawi) – d. April 5, 2012, Lilongwe, Malawi) was a Malawian politician and economist who was President of Malawi from May 2004 until his death. He was also President of the Democratic Progressive Party, which he founded in February 2005. It obtained a majority in Malawi's parliament in the 2009 general election. During his two terms in office he was noted for being the Chairperson of the African Union in 2010–2011, as well as for several domestic controversies. In 2009 he purchased a private presidential jet for $13.26 million. This was followed almost immediately by a nationwide fuel shortage which was officially blamed on logistical problems, but was more likely due to the hard currency shortage caused by the jet purchase. He died of a heart attack in Lilongwe while in office on April 5, 2012.
Bingu wa Mutharika was elected president of Malawi in 2004 as the handpicked successor of President Bakili Muluzi (who was constitutionally banned from running for another term of office), but instead of bowing to Muluzi’s behind-the-scenes power play, Mutharika set out to eliminate corruption, streamline spending, and reform Malawi’s moribund agricultural sector, ending the country’s dependence on food aid. He also restored damaged relations with foreign donor countries, resigned from Muluzi’s political party to form his own, and allowed criminal charges to be brought against Muluzi. Mutharika studied economics overseas, obtaining a master’s degree at the University of Delhi and a doctorate at the private Pacific Western University, Los Angeles. Before he became president, he was a civil servant and a cabinet minister and held a post with the World Bank. Mutharika was reelected in 2009, but his continuing feud with Muluzi and his increasingly autocratic eccentricities damaged Malawi’s fragile political and economic stability.
Bingu wa Mutharika (b. Brightson Webster Ryson Thom, February 24, 1934, Thyolo, Nyasaland (Malawi) – d. April 5, 2012, Lilongwe, Malawi) was a Malawian politician and economist who was President of Malawi from May 2004 until his death. He was also President of the Democratic Progressive Party, which he founded in February 2005. It obtained a majority in Malawi's parliament in the 2009 general election. During his two terms in office he was noted for being the Chairperson of the African Union in 2010–2011, as well as for several domestic controversies. In 2009 he purchased a private presidential jet for $13.26 million. This was followed almost immediately by a nationwide fuel shortage which was officially blamed on logistical problems, but was more likely due to the hard currency shortage caused by the jet purchase. He died of a heart attack in Lilongwe while in office on April 5, 2012.
Bingu wa Mutharika was elected president of Malawi in 2004 as the handpicked successor of President Bakili Muluzi (who was constitutionally banned from running for another term of office), but instead of bowing to Muluzi’s behind-the-scenes power play, Mutharika set out to eliminate corruption, streamline spending, and reform Malawi’s moribund agricultural sector, ending the country’s dependence on food aid. He also restored damaged relations with foreign donor countries, resigned from Muluzi’s political party to form his own, and allowed criminal charges to be brought against Muluzi. Mutharika studied economics overseas, obtaining a master’s degree at the University of Delhi and a doctorate at the private Pacific Western University, Los Angeles. Before he became president, he was a civil servant and a cabinet minister and held a post with the World Bank. Mutharika was reelected in 2009, but his continuing feud with Muluzi and his increasingly autocratic eccentricities damaged Malawi’s fragile political and economic stability.
*Yaba Higher College officially opened (January).
Nnamdi Azikiwe received a master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. He also worked as an instructor at Lincoln University before returning to Nigeria.
In November, Azikiwe took the position of editor for the African Morning Post, a daily newspaper in Accra, Ghana. In that position he promoted a pro-African nationalist agenda. In his passionately denunciatory articles and public statements, Azikiwe censured the existing colonial order: the restrictions on the Africans' right to express their opinions, and racial discrimination. He also criticized those Africans who belonged to the "elite" of colonial society and favored retaining the existing order, as they regarded it as the basis of their well being.
(French Congo)
*France introduced air service between Algiers and Brazzaville in the French Congo (June 18).
*In the French Congo, a railway line connecting Pointe-Noire with Brazzaville opened (July 10).
(Southern Rhodesia)
*The Southern Rhodesian general election was held. The new United Party led by Godfrey Huggins won 24 out of 30 seats.
South Africa
*The Jonker diamond was found at the Elandsfontein mine in South Africa by Johannes Jacobus Jonker (January 17).
*The Status of the Union Act, declaring the Union of South Africa to be a "sovereign independent state", received royal assent (June 22).
*Hertzog and Smuts formed the United South African National Party.
The United Party was South Africa's ruling political party between 1934 and 1948.
The United Party was formed by a merger of most of Prime Minister Barry Hertzog's National Party with the rival South African Party of Jan Smuts, plus the remnants of the Unionist Party. Its full name was the United National South African Party, but it was generally called the "United Party". The party drew support from several different parts of South African society, including English-speakers, Afrikaners and Coloureds.
Hertzog led the party until 1939. In that year, Hertzog refused to commit South Africa to Great Britain's war effort against Nazi Germany. Many Afrikaners who had fought in the Second Boer War were still alive, and the atrocities committed by the British during that conflict were fresh in their memory. Hertzog felt that siding with the former enemy would be unacceptable to Afrikaners. Furthermore, he could see little benefit for South Africa in taking part in a war that he saw as an essentially European affair.
The majority of the United Party caucus were of a different mind, however, and Hertzog resigned. Jan Smuts succeeded him and led the party and the country throughout World War II and the immediate post-war years.
Smuts and the United Party lost the 1948 election to the National Party. It was never to hold power again.
The Dominion Party was a South African political party establish in late October 1934 by dissatisfied members of the South African Party when that party merged with the National Party to form the United South African Party, commonly referred to as the "United Party". Its formation was mainly due to distrust of the motives of then-Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog and the new Afrikaner nationalist faction he brought into the now-united Party. The Party was established principally to maintain South Africa's "British connection" (it campaigned to keep the Union Jack and God Save the Queen in 1938 and to enter the Second World War in 1939 on the side of Great Britain) and particularly the Natal's distinct British culture. The Party won 8 seats in the 1938 general election and lost one in 1943. It acquired no seats in the 1948 election, and disappeared from national politics. The Dominion Party leader was Colonel C. F. Stallard, who later served as Minister of Mines during the second Ministry of Jan Smuts.
From the 1860s onward, more and more whites in the Cape and the Transvaal were forced off the land to join a burgeoning working class while the landed entrepreneur became wealthier at the expense of less efficient farmers. Reacting to the poverty which resulted, the mainly Afrikaans-speaking poor whites nurtured a nationalism that sought to unite wealthy and impoverished Afrikaners -- first under organizations such as the Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaner Brotherhood), and then in financial establishments to rival those of English-speaking capitalism -- such as the insurance giant, SANLAM, and the financial institution, Volkskas Beperk -- the People's Bank.
The Volkskas Beperk (Afrikaans: Peoples' Bank) was a South African bank founded in 1934 as a cooperative loan bank, becoming a commercial bank in 1941. In 1991, by which time it had become South Africa's largest Afrikaner bank, Volkskas merged with United Bank, Allied Bank and Trust Bank to form Amalgamated Banks of South Africa.
The bank issued banknotes for circulation in South West Africa between 1949 and 1959 from its Windhoek branch.
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*Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African pianist and composer, was born in Cape Town, South Africa (October 9).
*Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African pianist and composer, was born in Cape Town, South Africa (October 9).
Abdullah Ibrahim (b. Adolph Johannes Brand, October 9, 1934), formerly known as Dollar Brand, is a South African pianist and composer. His music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multi-cultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church and ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles. Ibrahim is considered the leading figure in the subgenre Cape jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Theolonious Monk and Duke Ellington. With his wife, the jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, he is father to the New York underground rapper Jean Grae, as well as to a son, Tsakwe.
Ibrahim was born in Cape Town on October 9, 1934, and was baptized Adolph Johannes Brand. He attended Trafalgar High School in Cape Town's District Six, and began piano lessons at the age of seven, making his professional debut at 15.
In 1959 and 1960, Ibrahim played with the Jazz Epistles in Sophiatown, alongside saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, trombonist Jonas Gwangwa, bassist Johnny Gertze and drummer Makaya Ntshoko. In 1960, the group recorded the first jazz LP by Black South African musicians. Ibrahim then joined the European tour of the musical King Kong.
Ibrahim moved to Europe in 1962. In February 1963, his wife-to-be, Sathima Bea Benjamin (they married in 1965), convinced Duke Ellington, who was in Zurich on a European tour, to come to hear Ibrahim perform as "The Dollar Brand Trio" in St. Gallen's "Africana Club". After the show, Ellington helped set up a recording session with Reprise Records which resulted in the album, Duke Ellington presents The Dollar Brand Trio. A second recording of the trio (also with Ellington and Billy Strayhorn on piano) performing with Sathima as vocalist was recorded, but remained unreleased until 1996 (A Morning in Paris, under Benjamin's name). The Dollar Brand Trio (with Johnny Gertze on bass and Makaya Ntshoko on drums) subsequently played at many European festivals, as well as on radio and television.
Ibrahim and Benjamin moved to New York in 1965 and that year he played at the Newport Jazz Festival, followed by a first tour through the United States. In 1966 Ibrahim substituted for Duke Ellington on five dates, leading the Duke Ellington Orchestra. In 1967, a Rockefeller Foundation grant enabled Ibrahim to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. While in the United States, Ibrahim interacted with many progressive musicians, among them Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp.
Ibrahim briefly returned to South Africa in the mid-1970s, having in 1968 converted to Islam (with the resultant change of name from Dollar Brand to Abdullah Ibrahim). However, Ibrahim soon returned to New York in 1976, as he found the political conditions in South Africa too oppressive. While in South Africa, however, he made a series of recordings with noted Cape Town players (including Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen). These recordings gave impetus to a new sound, Cape Jazz. These included "Mannenberg" (first recorded in 1974, and renamed "Capetown Fringe" in its United States release), one of South Africa's popular musical compositions, inspired by the Cape Flats township where many of those forcibly removed from District Six were sent. "Black Lightning", "African Herbs", and "Soweto Is Where It Is At" were subsequent recordings that mirrored and spoke of the defiance in the streets and townships of South Africa. "Mannenberg" came to be considered "the unofficial national anthem" of South Africa, and the theme tune of the anti-apartheid movement. Saxophonist and flautist Carlos Ward was Ibrahim's sideman in duets during the early 1980s.
From 1983, Ibrahim led a group called Ekaya (which translates as "home"), as well as various trios, occasional big bands and other special projects.
After the ending of apartheid, Ibrahim lived in Cape Town, and divided his time between his global concert circuit, New York, and South Africa.
Ibrahim composed the soundtracks for a number of films, including Chocolat (1988), and 1990's No Fear, No Die.
In 1989 he made an extended appearance in the British television discussion series After Dark alongside Zoe Wicomb, Donald Woods, Shula Marks and others. He also took part in the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, where he and others recalled the days of apartheid.
Ibrahim worked as a solo performer, typically in unbroken concerts that echo the unstoppable impetus of the old marabi performers, classical impressionists and his musical idols – Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Fats Waller. He also performs frequently with trios and quartets and larger orchestral units. After his return to South Africa in the early 1990s, Ibrahim was feted with symphony orchestra performances, one of which was in honor of Nelson Mandela's 1994 inauguration as President.
In 1997, Ibrahim collaborated on a tour with drummer Max Roach, and the following year undertook a world tour with the Munich Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1999, he founded the "M7" academy for South African musicians in Cape Town and was the initiator of the Cape Town Jazz Orchestra, an 18-piece big band launched in September 2006.
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Nelson Mandela and several other boys travelled to Tyhalarha to undergo the circumcision ritual that symbolically marked their transition from boys to men. The rite over, Mandela was given the name Dalibunga.
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