1938 Africa

Africa

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Nelson Mandela

*Mandela was admitted to the University of Fort Hare, a black institution. Two years later he would be expelled for leading a student protest.

Chad

*Ibrahim Abatcha, a Muslim Chadian politician, was born.

Ibrahim Abatcha (1938 – February 11, 1968) was a Muslim Chadian politician reputed of Marxist leanings and associations. His political activity started during the decolonization process of Chad from France, but after the country's independence he was forced to go into exile due to the increasing authoritarinism of the country's first President Francois Tombalbaye. To overthrow Tombalbaye he founded in Sudan in 1966 the FROLINAT, of which he was the first leader and field commander. Two years later he was killed in a clash with the Chadian Army.

Originally from Borno (a province of the British colony of Nigeria), Abatcha was born into a family with a Muslim background in the French colony of Chad at Fort-Lamy (today N'Djamena) in 1938, and learned to speak French, English and Chadian Arabic, but not to write Classical Arabic, as he did not study in a Qur'anic school. He found work as a clerk in the colonial administration and became a militant trade unionist.

Abatcha entered politics in 1958, becoming a prominent figure in the new radical Chadian National Union (UNT), mainly a split from the African Socialist Movement (MSA) by promoters of the No-vote in the referendum on Chad's entry into the French Community. The party's followers were all Muslims, and advocated Pan-Africanism and socialism. Towards the end of the colonial rule, Abatcha was jailed for a year either for his political activities or for mismanagement in the performance of his duties.

After independence in 1960, Abatcha and his party staunchly opposed the rule of President Francois Tombalbaye, and the UNT was banned with all other opposition parties on January 19, 1962. After that Abatcha was briefly imprisoned by the new Chadian government.

After his release, the UNT cadres decided that if the political situation in Chad became too unbearable to allow the party to survive, it would be wise to send out of the country some party members so that the organization would in any case maintain its existence. Thus Abatcha, who held the position of second adjutant secretary-general of the UNT, was sent in 1963 to Accra, Ghana, where he was later joined by UNT members Aboubakar Djalabo and Mahamat Ali Taher. By going into exile, the UNT members meant also to ensure their personal safety and organize abroad an armed revolt in Chad. As part of the means to preserve the unity of the movement, Abatcha wrote for the UNT a policy statement; this draft was to be the core of the official program of the FROLINAT.

Abatcha led the typical life of the Third World dissident in search of support in foreign capitals, first residing in Accra, Ghana, where he received his first military training and made friends among members of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon that had found asylum there. The Cameroonians helped him attend conferences organized by international Communist groups.

After leaving Accra in 1965, Abatcha started traveling to other African capitals always seeking support for his project of beginning an insurgency against Tombalbaye. The first capital he reached in 1965 was Algiers, where the UNT had already a representative, probably Djalabo. His attempts were unsuccessful, as were those made from there to persuade the Chadian students in France to join him in his fight. From Algiers, he traveled to Cairo, where a small secret committee of anti-government Chadian students of the Al-Azhar University had formed. The students in Cairo had developed a strong political sensitivity because they had come to resent that the degrees obtained by them in Arab countries were of no use in Chad, as French was the only official language. Among these students, Abatcha recruited his first supporters, and with the help of the UPC Cameroonian exiles contacted the North Korean embassy in Egypt, which offered him a military stage. Seven Cairo students volunteered, leaving Egypt in June 1965 and returning in October; these were to be with Abatcha the first military cadres of the rebels. Abatcha with his "Koreans" went then to Sudan in October 1965.

Once in Sudan, Abatcha found fertile ground for further recruitment, as many Chadian refugees lived there. Abatcha was also able to enroll in his movement former Sudanese soldiers, including a few officers, of whom the most distinguished was to become Hadjaro Senoussi. He also contacted Mohamed Baghlani, who was in communication with the first Chadian insurgents already active in Chad, and with the insurgent group Liberation Front of Chad (FLT).

A merger was negotiated during the congress at Nyala between June 19 and June 22, 1966 in which the UNT and another rebel force, the Liberation Front of Chad (FLT) combined, giving birth to the FROLINAT, whose first secretary-general was agreed to be Abatcha. The two groups were ideologically ill-fitted, as they combined the radicalism of the UNT and the Muslim beliefs of the FLT. FLT's president, Ahmed Hassan Musa, missed the conference because he was imprisoned in Khartoum; Musa suspected with some reason that Abatcha had deliberately chosen the moment of his incarceration to organize the conference due to his fear of FLT's numerical superiority over the UNT. As a result, once freed Musa broke with the FROLINAT, the first of many splits that were to plague the history of the organization. Thus Abatcha had to face from the beginning a level of considerable internal strife, with the opposition guided by the anti-communist Mohamed Baghlani.

The unity was stronger on the field, with Abatcha and his so-called Koreans passing to Eastern Chad in mid-1966 to fight the government, and El Hadj Issaka assuming the role of his chief-of-staff. While his maquis were badly trained and equipped, they were able to commit some hit-and-run attacks against the Chadian army, mainly in Ouaddai, but also in Guera and Salamat. The rebels also toured the villages, indoctrinating the people on the future revolution and exhorting youths to join the FROLINAT forces.

The following year Abatcha expanded his range and number of operations, officially claiming in his dispatches 32 actions, involving prefectures previously untouched by the rebellion, that is Moyen-Chari and Kanem. Mainly due to Abatcha's qualities as both secretary-general and field-commander, what had started in 1965 as a peasant uprising was becoming a revolutionary movement.

On January 20, 1968 Abatcha's men killed on the Goz Beida-Abéché road a Spanish veterinarian and a French doctor, while they took hostage a French nurse. Abatcha disavowed this action and ordered his men to free the nurse. However, due to these actions, on February 11, Abatcha was tracked down by the Chadian army and killed in a clash.

Abatcha's death was the end of an important phase in the history of the FROLINAT and more generally of the rebellion. Abatcha had been the one generally acceptable leader of the insurrection. After him, the FROLINAT was more and more divided by inner rivalries, making it more difficult to provide the insurgents with a coherent organization.

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Democratic Republic of Congo

*Between 1938 and 1944, the number of workers employed in the mines of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga (UMHK) rose from 25,000 to 49,000 to cope with the increased demand.

Following World War I, Belgium possessed two colonies in Africa—the Belgian Congo, which it had controlled since its annexation of the Congo Free State in 1908, and Ruanda-Urundi, a former German colony that had been mandated to Belgium in 1924 by the League of Nations.  The Belgian colonial military numbered 18,000 soldiers, making it one of the largest standing colonial armies in Africa at the time.

The Belgian government followed a policy of neutrality during the interwar years.  Nazi Germany invaded on May 10, 1940 and, after 18 days of fighting, Belgium surrendered on May 28 and was occupied by German forces. King Leopold III,  who had surrendered to the Germans, was kept a prisoner for the rest of the war. Just before the fall of Belgium, its government, including the Minister of the Colonies Albert de Vleeschauwer, fled first to Bordeaux in France, then to London, where it formed an official Belgian government in exile in October 1940.

The Governor-General of the Congo, Pierre Ryckmans, decided on the day of Belgium's surrender that the colony would remain loyal to the Allies, in stark contrast to the French colonies that later pledged allegiance to the pro-German Vichy government. The Congo was therefore administered from London by the Belgian government in exile during the war.

Despite this assurance, disruption broke out in the city of  Stanleyville (now Kisangani in the eastern Congo) among the white population panicking about the future of the colony and the threat of an Italian invasion.

Soon after the arrival of the Belgian government in exile in London, negotiations began between the Belgians and the British about the role which the Congo would play in the Allied war effort. The British were determined that the Congo should not fall into Axis hands, and planned to invade and occupy the colony if the Belgians did not come to an arrangement. This was particularly because, after the fall of Dutch and British colonies in the Far East to Japan, the Allies were desperate for raw materials like rubber which the Congo could produce in abundance. Eventually, the two parties came to an arrangement in which virtually all the British demands were accepted, including a 30 percent devaluation of the Congolese franc.  

With the official agreement and the Congolese declaration of support for the Allies, the economy of the Congo and in particular its production of important raw materials, was placed at the disposal of Belgium's Allies, particularly Britain and the United States.

The Congo had become increasingly centralized economically during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as the Belgian government encouraged the production there of cotton, which had value on the international market. The greatest economic demands on the Congo were related to raw materials. Between 1938 and 1944, the number of workers employed in the mines of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga (UMHK) rose from 25,000 to 49,000 to cope with the increased demand. In order to increase production for the war effort, the colonial authorities increased the hours and the speed at which workers, both European and African, were expected to work. This led to increasing labor unrest across the colony. Discontent among the white population was also increased by the raising of a 40 percent "war tax". High taxes and price controls were enforced from 1941, limiting the amount of profit that could be made and curbing profiteering.  

The vast majority of the Congolese-produced raw resources were exported to other Allied countries. By 1942, the entire colony's output of copper, palm oil and industrial diamonds were being exported to the United Kingdom, while almost all the colony's lumber was sent to South Africa. Exports to the United States also rose from $600,000 in early 1940 to $2,700,000 by 1942.

Tax revenue from the Belgian Congo enabled the Belgian government in exile and Free Belgian Forces to fund themselves, unlike most other states in exile, which operated through subsidies and donations from sympathetic governments. It also meant that the Belgian gold reserves, which had been moved to London in 1940, were not needed to fund the war effort, and therefore were still available at the end of the war.

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Ethiopia

(Abyssinia)

*Britain formally recognized Italy's control of Ethiopia (November 16). In return Mussolini agreed to withdraw 10,000 troops from Spain.

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Ghana

(The Gold Coast)

*Kofi Annan, diplomat and Secretary-General of the United Nations, was born in Kumasi (Comassie) Gold Coast (now Ghana) (April 8).

Kofi Annan, in full Kofi Atta Annan (b. April 8, 1938, Kumasi, Gold Coast [now Ghana]) is a Ghanaian international civil servant, who was the secretary-general of the United Nations (UN) from 1997 to 2006. He was the co-recipient, with the United Nations, of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2001.

Annan, whose father was governor of Asante province and a hereditary paramount chief of the Fante people, studied at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi before enrolling at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in the United States, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics. He continued his studies at the Institute for Advanced International Studies in Geneva. He earned a master’s degree while a Sloan fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971–72.

Annan began his career with the United Nations as a budget officer for the World Health Organization in Geneva in 1962. With the exception of a brief stint as the director of tourism in Ghana (1974–76), he spent his entire career with the UN, serving in several administrative posts. On March 1, 1993, he was elevated to undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations. In that position he distinguished himself during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in his skillful handling of the transition of peacekeeping operations from UN forces to NATO forces.

Because Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Annan’s predecessor as secretary-general, had alienated some member nations—most notably the United States—with his independent and aloof style, Annan entered office with the tasks of repairing relations with the United States and reforming the UN bureaucracy. Soon after becoming secretary-general, he introduced a reform plan that sought to reduce the organization’s budget and streamline its operations, moves that were welcomed by the United States. Other priorities included restoring public confidence in the UN, combating the AIDS virus, especially in Africa, and ending human rights abuses.

In 2001, Annan was appointed to a second term. Later that year, the September 11 attacks occurred in the United States, and global security and terrorism became major issues for Annan. In 2003, the United States launched a war against Iraq without receiving approval from the UN Security Council, and Annan’s subsequent criticism of the war strained relations with the United States. Later in 2003, Annan appointed a panel to explore the UN’s response to global threats, and he included many of its recommendations in a major reform package presented to the UN General Assembly in 2005. A number of measures were later adopted; the proposal to expand the Security Council from 15 to 24 members was among those rejected. In 2005, Annan was at the center of controversy following an investigation into the oil-for-food program, which had allowed Iraq—under UN supervision—to sell a set amount of oil in order to purchase food, medicine, and other necessities. A report described major corruption within the program and revealed that Annan’s son was part of a Swiss business that had won an oil-for-food contract. Although Annan was cleared of wrongdoing, he was criticized for his failure to properly oversee the program. In 2006 Annan’s term ended, and he was succeeded by Ban Ki-Moon. 

In 2007, Annan was named chairperson of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization aiding small-scale farmers.  AGRA was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Annan later played a crucial role in resolving the Kenyan election crisis that began in late December 2007, eventually brokering a power-sharing agreement between the government and the opposition on February 28, 2008. In the same year, he received the Peace of Westphalia Prize, awarded biannually for contributions to unity and peace in Europe, and became chancellor of the University of Ghana. In 2007 he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that promotes peace, sustainable development, human rights, and the rule of law.

In February 2012, Annan was appointed Joint Special Envoy for Syria by the United Nations and the League of Arab States. His core diplomatic effort consisted in delivering to the Syrian government a six-point proposal for ending the country’s civil war, a plan endorsed by the Security Council. The proposal enjoined President Bashar al-Assad's government to take significant steps, including ending all fighting operations. The Syrian government formally accepted the plan in March but continued its attacks on rebel forces and on popular demonstrations. In August, Annan announced his demission as Joint Special Envoy, citing a lack of unity and political will among world powers to resolve the conflict.

Annan co-authored a number of works. The memoir Interventions: A Life in War and Peace (co-written with Nader Mousavizadeh) was published in 2012.

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*John Kufuor, a Ghanaian businessman and politician who served as President of Ghana from 2001 to 2009, was born in Kumasi, Gold Coast (now Ghana) (December 8).

John Kufuor, in full John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor, (b. December 8, 1938, Kumasi, Gold Coast [now Ghana]) was the seventh of ten children of Nana Kwadwo Agyekum, an Asante royal, and Nana Ama Dapaah, a queen mother. Kufuor was educated at Prempeh College in Kumasi and in Great Britain. He was called to the bar in 1961 at Lincoln’s Inn, London, and then studied at the University of Oxford,  where in 1964 he earned a master’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics.

After completing his education, Kufuor returned to Ghana and launched his political career. In 1967 he became chief legal officer and town clerk for the city of Kumasi. By 1969 he was a member of Parliament and deputy foreign minister in the government of Kofi Busia. After Busia was overthrown in 1972, Kufuor spent several years as a businessman in the private sector. During Ghana’s transition back to democracy in 1979, Kufuor returned to public life. He was a member of the assembly that drafted the constitution of the third republic, and he was elected to Parliament in 1979, serving as deputy minority parliamentary leader. After Jerry J. Rawlings overthrew the government in late 1981, Kufuor stayed on as Rawlings’s secretary for local government. He resigned less than a year later, however, expressing his disappointment with the Rawlings regime.

Kufuor spent the rest of the decade as a private citizen until Ghana returned to democratic politics in 1992. He helped found the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and in 1996 became the party’s candidate for president. Though Kufuor lost to Rawlings in the national election that year, the NPP nominated him again to stand in the December 2000 election. Kufuor ran on a platform that emphasized improving the Ghanaian economy and educational system and capitalized on the mood of voters who were ready for a change in leadership. Kufuor garnered the most votes in the presidential election but did not have a majority, thus requiring a runoff election to be held later that month. Kufuor won the runoff election, capturing 57 percent of the vote.

On January 7, 2001, Kufuor began his first term as president. His inauguration marked the first peaceful transfer of power between democratically elected governments since Ghanaian independence in 1957. He spent his first year in office concentrating his efforts on the national economy. Though unemployment and inflation remained high, the national currency stabilized, and investment in the country increased. After being re-elected in 2004 with 52.75 percent of the vote, Kufuor visited many countries to build stronger ties with the international community. He stepped down from office upon the end of his second term and was succeeded by John Evans Atta Mills. Kufour also served as the chairperson of the African Union in 2007–08.

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Lesotho

*Moshoeshoe II, the King of Lesotho from 1966 to 1990 and from 1995 to 1996, was born in Morija, Lesotho (May 2).

Moshoeshoe II (b. May 2, 1938, Morija, Lesotho – d. January 15, 1996, Maloti Mountains, Lesotho), previously known as Constantine Bereng Seeiso, was the paramount chief of Lesotho, succeeding paramount chief Seeiso from 1960 until the country gained full independence from Great Britain in 1966. He was king of Lesotho from 1966 until his exile in 1990, and from 1995 until his death in 1996.

The young Seeiso was educated at the Roma College in Lesotho, then was sent to England, first to Ampleforth College and later to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. While there, he took to the life of an English country gentleman, including hunting, shooting, and fishing.

As king, Moshoeshoe's political power was always limited, and his reign was interrupted twice. Early in his reign, Leabua Jonathan became Prime Minister of Lesotho and gained control of the government. Jonathan suspended Moshoeshoe in 1970 in order to re-establish his control in the country after his party lost the election. Moshoeshoe went into temporary exile in the Netherlands. A few months later, when he gained control, Jonathan allowed Moshoeshoe to reassume the title of king. Jonathan was himself overthrown in 1986 and the king gained some power, but he was deposed in 1990, while his son Letsie III was forced to take his place as king. Moshoeshoe went into exile in the United Kingdom. Moshoeshoe was restored to the throne in 1995. The following year he was killed in a car accident, and Letsie became king again a month later. During the political turmoil of 1970 and 1990, and for a month after his death in 1996, his wife and Letsie's mother, 'Mamohato, acted as regent.

The King died at the age of fifty-seven in a road accident, when his car plunged off a mountain road during the early hours of January 15, 1996. The accident also killed the car's driver. According to a government statement, Moshoeshoe had set out at 1 am to visit his cattle at Matsieng, and was returning to Maseru through the Maloti Mountains when his car left the road.

Moshoeshoe married Princess Tabitha 'Masentle Lerotholi Mojela (later known as Queen 'Mamohato of Lesotho) in 1962, and with her had two sons and one daughter.

Liberia

*Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Liberian politician and economist who became President of Liberia in 2006 and who received the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, was born in Monrovia, Liberia (October 29).

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, née Ellen Johnson (b. October 29, 1938, Monrovia, Liberia) was the first woman to be elected head of state of an African country when she became President of Liberia in 2006. Johnson Sirleaf was one of three recipients, along with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman, of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts to further women’s rights.

Johnson Sirleaf is of mixed Gola and German heritage; her father was the first indigenous Liberian to sit in the national legislature. She was educated at the College of West Africa in Monrovia and at age 17 married James Sirleaf (they were later divorced). In 1961, Johnson Sirleaf went to the United States to study economics and business administration. After obtaining a master’s degree (1971) in public administration from Harvard University, she entered government service in Liberia.

Johnson Sirleaf served as assistant minister of finance (1972–73) under Pres. William Tolbert and as finance minister (1980–85) in Samuel K. Doe's military dictatorship. She became known for her personal financial integrity and clashed with both heads of state. During Doe’s regime, she was imprisoned twice and narrowly avoided execution. In the 1985 national election, she campaigned for a seat in the Senate and openly criticized the military government, which led to her arrest and a 10-year prison sentence. She was released after a short time and allowed to leave the country. During 12 years of exile in Kenya and the United States, during which time Liberia collapsed into civil war, Johnson Sirleaf became an influential economist for the World Bank, Citibank, and other international financial institutions. From 1992 to 1997 she was the director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme.

After a tentative truce had been reached in Liberia’s conflict, Johnson Sirleaf ran for president in the 1997 election, representing the Unity Party. She finished second to Charles Taylor and was forced back into exile when his government charged her with treason. By 1999, Liberia’s civil war had resumed. After Taylor went into exile in 2003, Johnson Sirleaf returned to Liberia to chair the Commission on Good Governance, which oversaw preparations for democratic elections. In 2005, she again ran for president, vowing to end civil strife and corruption, establish unity, and rebuild the country’s devastated infrastructure. Known as the “Iron Lady,” she placed second in the first round of voting, and on November 8, 2005, she won the runoff election, defeating football (soccer) legend George Weah. Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as president of Liberia on January 16, 2006.

With more than 15,000 United Nations peacekeepers in the country and unemployment running at 80 percent, Johnson Sirleaf faced serious challenges. She immediately sought debt amelioration and aid from the international community. By late 2010 Liberia’s entire debt had been erased, and Johnson Sirleaf had secured millions of dollars of foreign investment in the country. In addition, she established a Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) in 2006 to probe corruption and heal ethnic tensions. Ironically, in 2009 Johnson Sirleaf was mentioned in one of the TRC’s reports, which recommended that she, along with a number of others, be banned from holding elective office for 30 years for having supported warring factions in the civil war. In Johnson Sirleaf’s case, she had supported Taylor for a time very early in the war. The report’s recommendations were not binding, though, and she was buoyed by a widespread demonstration of both domestic and international support.

Despite having previously pledged to serve only one term as president, in 2010 Johnson Sirleaf announced her intent to stand in the October 2011 presidential election, stating that she still had work to do. A month before the election, however, Johnson Sirleaf’s eligibility was challenged in court by a small opposition group that pointed to a provision of the constitution that stated that all presidential candidates were to have resided in Liberia for 10 years prior to an election, a requirement that Johnson Sirleaf and several other candidates did not meet and one that the government had tried—but failed—to have changed via referendum in August 2011. Six days before the election the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge, noting that the writers of the 1986 constitution could not have foreseen the years of conflict that forced many Liberians to live outside the country. Additional pre-election controversy was generated when Johnson Sirleaf won the Nobel Peace Prize mere days before the election. Other candidates complained that the Nobel Committee was interfering with Liberian politics by awarding the prize so close to the election.

More than a dozen candidates stood in the October 11, 2011, election. Johnson Sirleaf was the top vote getter, with more than 43 percent of the vote, followed by Winston Tubman —running with Weah as his vice presidential candidate — who garnered about 32 percent. As Johnson Sirleaf did not win more than 50 percent, a runoff election was held on November 8. It did not go as smoothly as the first round of voting, however. Tubman and the Congress for Democratic Change party had raised allegations of voting irregularities in the first round; although these allegations were widely dismissed as being unsubstantiated, they still cast a pall on the second round of voting, as Tubman announced that he was dropping out of the race and called for voters to boycott the election. Though Johnson Sirleaf was reelected with slightly more than 90 percent of the vote, her victory was clouded by Tubman’s withdrawal and low voter turnout, which was less than half that of the first round.

Libya

After the end of the war in Ethiopia in late 1936 early 1937, the Corps of "Polizia Coloniale" (Colonial Police) was created to be the police in the colonies in Africa (Libya) and it started issuing its own license plates in March 1938. The unit was created as a result of the reorganization of public safety units operating in Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI) and to later garrison Ethiopia  and the rest of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI).

Nigeria

*Governor Bourdillon met with the leaders of the Nigerian Youth Movement (February 1).

Governor Bernard Bourdillon was aligned with the reforming trend in colonial policy, and rapidly gained the respect and friendship of the educated elite of Nigeria. On February 1, 1938 he met with the Nigerian Youth Movement to hear their complaints about the way in which the European Cocoa Pool agreement was limiting competition. When asked to take a neutral position in the dispute he refused, saying he supported the African position. A few days later the Colonial Office announced a commission of inquiry and soon after the pool was suspended. Nnamdi Azikiwe's West African Pilot was full of praise for Bourdillon. He continued to remain on close terms with Nigerian opinion leaders throughout his term.

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*Fela Kuti, a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer, human rights activist and political maverick who is best known as the pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre, was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria (October 15).

Fela Kuti, byname of Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, also called Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (b. October 15, 1938, Abeokuta, Nigeria — d. August 2, 1997, Lagos, Nigeria) was a Nigerian musician and activist who launched a modern style of music called Afro-beat, which fused American blues, jazz, and funk with traditional Yoruba music.

Kuti was the son of feminist and labor activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti.  As a youth, he took lessons in piano and percussion before studying (1959) classical music at Trinity College London. While in London, he encountered various musical styles by playing piano in jazz and rock bands. Returning to Nigeria in the mid-1960s, he reconstituted Koola Lobitos, a band with which he had played in London. The Afro-beat sound emerged from that group’s experiments.

Following his 1969 tour of the United States, where he was influenced by the politics of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other militants, Kuti’s music became increasingly politicized. He exhorted social change in such songs as “Zombie,” “Monkey Banana,” “Beasts of No Nation,” and “Upside Down.” Fela (as he was popularly known) and his band, which was known variously as the Nigeria 70, Africa 70, and later the Egypt 80, performed for packed houses at the early-morning concerts that they staged at Fela’s often-raided nightclub in Lagos. The firebrand singer, who gyrated over the keyboard as he sang in English and Yoruba, struck a chord among the unemployed, disadvantaged, and oppressed. His politically charged songs, which decried oppression by Nigeria’s military government, prompted authorities to routinely raid his club, looking for reasons to jail him. Near there he also set up a communal compound, which he proclaimed the independent Kalakuta Republic. As head of the commune, he often provoked controversy and attracted attention by promoting indulgence in sex, polygamy (he married 27 women), and drugs, especially marijuana.  A 1977 raid on the complex by Nigerian authorities resulted in his brief incarceration and the death of his mother the following year due to complications from a fall. In exile in Ghana in 1978, he changed his name from Ransome to the tribal Anikulapo.

In 1979, Fela formed a political party, the Movement of the People, and ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Nigeria. Five years later he was jailed for 20 months on charges of currency smuggling. Upon his release, he turned away from active political protest and left his son, Femi, to carry the torch of Afro-beat music. Fela was jailed again in 1993 for murder, but the charges were eventually dropped. He died as a result of complications from AIDS in 1997.

Senegal

*Jacques Diouf, a diplomat who became the Director General of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was born in Senegal (August 1).

Jacques Diouf (b. August 1, 1938, Senegal) was the Director-General of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from January 1994 to December 31, 2011. His successor, Jose Graziano da Silva, was elected in June 2011 and took up his service on January 1, 2012.

Diouf attended primary and secondary school in his native Saint-Louis, Senegal. He then traveled to France, where he earned a bachelor of science in Agriculture from the Ecole nationale d'agriculture, Grignon-Paris Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon, a Master of Science in Tropical Agronomy from the Ecole nationale d'application d'agronomie tropicale, Nogent-Paris (France), and a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Sciences of the Rural Sector from the Faculté de droit et de sciences économiques, Panthéon–Sorbonne, Paris.

Beginning in 1963 at the age of 25, Diouf was the Director of the European Office and the Agricultural Program of the Marketing Board (Paris/Dakar). Leaving that position in 1964, Diouf became the Director of the African Groundnut Council based in Nigeria African Groundnut Council based in Nigeria from 1965 to 1971. From 1971 to 1977, Diouf was the Executive Secretary of the newly created West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) (now Africa Rice Center). Leaving WARDA in 1978, Diouf became the Secretary of State for Science and Technology of the government of Senegal under both Leopold Sedar Senghor and his successor Abdou Diouf until 1983. In that year he became a member of the parliament of Senegal and the Senegambia Confederation.  In Senegal, he was chairman of the foreign relations committee. From 1985 to 1990, Diouf was the Secretary-General of the Central Bank for West African States,  which is based in Dakar. Subsequently he was the Senegalese Ambassador to the United Nations from 1991 to 1993.

On 8 November 1993, Diouf was elected Director-General of FAO and in January 1994 began his first six-year term. Diouf was re-elected twice. His last term began in January 2006 and ended in December 2011.

South Africa

*A general election was held in South Africa, won by the United Party (May 18).

*The Council for Non-European Trade Unions was formed (August 7).

After almost a decade of inactivity, concrete signs of a new spirit of defiance among African workers had begun to emerge in 1936 when black labor leaders, exasperated by the constant rebuffs from representatives of white unions, decided to sever ties with the Trades and Labour Council (TLC) and to form their own organization.  On August 7, 1938, the strongly pro-Africanist Council for Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU) was formed amid accusations of racism (followed by a walkout) by Max Gordon, a white Trotskyite socialist who was secretary of four African trade unions.  However, Gana Makabeni, the organization's first chairman (and himself a former communist), was unrepentant: "White men govern the country, supervise all establishments, own the factories and commercial enterprises.  Must we have European leaders even in our own establishments?"  

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*A coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct, was caught off the coast of South Africa near Chalumna River (December 22).

A strange fish was found on a fishing trawler in East London, South Africa.  It was later identified as a coelacanth, a fish species previously thought to be extinct.

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*Centenary celebrations of the Great Trek occurred.

The Great Trek (Afrikaans: Die Groot Trek) was an eastward and north-eastward emigration away from British control in the Cape Colony during the 1830s and 1840s by Boers (Dutch/Afrikaans for "farmers"). The migrants were descended from settlers from western mainland Europe, most notably from the Netherlands, north-west Germany and French Huguenots.  The Great Trek itself led to the founding of numerous Boer republics, the Natalia Republic, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal being the most notable.

There was perhaps no more ardent, visible expression of Afrikaner solidarity and patriotism than in the symbolic ox-wagon trek of 1938, the main event of the centenary celebrations commemorating the Great Trek.  

Retracing the steps his Voortrekker forefathers had taken was a longstanding dream of Henning Klopper, the Port Superintendent at Mossel Bay and founding member of the Afrikaner Broederbond.  When Klopper heard of the government's plan to build a memorial to the Voortrekkers outside Pretoria, and to inaugurate it on December 16, 1938 -- 100 years after the Battle of Blood River -- he could think of no better occasion to make his dream come true.

Klopper's idea -- a symbolic trek from Cape Town to Pretoria -- was enthusiastically taken up by the Broederbond which in turn undertook to co-ordinate this event.  It was to be sponsored by the Federation of Afrikaners Cultural Organizations (FAK), organized by the Afrikaner Language and Cultural Society (ATKV) of the South African Railways and Harbours, and chaired by Klopper.

On August 8, 1938, two stinkwood ox-wagons, the Piet Retief and the Andries Pretorius, were positioned in front of Jan van Riebeeck's statue on the Foreshore in Cape Town surrounded by a jostling, cheering crowd of some 100,000 people.  Klopper was astounded by this overwhelming response.  He spoke to the crowd, reminded them of the Covenant and then prayed that the trek would unite Afrikaners everywhere.

The slow trek pulled out of Cape Town and headed north on a carefully charted course, the work once again of Klopper.  At every town where they stayed overnight, the trekker pilgrims were assured of a friendly reception organized by the town's dominee and someone from the Broederbond.  They were further inspired by the news that six more wagons from different points were winding their way to the capital.  

With undiminished fervor, the pilgrims visited places where Afrikaners had fought and often died.  Streets were renamed after Voortrekker heroes -- Seventh Street in Boksburg became Sarel Cilliers Street and so on.  Thousands of men grew bushy Voortrekker beards and donned corduroy breeches, waistcoat and knotted scarf.  Women were seen in traditional Voortrekker dresses.

In Bloemfontein, a team of torchbearers from the Cape caught up with the trek.  The burning torch was immediately seen as a symbol of nationhood, and the Broederbond was inspired to collect money for the poor urban Afrikaner in what became a Reddingsdaad -- an Act of Rescue.

The ox-wagons eventually entered Pretoria amid more speeches, sermons, the singing of the new Afrikaner anthem Die Stem, as well as rumors that Klopper was about to proclaim a republic. 

An enormous bonfire was lit at the foot of the Voortrekker Monument and the torches flung into the flames.  The wagons were drawn up the hill by teams of people and three women laid the foundation stone of the monument.  The following day a minister of the church, Paul Nel, was asked to lay another foundation stone, that of a marble replica of a wagon erected on the battlefield of Blood River.

In a rousing speech, Daniel Malan, the leader fo the Purified National Party, told the masses that just as "the muzzleload [had] clashed with assegai" at Blood River to preserve the interests of whites, now too it was the duty of Afrikaners to strive "to make South Africa a white man's land".

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Tanzania

(Tanganyika)

*Benjamin Mkapa, the third President of Tanzania, was born in Ndanda, near Masasi, in southern Tanganyika.

Benjamin William Mkapa (b. November 12, 1938, Ndanda, near Masasi, Tanganyika) was the third President of Tanzania, in office from 1995 to 2005. He was also Chairman of the Revolutionary State Party (Chama Cha Mapinduzi or CCM).

Mkapa was born in 1938 in Ndanda, near Masasi in southern Tanganyika. He graduated from Makerere University in Uganda in 1962 with a degree in English. He also attended Columbia University in 1963 and was awarded a master's degree in international affairs. Previous posts include being the administrative officer in Dodoma and the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education. Mkapa led the Tanzania mission to Canada in 1982 and to the United States from 1983 to 1984. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1977 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1990.

In 1995, Mkapa was elected as President based on a popular anti-corruption campaign and the strong support of former president Julius Nyerere. Mkapa's anti-corruption efforts included creation of an open forum called the Presidential Commission on Corruption (Warioba Commission) and increased support for the Prevention of Corruption Bureau.

Mkapa's second five-year term of office as President ended in December 2005. During this term in office, Mkapa privatized state-owned corporations and instituted free market policies. His supporters argued that attracting foreign investment would promote economic growth. His policies won the support of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and resulted in the cancellation of some of Tanzania's foreign debts.

He was criticized for the ineffectiveness of his anti-corruption efforts as well as for his lavish spending. He spent £15 million on a private presidential jet, as well as almost £30 million on military aviation equipment which experts deemed beyond the limited needs of the country's armed forces. 

Having left office due to a two-term limit, Mkapa was dogged by many accusations of corruption, among them improperly appropriating to himself and his former finance Minister Daniel Yona the lucrative "Kiwira Coal Mine" in the southern highlands of Tanzania without following procedures. By privatizing the Kiwira Coal Mine to himself, he broke the Tanzanian constitution, which does not allow a president to do business at the state house.

Mkapa served as a Trustee of Aga Khan University from November 2007 until 2012.