Cape Town is the second largest city in South Africa and one of the nation’s cultural and economic centers. Before the arrival of Europeans, the area was inhabited by San and Khoikhoi peoples. In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established a small colony on the Cape … Read MoreCape Town, South Africa (1652- )
Benjamin Zephaniah, poet, playwright, novelist and activist, was born on April 15, 1958, the first of eight children, in Birmingham, England. Zephaniah grew up in Wandsworth until the age of nine when his mother, a Jamaican nurse, fled his father, a postman from Barbados. Leaving … Read MoreBenjamin Zephaniah (1958- )
Born to a Ghanaian father and a Scottish mother in Hackney, London, Paul Yaw Boateng became one of the first black British Members of Parliament in the general election of 1987. In 2002 he became the first Afro-Briton to serve in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. … Read MorePaul Yaw Boateng (1951- )
The city of Great Zimbabwe existed in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa from the 11th century to the mid-16th century. The city grew from a community of farmers and cattle herders to a major economic center, deriving power and wealth from its proximity to resources … Read MoreGreat Zimbabwe (ca. 1000-1550 AD)
The Changamire dynasty of rulers emerged from the Shona people who had founded the state of Monomutapa around 1500. Named after its founder Changa (also known as Changamir), Changamire had been a province of Monomutapa but with the rise of civil wars and the Portuguese … Read MoreChangamire (ca. 1500-1830)
Samora Machel, the first president of independent Mozambique, was born on September 29, 1933, in the village of Chilembene, in the Gaza Province of Mozambique. He was of the Shangana ethnic group and was born into a family of farmers. Machel attended a Catholic mission … Read MoreSamora Moises Machel (1933-1986)
Eduardo Mondlane, an educator, nationalist, and leader of the Mozambique independence movement, was born on June 20, 1920, in the Gaza District of Southern Mozambique, which at the time was under the colonial rule of the Portuguese. He was the child of a Tsonga chief, … Read MoreEduardo Chivambo Mondlane (1920-1969)
The Freedom Charter Adopted at the Congress of the People, Kliptown, on 26 June 1955 We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and … Read More(1955) The South African Freedom Charter
In a speech before the Scandinavian Institute for African Affairs, Uppsala, Sweden, in December, 1972, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, then the Chief Executive Officer of the KwaZulu Territorial Authority, describes his cooperation with South African leaders despite his opposition to the country’s apartheid system. The speech … Read More(1972) M. Gatsha Buthelezi, “My Role Within Separate Development Politics”
In 1973 attorney K.M.N. Guzana was leader of the opposition Democratic Party in the national legislature of the theoretically independent nation of Transkei, one of the former homelands created by South Africa to contain the black population and thus reduce their “majority” status in the … Read More(1973) K.M.N. Guzana, “On Being a South African”
