At 2:15 pm British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, receives the following news from Allied C-in-C General Harold Alexander in North Africa: "Sir, it is my duty to report that the Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are the masters of the North African shores."

At 11:15 am Giovanni Messe, promoted to Field Marshal of the Italian First Army, is authorized to capitulate by Mussolini: "As the aims of your resistance can be considered achieved, your Excellency is free to accept an honourable surrender." Meanwhile at Ste. Marie-du-Zit, Generaloberst Hanz-Jürgen von Arnim and his command, camped with the remains of the Afrika Korps, surrender to the British. Arnim, however, will not disobey Hitler's orders and instruct the rest of the German army to surrender.

One of the most significant things to have happened on the 10th of May in African history was the inauguration in 1994 of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, following the first-ever democratic elections. Addressing the crowds at the Union Buildings in Pretoria Mandela said: "We saw our country tear itself apart in terrible conflict ... The time for healing of wounds has come ... Never, never again will this beautiful land experience the oppression of one by another."
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Born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales, on 28 January 1841, Henry Morton Stanley was the journalist and explorer for the New York Herald famous for his expedition to Africa to 'discover' what had happened to Dr David Livingstone. He also played a significant role in the European colonization of the African continent.

Stanley had been living full time in Britain since 1890, becoming Member of Parliament for Lambeth between 1895 and 1900. He was knighted in 1899.

In April 1904 Stanley contracted pleurisy and by early May it was clear he would soon die. On the evening of 9 May he reportedly told his wife "I have done all my work, I have circumnavigated…I want to be free! I want to go into the woods to be free." On the morning of the 10th, as Big Ben struck six, Stanley died.

Stanley had expected to be buried in Westminster Abbey next to Livingstone, but in the end his coffin was just driven past it to be cremated – the Dean of Westminster, Reverend Joseph Armitage Robinson had ruled against his interment in the Abbey. The granite headstone, in the churchyard at Pirbright, reads "Henry Morton Stanley, Bula Matari, 1841-1904, Africa."

^{Image Source in Public Domain: The Autobiography of H.M. Stanley, Ed. Dorothy Stanley, London, 1909.}

The Riekert Commission was appointed in the 1970s to investigate the employment conditions of blacks in South Africa. The commission's final report published in 1979 recommended that those blacks already living in urban areas (and who had residential rights to do so) should receive 'preferential treatment' when seeking employment – and hence develop a 'black middle-class'. Those blacks who did not have residential rights were to be kept out of urban areas by a stricter enforcement of influx control.

The Riekert Commission report also recommended the removal of the '72–hour' rule (the period during which a black man could look for work in urban areas) for 'qualified' blacks, whilst non-qualified, or migrant, workers would be required to pass through 'assembly centers' along the border of their homelands.

As a result of Operation STRIKE, which started at 3:00 am the previous morning, General Sir Harold Alexander's 18th Army Group capture Bizerte and Tunis. The intense artillery barrage in the Medjerda valley which began the operation had five times the density of any laid down at El Alamein. All that remains of the German force is General Gustav von Vaerst's 5th Panzer Army on the Cape Bon peninsula.

The last Allied offensive in North Africa, Operation STRIKE, begins at 3:00 am with an intense artillery barrage in the Medjerda valley. (The barrage is five times the density of that laid down at El Alamein.) The British First Army is poised to take Tunis, whilst the Eighth Army distracts as much of Generaloberst Hanz-Jürgen von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army as possible to the south. The American II Corps, meanwhile, are speeding their way towards Bizerte in the north.

Exactly five years after Addis Ababa fell to Mussolini's troops, Emperor Haile Selassie was reinstalled on the Ethiopian throne. He reentered the city through streets lined with black and white African soldiers, having fought his way back against a determined Italian army with Major Orde Wingate's Gideon Force and his own Ethiopian 'Patriots".

It was only five days after Italian forces under the command of General Pietro Badoglio entered Addis Ababa back in 1936, at the end of the 2nd Italo-Abyssinian War, that Mussolini declared the country part of the Italian Empire. "It is a Fascist empire because it bears the indestructible sign of the will and power of Rome." Abyssinia (as it was known) was joined with Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to form the Africa Orientale Italiana (Italian East Africa, AOI). Haile Selassie fled to Britain where he remained in exile until the second World War gave him the opportunity to return to his people.

Haile Selassie had made an impassioned appeal to the League of Nations on 30 June 1936, which gained great support with the United States and Russia. However, many other League of Nations members, especially Britain and France, continued to recognize the Italian possession of Ethiopia.

The fact that the Allies ultimately fought hard to return independence to Ethiopia was a significant step on the path to African independence. That Italy, like Germany after World War I, had its African Empire taken away, signaled a major change in European attitude towards the continent.

At the conclusion (4 May 1990) of a meeting between the South African government and the recently unbanned African National Congress, ANC, at the presidential residence in Cape Town, both parties agreed to the remove several obstacles which currently inhibited negotiations towards the end of white rule in South Africa. The points included the creation of a timetable for the release of political prisoners, and granting of immunity from prosecution for politically motivated offenses (so that members of the ANC Executive Committee in exile could return to the country).

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This is a powerful film about the Rwandan Genocide, although curiously set around the experiences of two white people: a priest, Father Christopher (played by John Hurt), and a school teacher, Joe Connor (played by Hugh Dancy). For all its faults (like Hotel Rwanda it is a fictionalized account "based on real events and filmed in the locations depicted") it strongly brings to bear the main threads of the genocide – how could the UN and the West let it happen, how could a nation be split so easily, and why was there no intervention by Africa or the rest of the world? Find out more about Shooting Dogs in this review.

^{Image: © 2007 Alistair Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.}