Carl Peters was a German explorer, journalist, and philosopher, instrumental in the founding of German East Africa and helped create the European "Scramble for Africa". Despite being vilified for cruelty ... Read More

Lebo wrote to ask: "What was the mfecane and why is it a controversial subject in South Africa today?" The word mfecane is derived from Xhosa terms: ukufaca 'to become thin ... Read More

Formally the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, the country was developed purely for its vast copper resources. It was grouped with Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) as part of ... Read More

Rommel's forces had been brought to a standstill by an equally exhausted Eighth Army at El Alamein in July 1942. Rommel had made an attempt to cut through Allied lines ... Read More

The "Wind of Change" speech was made by the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, whilst addressing the South African Parliament during his tour of African Commonwealth states. It was a ... Read More

Richard Burton (1821-1890) was not only a great explorer but also a great scholar (he produced the first unabridged translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night). His most famous ... Read More

Samora Machel, the Mozambican president and thirty-three others were traveling in the Tupolev TU 134A-3, on their way home following the Lusaka Summit in Zambia. The plane crashed in the ... Read More

Color (Ancient Egyptian name 'iwen') was considered an integral part of an item's or person's nature in Ancient Egypt, and the term could interchangeably mean color, appearance, character, being, or ... Read More

A colony of Spain for 190 years Equatorial Guinea achieved independence in 1968. Equatorial Guinea has been ruled since independence by two members of the same family -- the current ... Read More

Two days earlier, Francis William Reitz, the Zuid Afrikaansche Repulick (ZAR, South African Republic or Transvaal) State Secretary handed an ultimatum to the British Agent Sir William Conyngham Greene: "Her Majesty's ... Read More

Whether slavery existed within sub-Saharan African societies before the arrival of Europeans is a hotly contested point between Afrocentric and Eurocentric academics. What is certain is that Africans were subjected ... Read More

Two thousand years ago the first of several waves colonists swept into South Africa. Each time a new wave arrived the existing populations were marginalized. In the first of these ... Read More

The Zulu nation, forged by Shaka, was a powerful force in southern Africa. Invaded by Voortrekkers, subdued by the British in 1879, and eventually absorbed into South Africa, the many ... Read More

After defeat by the Boers in 1843, King Moshoeshoe I, of the Basotho people, looked to the British for aid. In 1884 a British Crown colony was formed. Independence as ... Read More

The fascist leader of Italy, Benito Mussolini, had long wanted an empire - but there were few opportunities left. Africa, except for one region, Abyssinia, had been carved up by ... Read More

Once part of a series of West African Empires (Ghana, Mali, and Songhai), the region was wrested from Muslim rule by a French military incursion in the mid 1800s and ... Read More

Originally a collection of African states whose wealth came from trans-Saharan (and trans-Atlantic) trade, it became a British colony in 1861, divided into two British Protectorates in 1898, and then ... Read More