| Week starting Monday 31 March |
|
| Date |
Year |
Event
|
|
| 31 |
1955 |
A state of emergency is declared by the French government in Algeria. |
| 31 |
1960 |
Under the recently declared state of emergency in South Africa (which followed the Sharpeville Massacre), 300 Black Africans are reported
jailed and four more shot. |
| 31 |
1992 |
Sanctions are imposed on Libya by the UN after it refuses to hand over two men suspected of
the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie (22 December 1988). |
| 31 |
1944 |
The discovery, in Ethiopia, of a complete skull of Australopithecus afarensis is announced
by Nature magazine. |
|
|
| April |
|
|
| 1 |
1960 |
French detonate their second nuclear bomb in the Sahara. |
| 1 |
1963 |
Nationalist leader Joshua Mqabuko Nyangolo Nkomo is sentenced to six-months hard labour by
court in Northern Rhodesia. |
|
| 2 |
1904 |
German forces under Major Von Glasenapp are defeated by Herero tribesmen near Okaharui,
German West Africa (now Namibia). |
| 2 |
1937 |
Political activities by foreigners are outlawed in South Africa. |
| 2 |
1941 |
German Afrika Korps, commanded by General Erwin Rommel, take Agedabia and Zuetania, Libya. |
|
| 3 |
1935 |
Ethiopian forces are massing along the Italian Somaliland border. |
| 3 |
1942 |
Rule of Equatorial Africa and the Cameroons by 'Free France' is recognised by the US. |
| 3 |
1984 |
One week after the death of Ahmed Sékou Touré in Guinea, Colonel Lansana Konte is
declared president. Touré's prime minister, Louis Lansana Beavogui is removed as acting president by the
military, with wide support from the public. |
|
| 4 |
1902 |
Cecil John Rhodes' will bequests £6 million to fund scholarships to Oxford University for
citizens of the British Empire, United States of America and Germany. |
| 4 |
1923 |
Egpytologist Lord Carnarvon dies from an insect bite in Egypt. |
| 4 |
1956 |
Sultan Sayyidi Muhammad V ibn Yusuf arrives in northern Morocco in the hope of ending
Spanish rule. |
| 4 |
1989 |
The South African government threatens to pull out of the UN peace plan for Namibia unless
action is taken against South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) guerrillas fighting near the northern
border. |
|
| 5 |
1948 |
As riots rage around Cairo, 25 civilians are killed by the Egyptian army. |
| 5 |
1953 |
Jomo Kenyatta, the supposed Mau Mau leader, is convicted and sentenced to seven years
(through the use of false testimony) in Kenya. Kenyetta and five others are detained at Lodwar, a particularly
remote desert army post. |
| 5 |
1961 |
UN anti-Apartheid sanctions against South Africa are opposed by the US. |
|
| 6 |
1923 |
Following the death of Lord Carnarvon in Egypt, owners of Egyptian antiquities swamp the
British Museum in the hope that they will take the potentially 'cursed' artefacts. |
| 6 |
1952 |
South African non-whites start a civil disobedience campaign to protest the segregation
laws. |
| 6 |
1996 |
Joshua Nkomo, the Zimbabwean vice president whose son has recently died of HIV/AIDS, claims
the disease is a "white conspiracy to exterminate blacks." |
|
