1652, 6 April
Jan van Riebeeck lands at Table Bay.
1897, 6 April
Slavery is abolished by the Sultan of Zanzibar.
1900, 6 April - Boer War: Battle of Boshof
Combat-General De Villebois-Mareuil is buried with full military honours by General Lord Methuen. One-an-a-half thousand men of the Loyal North Lancashires form the guard of Honour.
1900, 6 April
Fort Coomassie is besieged by Ashanti forces in response to a British demand that they turn over the 'Golden Stool'.
1902, 6 April
Caspar Kruger, the son of Paul Kruger (ex-president of the Transvaal), takes the oath of allegiance to Britain.
1905, 6 April
Germany's invitation to the Moroccan conference angers the French.
1923, 6 April
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.
1941, 6 April – World War II : East Africa
The South African Brigade enters Addis Ababa.
1943, 6 April – World War II : North Africa
Continuing Operation Torch, British and American forces link up in Tunisia.
1952, 6 April
South African non-whites start a civil disobedience campaign to protest the segregation laws.
1959, 6 April
Robert Sobukwe and several others break with the African National Congress, ANC, to form the Pan Africanist Congress, PAC, claiming that the Congress Alliance is re-affirming "white-imposed racial divisions."
1994, 6 April
President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, plus a number of government officials, are killed when their aircraft is brought down by a missile on its approach to Kigali airport.
Rwanda's Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, stated in an interview with Radio France that evening "there is shooting, people are being terrorized, people are inside their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of the death of the head of state, I believe. We, the civilians, are in no way responsible for the death of our head of state."
1995, 6 April
Genocide trials begin in Rwanda.
1996, 6 April
Joshua Nkomo, the Zimbabwean vice president whose son has recently died of HIV/AIDS, claims the disease is a "white conspiracy to exterminate blacks."
