AFRICAN LEGENDS OF THE BRUTALLY CRUSHED RESISTANCE

A lot of Africans today die as a result of trying to cross the Altlantic or Mediterrenean
into Europe and the Americas in search of better life and “greener pastures”. They
leave behind loved ones for a loveless quest for the better things of life: better homes,
better health care, better social infrastructure and even better leisure in Europe. The
Europeans’ whose counties are being infiltrated with the influx of the “black man”
from the dark continent are alarmed and disgusted by that. But it is as a result of the
underdevelopment of Africa, which the European nations greatly contributed -
through activities of colonialism and deliberate refusal for African industrialisation-
to the African wanting to reach Europe and America by any means.
If at the time of colonisation Africa had attained industrialisation, then Africans would
have resisted the colonisation process since it would produce the war machines which
the Europeans used during colonisation.
At the root of this African backwardness and underdevelopment is colonialism, which
ensured that we remain dependent either directly or indirectly to the colonial powers
till this day. Only a few strong men and women who were bold enough to call a spade
a spade at the time resisted and were brutally crushed, while at the same time some
leaders in Africa collected bribes from the colonisers in the form of mirrors and
distilled gin sourced from the raw materials of the African colonies, and thereby those
leaders sold out the future of generations to come without any resistance, and we see
the effect today in the rising number of death toll on illegal immigrant dingy on the
seas.
The wise words of Chief Hendrik Witbooi, a Namibian traditional ruler in his reply to
the German colonialist’s final ultimatum to recognise the German Emperor in 1894
captures the spirit of the resistance:
“You say that it grieves you to see that I will not accept the Protection of the German
Emperor, and you say that this is a crime for which you intend to punish me by force
of arms. To this I reply as follows: I have never in my whole life seen the German
Emperor; therefore, I have never angered him by words or by deeds. God the Lord
has established various Kings on the earth, and therefore I know and believe that it
is no sin and no misdeed for me to wish to remain the independent Chief of my land
and my people. If you desire to kill me on account of my land, and without guilt on
my part, that is to me no disgrace and does no damage, for then I die honourably for
my land. But you say that ‘Might is Right’ and in terms of these words you deal with
me because you are indeed strong in weapons and all conveniences. But, my dear
friend, you have come to me with armed power, and declared that you intend to shoot
me…I will shoot back, not in my name, not in my strength, but in the name of the
Lord, and under his power…So the responsibility for the innocent blood of my people
and of your people which will be shed does not rest upon me as I have not started this
war.”
This work was born out of the stark realisation by the compiler that there is much to
be learnt in the lives of these brave men, most of whom laid their lives and suffered
constant and frequent arrests and detentions, and sometimes exile from their mother
land by the colonial powers at that time, who mostly got the right to invade African
territories because they won World Wars and sliced Africa between themselves in the
lavish opulence of Berlin Conference tables in 1884-85, and similar conferences in
which the powers took their piece of the African cake at the detriment of ancestral
kingdoms in indigenous African states.
The compiler is humbly not a historian and anything stated herein is subject to
verification as historical facts. I decided to take and reproduce the lives of some
exceptionally great and courageous men and women who were selfless and bold
enough to resist the almighty reinforcements from the European Powers.
Legends like Stephen Biko and Dedan Kimathi never lived to see forty. Our own
Nigerian King Jaja of Opobo, Nana of the Itsekiri, and Sultan Attahiru III. Namibian
Chief Hendrik Witbooi, Makombe Hanga, Tchaka the Zulu, to mention a few had the
audacity to form the resistance. We also have great African royalty who resisted in
Rainilaiarivony and his Queen Ranavalona I and and of course Emperor Haile Selassie,
Paitando Mapondera, and Algeria’s lion Sidi Umar Mukhtar.

1.ABD EL-KADER (1808-1883)

Also spelled Abdul-Qadir, his full name in Arabic is ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Muḥyī al-
Dīn ibn Musṭafā al-Ḥasanī al-Jazāʾirī, (born Sept. 6, 1808, Guetna, near Mascara,
Algeria.—died May 26, 1883, Damascus, Syria), amīr of Mascara (from 1832), the
military and religious leader who founded the Algerian state and led the Algerians in
their 19th-century struggle against French domination (1840–46).
His physical handsomeness and the qualities of his mind had made Abdelkader
popular even before his military exploits. Of medium height, lithe and elegant, with
regular features and a black beard, his demeanour was exceptionally refined, and his
life-style simple. He was known as a religious and educated man who could excite his
co-religionists with his poetry and oratorical eloquence.

Algeria was an Ottoman regency when the French army landed there in 1830. The
government was controlled by a dey (governor) and by the Turkish Janissaries who
had chosen him. These rulers, supported by the Koulouglis (people of mixed Turkish
and Algerian ancestry) and by certain privileged tribes, and aided by the fact that they
were of the same religion as the people, long held Algeria firmly in their grip.

Nevertheless, the Algerians detested them, and there were continual rebellions in the
early 19th century. As a result, the country was left too divided to oppose the French
invaders.

The western tribes laid siege to French-occupied Oran and tried to organize
themselves, unified by their common Muslim religious sentiment, which was
cultivated by the schoolmasters and particularly by members of the religious
brotherhoods. The leader of one of the brotherhoods, Mahieddin, director of the
zāwiyah (religious school) near Mascara, was asked to lead the harassment of the
French troops in Oran and Mostaganem.

In November 1832 the aging Mahieddin had his young son Abdelkader elected in his
place. The youth, already renowned for his piety and military prowess, took over the
war of harassment. The ensuing Desmichels Treaty of 1834 gave him the whole interior
of the Oran, with the title commander of the believers. In a move to unify his new
territories, Amīr Abdelkader, taking advantage of this treaty, imposed his rule on all
the tribes of the Chelif, occupied Miliana and then Médéa, and succeeded in defeating
General Camille Trézel at Macta. Although pressed by generals Bertrand Clauzel and
T.R. Bugeaud, he managed to rally support from Algerians who had become indignant
over the French use of violence. By able negotiation, he convinced General Bugeaud to
sign the Treaty of Tafna (1837), which further increased his territory and made him
master of the whole interior of Oran and the Titteri, with the French having to be
content with a few ports.
In two years Abdelkader had organized a true state, the capital of which was sometimes
Mascara and sometimes the fortress of Tiaret (now Tagdempt). He established
juridical equality among population groups by suppressing the privileges of the
warlike tribes (makhzen) and by imposing equal taxes on all his subjects. First he
extended his influence to the Sahara by fighting al-Tijīnī, who dominated the southern
oases, and rallying the desert peoples to him. Then he strengthened his authority in
the valley of the Chelif and in the Titteri as far as the borders of the province of the
east, where he was resisted by the bey of Constantine, Hajj Ahmed. He also exacted
harsh punishment of the Koulouglis of Zouatna, who had joined the French. By the
winter of 1838, his authority extended across the borders of Kabylie and, in the south,
from the oasis of Biskra to the Moroccan border. To destroy the power of al-Tijīnī, he
besieged his capital, Aïn Mahdi, for six months and demolished it, while all the
Saharan tribes paid him homage.

Abdelkader was an absolute leader who only rarely called in the grandees to advise
him. Algerian religious sentiment was his support, the one force that could bring his
subjects together and unify them in the face of the invader. But that did not prevent
him from employing competent persons of all nationalities, whether Jews or
Christians, to help him build a modern state. The best known of these Europeans was
the future diplomat Léon Roches, who later recounted his adventures in a fanciful
book, Trente-deux ans à travers l’Islam (“Thirty-two Years Through Islam”).
Abdelkader organized a regular army of approximately 2,000 men, to be supported by
either volunteers or contingents furnished by the tribes. As towns near French
territory would have been too vulnerable, he fortified interior sites, such as Sebdou,
Saïda, Tiaret, Taza, and Boghar, where he opened arsenals, warehouses, and
workshops, and where he stored surplus crops whose sales were to finance his arms
purchases, mainly in England. He set up a new administration, with officials on fixed
salaries. He taught his people austerity and set a personal example, living without
ceremony in a tent. By expanding education, he slowly spread the concepts of
independence and nationality to his people.

When the columns of the duc d’Orléans crossed the Iron Gates, the Amīr took it as a
violation of the territories granted him by the Treaty of Tafna. Even though he was still
far from having completed his own work of organization, he made a surprise attack
and destroyed the French colonization of the Mitidja Plain. From then on the war
languished until General Bugeaud was named governor general in 1840. Bugeaud
convinced the French government to arm him for the conquest of all Algeria. The
resulting war was bitter and lasted seven years. The Amīr avoided big battles,
preferring to use his rifle-armed cavalry in incessant skirmishes, from which it would
retreat almost as soon as it had fired. But he was fighting a French army composed of
infantry organized by Bugeaud into extremely mobile columns, and he had to contend
with the devastation of the countryside practiced by Bugeaud and his lieutenants so as
to force the starving inhabitants to desert their leader.

In 1841 the French destroyed the Amīr’s fortified sites, and he was forced to become a
nomad in the interior of Oran. The following year he lost Tlemcen, and communication
with his Moroccan allies became difficult. Yet, despite further reverses and French
penetration in the south, he succeeded in reaching Morocco. But after Bugeaud’s
defeat of the Moroccans at Isly, the Sultan was forced to hold Abdelkader in the midst
of his empire. The Amīr, however, proved to have unflagging energy. Taking advantage
of a revolt in the Dahra, he re-entered Algeria, took the Sidi Brahim outpost, and
penetrated deep into the interior, all the while escaping the pursuing French columns.
In July 1846, with only a handful of men left, Abdelkader again took refuge in Morocco,
the Sultan of which by then considered him to be a burden. Deprived of this last area
of support, Abd-el-Kader returned to Algeria and in 1847, with great dignity, turned
himself over to Gen. Christophe de Lamoricière and to Bugeaud’s successor, King
Louis-Philippe’s son, the duc d’Aumale, who promised him transport to the East.

Louis-Philippe, however, failed to respect his son’s promise. Abdelkader was held
prisoner in France, first at the Château de Pau, where he learned the principles of
Freemasonry, and later at Amboise. It was the prince-president Louis-Napoléon who,
in 1852, authorized his return to Bursa and then to Damascus, where he led an
exemplary life and wrote Rappel à l’intelligent, avis à l’indifférent (“Call to the
Intelligent, Warning to the Indifferent”). The French government provided him with a
large pension and with a Kabyle guard and even attempted to obtain a throne for him
somewhere between Turkey and Egypt, which they wished to remove from Ottoman
control. At the time of the 1871 Algerian insurrection, he disowned one of his sons who
had tried to arouse the tribes of southern Constantine.

When he died, he was respected by all. French efforts to make him the symbol of
Algerian support for colonial rule were erroneous. Abdelkader believed he was
carrying out God’s will in admitting that his political role had ended. Present-day
Algerians consider him to be the greatest hero of their people.

2. ABD EL-KRIM (1882-1963)

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Khaṭṭābī, (born 1882, Ajdir, Morocco—died

February 6, 1963, Cairo, Egypt), leader of the Berber forces during the Rif War (1921–
26) against Spanish and French rule in North Africa and founder of the short-lived
Republic of the Rif (1923–26). A skilled tactician and a capable organizer, he led a
liberation movement that made him the hero of the Maghrib (northwest Africa).
Abd el-Krim was born in the small settlement of Ajdir, across Alhucemas Bay from the
Spanish army’s island presidio of Peñón de Alhucemas. Ajdir belonged to the Aït
Youssef Ou Ali faction of the Beni Urriaguel family, the largest and most-populous
Berber group in the Rif. Abd el-Krim’s father was a literate and learned man who had
significant influence both within and outside his faction, and in the 1880s he was
named a qāḍī (Islamic judge) by Moroccan Sultan Muley Hasan. As early as 1902, Abd
el-Krim’s father was designated a moro amigo (“friendly Moor”) by Spanish military
authorities, and he eventually received a monthly stipend for providing the Spanish
with local intelligence and supporting their cause in the central Rif. That relationship
would continue for a number of years, bringing benefits for his family but also the deep
distrust of some of his fellow Berbers.

Abd el-Krim’s initial education was provided exclusively by his father; in 1902 he was
sent to the traditional madrasah (university) of al-Qarawīyīn in Fès, where he studied
Islamic law and classical Arabic grammar and literature for two years. In 1906, as a
result of his father’s ties with the Spanish, he secured a teaching post at a Melilla
primary school for young Moroccan males, a position he would hold until 1913.
Additionally, in 1907 he was hired to edit and write articles in Arabic for El Telegrama
del Rif, a daily newspaper in Melilla. There he defended the advantages of European—
especially Spanish—civilization and technology and their potential to elevate the
economic and cultural level of the Moroccan population. His association with El
Telegrama lasted until 1915. In 1910 Abd el-Krim took a position as secretary-
interpreter in the Native Affairs Office in Melilla, which brought him into close contact
with the Spanish military bureaucracy and the town’s civil society. In that post he
gained a reputation for intelligence, efficiency, and discretion.
With the establishment of the Spanish protectorate in November 1912, Abd el-Krim’s
fortunes improved appreciably. On the basis of his work in the Native Affairs Office he
was named a qāḍī in July 1913, and the following October he was designated qāḍī al-
quḍāt (chief Islamic judge) of Melilla. That position brought not only a great deal of
responsibility and prestige but also the necessity of strictly adhering to Spanish policy.
With the coming of World War I and Spain’s neutrality in the conflict, that adherence
proved problematic. While still a paid Spanish agent, Abd el-Krim’s father
surreptitiously supported German and Arab agents in the Rif. The Spanish authorities
were well aware of those activities, because they were a violation of Spanish neutrality,
and were concerned about the reaction of the French, who closely monitored those
dealings.

In light of that, Abd el-Krim was interrogated in August 1915 concerning his father’s
actions and his own views on the German cause. On the basis of that interview, a report
was prepared by Spanish military authorities accusing Abd el-Krim of pro-Central
Powers sentiments, of animosity toward the French, and of supporting an autonomous
central Rif free of direct Spanish administration. That report led to two outcomes: Abd
el-Krim’s incarceration from September 1915 to August 1916 in a Melilla prison, for
pro-German and anti-Spanish sentiments, and the suspension of his father’s pension
payments.

Abd el-Krim’s incarceration left a bitter legacy. Although he did return to his judgeship
in May 1917, it was apparent that the Spanish were pressuring his father and him to
desist from supporting the German cause and to back their “pacification” of the central
Rif. That put Abd el-Krim’s family in an untenable position vis-à-vis their own people.
In December 1918 Abd el-Krim abandoned his judgeship, called his brother,
Muhammad, back from his studies in Madrid, and joined his father in Ajdir. By 1920
the family had definitively severed ties with the Spanish authorities and was actively
organizing resistance to Spanish encroachments into the central Rif.
Adb el-Krim during the Rif War.

Abd el-Krim proved highly successful at organizing indigenous resistance to Spanish

advances into the central Rif in June–August 1921, and those clashes marked the
outbreak of the Rif War. The poorly organized, trained, supplied, and commanded
Spanish conscript army under Gen. Manuel Fernández Silvestre was routed by Abd el-
Krim’s fighters into an epic retreat from their encampment at Annoual (Anwal) on July
22, 1921. Between 8,000 and 10,000 Spanish troops were killed, a great deal of
Spanish weaponry was abandoned, more than 300 prisoners were captured, and all
the territory in the eastern part of the protectorate that Spain had occupied since 1909
was lost.

Abd el-Krim’s crushing defeat of the Spanish at Annoual catapulted him and his
movement onto the international stage. He was seen as a heroic figure in the Islamic
world and as an example of the courageous fighter standing against European
colonialism by the international left. Support at home, however, proved more
complicated. Abd el-Krim had to use all of his considerable persuasive skills coupled
with force to induce the various Rifian groups to support his campaign. Those efforts
eventually resulted in the establishment of the Al-Jumhūriyyah al-Rīf (Republic of the
Rif) in February 1923. In deference to the spirit of the times, he called himself
“president” of the Republic of the Rif’s “cabinet,” which was composed primarily of his
relatives and close allies. His followers, on the other hand, referred to him by the more-
traditional term of mujāhid (“war leader”).

By 1922 the Spanish had taken back nearly all the territory that they had lost in 1921,
but, given the cost and the unpopularity in Spain of the war, most offensive operations
were put on hold. Consequently, the war remained stalemated through late 1924, when
Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera, who had taken control of the Spanish government by
means of a military coup d’état in September 1923, elected to pursue peace
negotiations with Abd el-Krim while simultaneously withdrawing Spanish forces from
the western part of the protectorate. Neither one of those initiatives was successful, as
Abd el-Krim rejected any agreement that did not recognize the full sovereignty of the
Rif and very quickly rushed his forces into the vacuum created by the retreat. At the
apex of his power in early 1925, Abd el-Krim controlled almost three-quarters of the
Spanish protectorate. In the process he replaced a hierarchical society with a
centralized bureaucracy and fighting force, a Muslim legal code, international trade
arrangements, and a nascent network of roads and telecommunications.

Abd el-Krim’s next step was to move his forces across the frontier into the French
protectorate to safeguard his supply lines and important sources of foodstuffs. In that
instance, his Riffian fighters were as successful against the French as they had been
against the Spanish, overrunning dozens of frontline positions, exacting some 6,200
French casualties, and endangering the important urban centres of Fès and Taza. That
success, however, ultimately doomed the Rifian cause, as it brought together the two
colonial powers in an alliance to put down the uprising. After careful preparation and
coordination, a joint offensive was launched in September 1925, with the Spanish
landing some 18,000 troops at Alhucemas Bay and the French inserting some 20,000
troops into the Spanish protectorate from the south. Abd el-Krim’s forces numbered
at most 13,000 men.

Rifian resistance was determined and fierce but ultimately unsuccessful in the face of
overwhelming manpower and the latest in military technology. By the spring of 1926
Abd el-Krim’s movement was a spent force, and on May 27, 1926, he and his family
surrendered, significantly, to the French rather than to the Spanish.
The French removed Abd el-Krim, his brother, his uncle, and their families to Fès and
then to Casablanca, where they boarded a ship to Marseilles. On September 2, 1926,
the ship sailed for Réunion Island, an isolated French outpost in the Indian Ocean,
east of Madagascar. There Abd el-Krim and his extended family would remain in
gilded exile for the following 20 years. Finally, in 1947 the French acceded to Abd el-
Krim’s petition that he and his family be relocated to France for health reasons and for
the education of the extended family’s children. Although the French plan was to move
the group to the south of France, that arrangement was derailed by a band of Moroccan
nationalists who took Abd el-Krim’s family—apparently against their wishes—from
their ship in Port Said, Egypt, and spirited them to Cairo, where King Farouk offered
them asylum.

In Egypt Abd el-Krim associated himself with the Liberation Committee of the Arab
West (Magreb) until he broke with that group in the early 1950s. He continued to give
interviews and to write articles for Arab consumption against European colonialism
and for the liberation of North Africa. Even after Morocco’s independence in 1956,
despite the pleas of Kings Muhammad V and Hassan II and various Moroccan
politicians, Abd el-Krim refused to return to Morocco, giving as his rationale that he
would not go back until there was no longer a French and Spanish military presence
in the country.
Source: Shannon Fleming

3. ABBAS II (1874-1944)

Abbās II, also called ʿAbbās Ḥilmī II, (born July 14, 1874, Alexandria, Egypt—died
Dec. 20, 1944, Geneva, Switz.), last khedive (viceroy) of Egypt, from 1892 to 1914,
when British hegemony was established. His opposition to British power in Egypt
made him prominent in the nationalist movement.

He went to Europe for schooling, spending some time at the Therasianum College in
Vienna. During that time the British occupied Egypt and in 1882 established complete
control there, while nominally respecting the sovereignty of the Sultan of Turkey,
whose representative the Khedive or Viceroy still was in theory. Tewfik, appointed by
the Sultan, Britain and France in 1879, submitted to the later imposition of virtual
colonial rule by Britain alone. But he died in January 1892, and his son and successor,
Abbas Hilmi, showed early on that he resented British domination.
Increasing bad relations between him and Sir Evelyn Baring (Later Lord Cromer), who
ruled Egypt as Britain’s Consul-General and Agent, culminated in a dispute over the
appointment of ministers early in 1893. While the Khedive secured the sacking of
Prime Minister Fahmi which he desired, he had to accept British control over
appointments from then on. The British also placed advisers in key ministries,
virtually running them. Abbas unwillingly accepted all this.
In 1894, when inspecting the army, under the overall command of the British General
Kitchener, he deliberately criticised its officers, as a criticism of Britain. Kitchener
offered to resign but this was refused and Cromer forced Abbas to sack his under-
secretary for War. Abbas continued to make secret contacts with Turkey, where British
control of a country still nominally under Ottoman rule was resented, and with Pan
Islamic circles who opposed British rule in Egypt, also with France, resentful of British
control over Egypt.
Between 1896 and 1898 the re-conquest of the Sudan pleased Egyptians, but the
virtually complete British occupation under the “condominium” was a further
grievance to nationalists, who also attacked Britain for denying sufficient Western
education to Egyptians, for alleged hostility to Islam, and other acts. Nationalism grew
in strength in the following few years, led particularly by Mustafa Kamil, his
newspaper al- Liwa’ and other newspapers also gave encouragement and help to him
and another nationalist editor, Sheikh Ali Yusuf of al-Mu’ayyad .
France ended its support of Egyptian nationalism in 1904, but Turkish and German
support followed, and indigenous support was massive by 1906, when the Turco-
Egyptian frontier incident and the Dinshawai case raised anti-British feelings to a
peak. In October 1906 Abbas, whose attitude no nationalist had been cautious and
ambiguous, made a pact with Kamil providing money for al-Liwa’. Abbas’ lifestyle was
exploited by the British who instigated press attacks on business dealings involving
the Khedivial Palace. This vulnerability isolated him from the more radical
nationalists. In 1907 he switched support from Kamil’s Nationalist, to the most anti-
British, to Ali Yusuf’s new Constitutional Reform Party, which called for eventual self-
rule under the Khedive.
In mid-1914, when he was visiting Constantinople, an attempt was made on Abbas’
life. He was in the Turkish capital when Turkey joined Germany in war against Britain.
Following this, the British declared Ottoman rule in Egypt formally ended, installed a
“protectorate”, and on 18 December 1914 deposed Abbas II. Refusing to accept the loss
of his throne, Abbas called Egyptians and Sudaneese to rise against Britain. In Egypt
where this did not happen, his uncle Hussein became ruler with the title:”Sultan”.
Abbas remained in exile during the First World War and afterwards.
There were some pro-Abbas elements in the nationalist upsurge of the early 1920s that
led to the legal independence of Egypt, but which he eventually renounced in 1931. He
died at Geneva on 21 December 1944.

4. ABUSHIRI (c. 1845-1889)

European empires arriving to East Africa naturally entered a going history of local
conflicts and accommodations. In the case of the region at hand, the archipelago of
Zanzibar lying just off the coast had been absorbed by, and then spun off from, the
domain of the sultan of Oman. As we lay our scene in the late 19th century, it is an
independent Sultanate of Zanzibar whose dominion extended to the adjacent Swahili
coast and inland, an area also known as the Zanj.
Zanzibar was a British interest here, but the islands themselves do not quite enter this
fray directly; the sultanate based there actually survived until 1964.
But in the 1880s, Germans scrambling for Africa arrived to gobble up the sultanate’s
mainland possessions. Germany, truth be told, was a little bit late to this game, and
although it secured some noteworthy footholds like Cameroon and Namibia, the
Second Reich suffered a distinct little imperial brother complex vis-a-vis the British
and the French — both of whom had more extensive holdings in Africa, to say nothing
of everywhere else in the world.
Certainly the German public, flush with the boom of industrialization and having only
just shown the French what-for on the battlefield, clamored for its rightful share of
overseas acquisition. The popular thirst for expansion dragged along reluctant
chancellor Otto von Bismarck into an adventure so inimical to the good order he
prized.
One such German dreaming big dreams of bigger maps was a cocksure 29-year-old
doctor of history, Carl Peters. Fresh off a few post-academic years knocking about in a
London astir with the white man’s burden, Peters co-founded the German East Africa
Company and then put that colonial corporation literally on the map with a bold
expedition to Zanzibar. Within a few weeks of arriving in November 1884, and despite
the explicit dissuasion of the German consulate there, Peters had obtained via just the
right mixture of largesse and menace treaty rights to 155,400 square kilometers
conferred by a number of coastal chiefs in the mainland ambit of the Sultan of
Zanzibar.
When Peters returned in glory to Germany brandishing these concessions, Chancellor
Bismarck was practically forced to accept them as a German protectorate … and
charter Peters’s corporation to start exploiting it. The mid-1880s saw a minor local
race between Peters and rival British explorers to establish their respective colonial
presences on the Swahili coast,* resulting in an 1886 Anglo-German agreement
formally dividing the region’s spheres of influence: British to the north, German to the
south. Today this line, shooting near-straight to the southeast from Lake Victoria to
the Indian Ocean with a slight bend round Mount Kilimanjaro, forms the border
between Kenya and Tanzania.
We are, at length, arriving at the unfortunate party whose execution occasions this
post.
The problem for young Master Peters with his personal agglomeration of the
fatherland was nothing but that familiar difficulty for invaders from time immemorial
— and Peters was ultimately an invader, no matter what treaties he could wrangle. For
his short spell as the commercial governor of this distant land, Peters earned of his
Bantu subjects the sobriquet Milkono wa Damu: the man with blood on his hands.
Diplomats could partition the land in Berlin, and could even compel the supine sultan
to acknowledge their arrangements. But no edict could command legitimacy for the
man with blood on his hands.

Beginning in September 1888, rebels comprising both Arabs and Swahili tribesmen
sacked German East Africa Company assets up and down the coast Peters had so
diligently won for Germany. Rousted from most of its towns and trading posts, the
Company hunkered down in its territorial capital of Bagamoyo and cabled Berlin for
help. Bismarck paternally relieved the in-over-its-head company with the aid of
mercenaries hired from Egypt and Mozambique, crushed the uprising with customary
roughness, and ushered Peters’s firm out of the colonial administration business in
favor of adult supervision. The little protectorate soon became German East Africa,
administered as a proper colonial appendage of the German Empire.
This Abushiri revolt is named for its most prominent leader, a mixed-race Arab-Oromo
coastal planter named Abushiri ibh Salim al-Harthi. He would be betrayed to German
hands trying to escape and promptly executed; however, resistance by others
continued to 1890.

This new disturbance, whose suppression Britain also aided, helped lead London and
Berlin back to the negotiating table for the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890 — a
comprehensive African arrangement to settle up spheres of influence not only on the
Swahili coast but touching Namibia and Togoland, too. Meanwhile, Germany gave up
remaining claims north of the Swahili coast dividing line and ceded Zanzibar itself to
British authority; in exchange, she obtained the islands of Heligoland off her
northwest shoulder — closing a potential security vulnerability.
Among the many curiosities of the years to follow for the great imperial powers
concerned, few are more vexing than just why it was that England and Germany went
to war in 1914. Profitable as that bloody effusion has been for these grim annals, it
posed as antagonists two countries that had long been thought by keen observers to be
natural allies — a belief shared by numerous British and German statesmen. Otto von
Bismarck was certainly one of these; his desire for an English alliance (against France
and Russia) was a pole star of the Iron Chancellor’s foreign policy. Indeed, he worked
amicably with his British opposite number Lord Salisbury; Bismarck once opined of
his unwillingly adopted East African holdings that they were “admirably suited to
become the sacrificial ram on the altar of friendship” with Great Britain.
But that isn’t what happened.
The failure of these great powers’ flirtation with one another, and the arrangements
they ultimately made with other powers instead, defined the belligerents of the Great
War. And while we would scarcely propose to lay the charnel houses of Verdun and
Gallipoli at the shores of Zanzibar, it has sometimes been postulated that the fatal
obstacle to Britain’s arrangement with Germany might have been the paucity of horses
to swap.
Thanks to far-flung colonial expansion, Britain had many borders with France all over
the globe, and accordingly had frequent need to collaborate and an ample store of
chips to trade. With Germany, she had but a few intersections, in Africa — and these
were settled almost too comprehensively after the Abushiri revolt.
It goes without saying that the sultan was none too happy about this development, but
he was made to get used to the idea. (Germany sent warships, and Great Britain
declined to back the sultan.)
The Anglo-German agreement accordingly limited the sultan’s authority on the coast
to a 10-mile strip. Although the European powers commanded whatever leases they
desired from this zone, Zanzibar’s anomalous territorial claims on the mainland would
not be extinguished until the post-colonial era. When that day came, the 10-mile strip
made for quite a sticky wicket during negotiations for Kenyan independence in the
1960s. The whole situation lies very far from the scope of this post, but the connosseur
of diplomatic Gordian knots should pause to enjoy exploring the whole mess.
Each party valued the thing it received quite a bit more than the thing it traded away
in this treaty. From Britain’s perspective, Heligoland would be nigh-indefensible in the
event of war with Germany; from Germany’s perspective, the claims it gave up outside
of German East Africa were little better than phantasmal.
*Charles Pike’s “History and Imagination: Swahili Literature and Resistance to German Language Imperialism
in Tanzania, 1885-1910,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1986)
5. El-AININ, SHEIKH MA’. (c. 1838-1910)
Ma al-Ainin, also known as "king of the desert". The endless sands of Mauritania and
Western Sahara for a long time remained completely unattractive for European
colonizers. Although as early as the end of the 18th century, France concluded the first
trade agreements with the Moorish emirate of Trarz, the French authorities did not
intend to penetrate deep into the Sahara. They were quite satisfied with the
development of trade with the Mauritanian emirate, which supplied gum arabic, which
was prized in Europe. As for the interior of Mauritania, it was of interest only to
enthusiasts - travelers like René Kaye or Leopold Pan. Kaye became the first European
to reach the legendary Malian city of Timbuktu. It was he who dispelled the myths that
prevailed in then Europe about the alleged wealth of this city. It turned out that the
inhabitants in Timbuktu live as poorly as in other cities of the Sahel. Kaye also visited
the Moorish emirate of Brakna, where he miraculously saved his life by posing as an
Arab. Leopold Pane went to Mauritania to visit Shingetti, a small town considered to
be a local cultural and religious center, a Mauritanian equivalent of Mali Tombuktu.
And also, like Rene Kaye, Leopold Pane was disappointed with his visit to Shingetti -
it was an ordinary desert village with earthen houses and poor people.

If Kaye and Pane were travelers, ethnographers and geographers, then French officer
Louis Leon César Federb engaged in the study of Mauritania, guided by practical

considerations. By the second half of the XIX century, France was firmly
entrenched on the Senegalese coast, French trading posts were established on the
Senegal River. However, both the local black population and the French colonists
suffered from the constant raids of militant Arab-Berber tribes from the territory of
Mauritania. Federb, who served as governor of St. Louis, formed from the Senegalese
Negroes detachments of camel cavalry, trained in the desert, and began to send them
to the lands of the Moorish emirates of Trarz and Brackne for retaliatory raids. In the
end, the Moorish emirs in 1858 were forced to sign an agreement not to attack the
French possessions in Senegal. But these agreements, although reflected in the
position of Senegal, did not guarantee the safety of the French traders and travelers in
the Mauritanian Emirates themselves. The huge desert territories, along which
detachments of the “desert people” - nomads from the tribal confederations of the
Moors - moved, remained “terra incognita” for Europeans. The few brave souls who
dared to penetrate into the Mauritanian Emirates, risked their lives.

At the end of the XIX century, France finally established itself in Senegal, and Dakar
became the administrative center of the new colony - French West Africa. The
conquest of the Mauritanian emirates in the plans of Paris was not included - the
French leadership was convinced that there was nothing to "profit" in a deserted
country. And the French public would not understand that the country would be
involved in another war. But at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. France attracted
the attention of rich Morocco. It became clear to the French political and military
leadership that the conquest of Morocco is impossible without prior "pacification" of
the Mauritanian Emirates. But the French did not want to subjugate Mauritania by
military means. For some time, the French authorities of West Africa adopted the
concept of peaceful penetration into Mauritania, authored by Xavier Coppolani (1866-
1905) - an amazing person, officer, diplomat and scientist. By origin, the lieutenant of
the French Army Coppolani was a Corsican, but from childhood he lived with his
parents in Algeria. This predetermined his interests. Although he was in the French
colonial service, this did not prevent him from becoming a first-class scholar and
making brilliant work on stories of North African Muslim brotherhoods - "tariqov."
The essence of the “peacekeeping concept” proposed by Coppolani was to assert
French influence in North Africa through the tribal sheikhs themselves. The main
thing, as Coppolani believed, was to convince the sheikhs that the French were not
going to change the original order, after which the sheikhs themselves would ensure
the loyalty of the rest of the native population. But the trust of the sheikhs can be
achieved only with the knowledge of the realities of local life, the Arabic language and
traditions. The concept of Coppolani, who was a decisive opponent of the use of violent
methods of conquering the North African territories, at that time perfectly served the
interests of the French leadership, and therefore was adopted as the basis of French
policy in the Sahara region. Xavier Coppolani himself was appointed French charge
d'affaires in Mauritania. In 1902, Mr. Coppolani went to Mauritania, where he met
with a number of reputable Muslim sheikhs and Hassans (Mauritanian society has two
top groups — the Hassan aristocrats and the Marabutose clergy). He managed to
convince the Mauritanian leaders of the advantages they would receive if a French
protectorate was established. In the end, the emirs of Trarza and the Brahns agreed to
the patronage of France. French military posts were established on their territory, and
Coppolani himself was appointed government commissioner in Mauritania.

But the subordination to the French patronage of the South-Mauritanian Emirates of

Trarz and Brakna did not suit the ambitious Coppolani. He "swung" at the most closed
for contacts Adrar - the inner regions of Mauritania, inhabited by tribes hostile to
Europeans. It was Adrar that was the center of Moorish culture, here was the famous
oasis of Shingetti, which in the Middle Ages, during the domination of the powerful
Almoravid dynasty, became the religious center of the entire western part of the Sahara
and then gave way to the larger Malian city of Timbuktu. Sheikhs Adrar were
considered the most rigid supporters of preserving the traditional way of life and were
extremely negatively disposed towards the penetration of Europeans into the country.
Nevertheless, Xavier Coppolani hoped that the militant Adrar would be able to
"pacify". In January, 1905 headed a detachment of three hundred French soldiers and
warriors provided by the emirs of Trarza and Bracna, Xavier Coppolani went to Adrar.
However, one evening the nomad camp attacked the expedition camp. Coppolani was
mortally wounded and died a few hours later.

As it turned out, behind an attack on the Coppolani expedition was Sheikh Ma al-Aynin
(1831-1910). His full name sounded Muhammad Mustafa Ould Sheikh Muhammad
Fadil bin Mamin al-Kalkami. He was the son of Sheikh Muhammad al-Fadil - the
founder of the religious brotherhood of Fadilia, who enjoyed great influence among
the nomadic tribes of Western Sahara, Mauritania and Morocco. In 1860, Ma al-Ainin
headed his own Ainiya brotherhood, created on the basis of one of the branches of the
Fadilia brotherhood. For a long time he lived in Algeria, then in 1887, he received the
position of Qaida from the Sultan of Morocco. Ma al-Ainin was a man, as they would
say now, of the “old formation”. He resembled medieval sheikhs — spiritual leaders,
who often led powerful popular movements in the Sahara and Sahel regions. With him,
Ma al-Ainin carried a chest with ancient manuscripts, and he wrote the authorship of
a number of religious treatises.

During his many travels, Ma al-Ainin gained more and more prestige among the
nomads of Southern Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania. He enlisted the
support of the Moroccan sultan Moulay Abd al-Aziz, who in 1897 allowed Ma al-Ainin
to open the convent (centers) of his Ainiy brotherhood in Morocco’s largest cities, Fez
and Marrakesh. Then Sultan of Morocco entrusted Ma al-Ainin with the task of leading
construction in the Sahara, in the region of Segiat al-Hamra, the city of Smara, which
was to include a fortress, mosques and a large market. Smara became one of the most
successful projects of the Saharan town planning, soon after its creation it turned into
a large commercial and cultural center of the region. In addition to the general
management, Ma al-Aynin himself headed the religious school established in Smara
with a library.

Unlike the emirs of South Mauritania, Ma al-Ainin remained a consistent opponent of

French penetration into the Sahara and any European influence in the region. Smara,
where Ma al-Ainin settled, became the stronghold of the anti-colonial resistance of the
peoples of the Sahara. Sheikh called on Saharan tribes to put aside all internal
contradictions and unite for jihad against the French and Spanish colonialists (by this
time, Spain also asserted its influence in the Western Sahara). Gradually, Ma al-Ainin
and his ideas of confronting European expansion gained enormous influence among
the heterogeneous mass of the population living between Senegal and southern
Morocco. Great support for Ma al-Ainin was provided by Morocco. In fact, the conflict
in Adrar between Ma al-Aynin and the French was the conflict between Morocco and
France.

Despite his age, and Ma al-Ainin at the time of the intensification of the armed
confrontation with the French, was already over seventy, he personally led the
guerrilla war against the French colonial forces. Nomad groups used tactics of
lightning attacks on French military posts. During one of these attacks, Xavier
Coppolani was killed, in which Ma al-Ainin saw a great danger - after all, Coppolani
was one of the few French soldiers who could not only fight, but also negotiate with
the sheikhs of the tribes.
Ma al-Ainin relied on the support of the regeybat tribal confederation, which roamed
the vast Sahara from Morocco to Mali and Senegal. Regatebat won the tribal wars with
the tribes of the Ulad Gaylan (1899-1904) and Awlad Jerier (1897-1909), as a result of
which they established control over the territory of Adrar. Then the regeybat was
subjugated and the tribe ulad-bu-sbaa. Thus, Ma al-Ainin became the main and most
dangerous enemy of the French colonial expansion in Western Sahara. For a long time,
he enjoyed the full support of the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Abd al-Aziz, but then the
French leadership still forced the Sultan to stop helping Ma al-Ainin. Then the “king
of the desert” responded to the “betrayal” of Moulay Abd al-Aziz in his own way - he
supported his rival in the struggle for the sultan's throne, Abd al-Hafid - the brother
of the sultan, who had long claimed the Moroccan throne. But then relations between
Khafid and al-Aynin deteriorated. In the end, Ma al-Aynin himself declared himself a
sultan and declared jihad to the French in southern Morocco.

In 1907, French Colonel Henri Joseph Gourot received an order to pacify Adrar. But it
was not until January that 1909, under the command of Gouraud, French colonial
troops marched inland. They included camel cavalry units recruited from
representatives of local tribes and trained by French officers.
The war was very cruel. The French troops chose the tactics of capturing the sources
on which the nomads brought their flocks to drink. At the same time, herds were also
captured, which were in fact the only wealth of the Saharan nomads. In conditions
when herds and springs were in the hands of the French, nomads had no choice but to
surrender to the nomads. Finally, the whole of Adrar was occupied by French troops.
French military posts were established in Adrar and Shingetti, and the forces of Ma al-
Aynin had to retreat to the north - to the Segyat el-Hamra region. Then the sheikh,
with the remnants of his supporters, marched on Fez, but was defeated by French
troops, who moved across the path to the nomads.

In 1910, during a retreat in the Tiznit area, 79-year-old Ma al-Ainin passed away. For
the French colonial authorities, the death of an elderly sheikh was a real gift - the
Western Saharan and Moorish nomads no longer had such charismatic leaders as Ma
al-Aynin. After his death, the struggle of the nomads regeibat against the French
authorities was headed by the son of Ma al-Aynin al-Hib, who also proclaimed himself
the Sultan of Morocco. But the French managed to enlist the support of the Berber
tribes Mtuga, Gandavi and Glauya, after which they defeated the forces of al-Hiba and
drove them out of Marrakesh. Then, in 1912, al-Hib a’s troops were driven back from
the Taroudant area. A French protectorate was established over Morocco. Colonel
Henri Joseph Gouraud, who rose in 1911 during the war in Morocco, before generals
chases, already after World War I, became famous as French High Commissioner in
Syria.

In 1920, Mauritania became a French colony within French West Africa. The colony
was administered by the Governor-General appointed by the French government. But
the French authorities did not abolish the traditional institutions of government -
sheikhs and emirs. Only in the 1932-1934 years, after the regular popular uprisings,
which were headed by local feudal lords, did the French authorities decide to liquidate
the Admiral and Brakna emirates. However, among other French colonies, Mauritania
occupied a special place. Here, in fact, French laws did not operate, the traditional
social structure, including slavery, remained in an unshakable state, which in fact
remains in this African country to this day. The number of Europeans - soldiers,
officials and merchants - who lived in this closed Saharan country was also very small.
In modern Mauritania, as well as among the rebels of the Frente Polisario, which
stands for the political independence of Western Sahara, Ma al-Aynin is considered a
national hero.

6. AL-BARUNI, SULAYMAN (1870-1940)

Sulayman al-Baruni was a Berber statesman and a prominent figure in the history of
Libya. Al-Baruni was born in the Jabal Nafusa in what was then the vilayet of
Tripolitania, part of the Ottoman Empire, around 1870. His family belonged to the
Ibadi sect of Islam, and he studied at the major universities of Al-Azhar in Egypt and
Ez-Zitouna in Tunisia. In Cairo he founded a newspaper and later a printing press.
During the reign of Abdul Hamid II, he was arrested several times by the Ottoman
authorities on the accusation that he was planning to re-establish an Ibadi imamate or
emirate in the Jabal Nefusa. In the general election of 1908, following the Young Turk
Revolution, al-Baruni was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as the member for the
Jabal Gharbi.
Following the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War in 1911, al-Baruni immediately began
recruiting Berbers to resist the invasion. He played a leading role at the Congress of
Aziziyya, a meeting of important Tripolitanian leaders, in late October 1912, following
the Ottoman capitulation. He eventually sought an understanding with the Italians in
the hopes of creating an autonomous Ibadi principality centred on the Jabal Nefusa
and Marsa Zuaga. At minimum he hoped the Berbers would receive special privileges
in the new Italian Libya. What remained of Berber resistance in Tripolitania was
crushed at the battle of al-Asabʿa on 23 March 1913. Al-Baruni and several other
leaders who had been connected with the Ottomans, went into voluntary exile in
French Tunisia. Italy sent Count Carlo Sforza to Tunisia to persuade the exiles to
return. Al-Baruni was the first to be convinced, suggesting to the other that they should
return to Tripolitania in exchange for an agreement from Italy that they could retain
the position in Tripolitanian society and that their past resistance would not be held
against them. Al-Baruni seems even to have been promised Berber autonomy. The
Italians also asked him to write a monograph on the Jabal Gharbi.
Al-Baruni did not return until October 1916, when he was appointed governor (Arabic
wāli, Turkish vali) of Tripolitania, Tunisia and Algeria by the Ottoman sultan in the
midst of the First World War. None of these territories were under actual Ottoman
control at the time, but the Ottomans were actively working to organise the war against
Italy in Tripolitania. In November 1918, al-Baruni was one of four local notables
elected to represent the Tripolitanian Republic that was proclaimed in the aftermath
of the Ottoman surrender. With the promulgation of the Legge Fondamentale
(Fundamental Law) in June 1919, al-Baruni made his peace with Italy.
By September 1921, as a result of the Italian policy of divide and conquer, there was a
civil war in Libya between the Berbers, who increasingly looked to Italy for protection,
and the Arabs. Among the Berbers, al-Baruni was widely blamed for this state of
affairs. He went into his final exile in November 1921. He traveled to France, Egypt,
Turkey and Mecca before settling in Oman. There he was appointed finance minister.
After his death, his daughter, Za'ima bint Sulayman, gathered some of his papers and
published them at Tripoli in 1964 under the title Safahat khalida min al-jihad li'l-
mujahid al-Libi Sulayman al-Baruni.

7. ATTAHIRU I, MUHAMMADU, SULTAN OF SOKOTO.

(D. 1903)

Muhammadu Attahiru I was the twelfth Sultan of the Sokoto Caliphate from
October 1902 until March 15, 1903. He was the last independent Sultan of Sokoto
before the Caliphate was taken over by the British.

The Sokoto Caliphate leaders are partly Arabs and partly Fulani as stated by Abdullahi
dan Fodio, brother of Usman dan Fodio who claimed that their family are part Fulani,
and part Arabs, they claimed to descent from the Arabs through Uqba ibn Nafi who
was an Arab Muslim of the Umayyad branch of the Quraysh, and hence, a member of
the family of the Prophet, Uqba ibn Nafi allegedly married a Fulani woman called
Bajjumangbu through which the Torodbe family of Usman dan Fodio descended.
Caliph Muhammed Bello writing in his book Infaq al-Mansur claimed descent from
Prophet Muhammad through his paternal grandmother's lineage called Hawwa
(mother of Usman dan Fodio), Alhaji Muhammadu Junaidu, Wazirin Sokoto, a scholar
of Fulani history, restated the claims of Shaykh Abdullahi bin Fodio in respect of the
Danfodio family been part Arabs and part Fulani, while Ahmadu Bello in his
autobiography written after independence replicated Caliph's Muhammadu Bello
claim of descent from the Arabs through Usman Danfodio's mother, the historical
account indicates that the family of Shehu dan Fodio are partly Arabs and partly Fulani
who culturally assimilated with the Hausas and can be described as Hausa-Fulani
Arabs. Prior to the beginning of the 1804 Jihad the category Fulani was not important
for the Torankawa (Torodbe), their literature reveals the ambivalence they had
defining Torodbe-Fulani relationships. They adopted the language of the Fulbe and
much ethos while maintaining a separate identity. The Toronkawa clan at first
recruited members from all levels of Sūdānī society, particularly the poorer people.
Toronkawa clerics included people whose origin was Fula, Wolof, Mande, Hausa and
Berber. However, they spoke the Fula language, married into Fulbe families, and
became the Fulbe scholarly caste.

When his predecessor died in October 1902, there was a dispute over succession in
which, by sheer force of his personality, Attahiru emerged victorious. Around that
time, British forces under Frederick Luggard were advancing on Sokoto, having
subdued Kano. Against this background of uncertainty, prepared his people, still
disunited following the succession dispute, for battle. On 15 th March 1903 he
personally led his army to the famous battle of Sokoto in which the Fulani cavalry
engaged the British in a heroic encounter just outside Sokoto town. According to some
sources the battle only lasted ninety minutes; largely because the British superior
military power (they used maxim guns) and partly because of internal disunity, the
Sokoto resistance soon collapsed.
But the opposition to the British presence produced its heroism. According to the
Nigerian Historian Obaro Ikime, in his book The Fall of Nigeria, the resistance, and
the courage and devotion of the Fulani soldiers who led it, surprised the British. “When
the Sokoto army marched out of the city walls to await the British, they took with
them the Flag of the Caliph. The main body of the army was already in flight within
half an hour of the beginning of the battle. However, a small group stood its ground
to defend the flag, the symbol of the Caliphate. The British themselves praised the
courage and devotion of this small group. One British source described how, as the
British opened fire on the group, one soldier after another took over the flag and held
on to it till he in turn was shot down. And so it continued until the last of the group,
the fiftieth, so goes a British account, fell dead and the flag fell on him. The British
thereupon captured the flag. But such was the importance of the flag to the people,
that someone managed to seize it back and take it to the Caliph in flight.”
The Caliph commenced his flight as the British entered Sokoto city; he left, marching
his forces eastwards and reminding his citizens that the founder of the Caliphate,
Usman Dan Fodio had prophesised that the faithful would one day take the Hijra to
the east. Thousands including the Alkali and other officials of his government and
some emirs deposed by the British, joined him in a remarkable mass show of
opposition to British occupation. He and his followers stopped at Gusau and then
moved on, with a British force in pursuit. The latter was beaten off several times with
several casualties.
As the exodus progressed through Zaria, Katagum and other emirates, several others
joined the fleeing Caliph. At Burmi Attahiru I and his party made the last stand. A first
British attack on 13th May 1903 was successfully repelled. But in the second battle of
Burmi on 27th July 1903 Burmi fell to the Europeans after fierce resistance in which
over 600 were thought to have died, Caliph Attahiru was among those who fell. The
diverse character of his supporters who had come from Sokoto, Kano, Gombe,
Kontagora, Nupe, Katagum, Misau, Bauchi and other parts of the Caliphate testified
to the unequivocal opposition to British presence. Attahiru’s son, Mai Wurno, was
among the many survivors who refused submit to British rule. They continued their
flight till they reached the Blue Nile in modern Sudan where they settled.

References

1. Falola, Toyin (2009). Historical Dictionary of Nigeria. Lanham, Md:

Scarecrow Press.
2. Abubakar, Aliyu (2005). The Torankawa Danfodio Family. Kano,Nigeria:
Fero Publishers.
3. Ibrahim, Muhammad (1987). The Hausa-Fulani Arabs: A Case Study of the
Genealogy of Usman Danfodio. Kadawa Press.
4. Willis, John Ralph (April 1978). "The Torodbe Clerisy: A Social View". The
Journal of African History. Cambridge University Press. 19 (2): 195.
doi:10.1017/s0021853700027596. JSTOR 181598. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
5. Ajayi, Jacob F. Ade (1989). Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s.
University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-03917-9. Retrieved 2013-02-
13.
6. The Cambridge History of Africa: 1870–1905. London: Cambridge
University Press. 1985. p. 276.
 7. Falola, Toyin (2009). Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
8. Paden, John (1973). Religion and Political Culture in Kano. Berkeley, A:
University of California Press.
9. Gott, Richard (3 November 2006). "Death of a sultan". The Guardian.
Retrieved 2021-08-15.
10. Sikanga, Ahmad Alawad (1995). Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and
Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press.
11. Gott, Richard (3 November 2006). "Death of a sultan". The Guardian.
Retrieved 28 April 2017.

1. 8. BEHANZIN HOSSU BOWELLE DAHOMEY, KING.

(1845-1906)

King Behanzin Hossu Bowelle was born in 1844 in Abomey into the family of
king Glele, who was also Dahomey's king at the time. Behanzin succeeded his
father as the 11th king of Dahomey. Following his father's death, Behanzin
was referred to as king Shark in accordance with Dahomey's customs, which
required that a king be given a name that reflected his symbols.
King Behanzin Hossu Bowelle lived up to his reputation as "King Shark," as
his fearlessness in nature reflects. Apart from that, the dolphin, the egg, the
smoking pipe, and the coconut palm served as his representational symbols.
While King Behanzin Hossu Bowelle was the ruler of Dahomey, he
commanded a formidable army of 5000 females and 1500 males. Throughout
his reign, King Behanzin Hossu Bowelle was regarded as a wise and
courageous monarch.
Glele resorted to maintain Dahomey’s independence as well as control the trade with
Europeans, came into increasing conflict with the French from 1878, when they began
asserting control over Porto Novo and Cotonou. France occupied Porto Novo in
alliance with its King Toffa, in 1883, but Glele refused to recognise any French
sovereignty in the area. In 1889 talks began on the dispute and others arising from it.
Towards the end of 1889, Glele died (it was rumoured he had committed suicide) and
was succeeded immediately by Behanzin.
The crisis with the French continued, resulting in a battle with Cotonou in 1890. Then
there was a truce. But Behanzin continued sale of prisoners to the Germans who sent
them to work in other parts of Africa without officially calling them slaves, and this
was added to other French complaints. In March 1892 a boat carrying France’s Lt.-
Governor on the Dahomey coast was attacked, and this was a pretext for a major
French expedition approved by France’s Parliament in April 1892.
French forces commanded by Gen. Dodds fought their way slowly inland towards
Abomey. The Dahomey forces, including the women warriors, (“Amazons”), fought
back well, delaying the French advance and winning some local victories. But the
French captured Abomey. For some time then they negotiated with Behanzin to
surrender on terms which would include a continued role for the King. These
negotiations failed and the French attacked the remnant of Behanzin’s forces. On 26
January 1894, he surrendered. Shortly before then, his brother Agoli Agbo had been
proclaimed King under French sovereignty. The old kingdom was steadily reduced in
area and weakened, and in 1900 Agboli-Agbo was deposed and the Kingdom abolished
permanently. Behanzin was then in exile in Martinique with several of his family. After
several years there they were moved to Algeria where Behanzin died in Algiers on 10
December 1906.
In 1928 his son Wanilo, who had accompanied him and been for long forbidden to
return, was allowed finally to go back and take Behanzin’s ashes to Abomey for
reburial. Wanilo had qualified as a lawyer in France and began to practice there. He
successfully had his father’s ashes reburied near the burial place of earlier Kings of
Dahomey.
References

***Makers of Modern Africa,1991. Raph Uwechue, Editor in Chief

Bello, D.R.B. and Zhu, X., 2020. The “Makpo” Arcade: Prestigious Object of the Kings of Dahomey
and its Sculpture Materials. Archaeologies, 16(3), pp.505-519.

Larsen, L.E., 2021. Wives and warriors: The royal women of Dahomey as representatives of the
kingdom. In The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories (pp. 225-235).
Routledge.

9. BEN BARKA, el-MAHDI. (1920-1965)

A Moroccan politician, head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNPF)
and secretary of the Tricontinental Conference. An opponent of French Imperialism
and King Hassan II, he was "disappeared" in Paris in 1965. Many theories attempting
to explain what happened to him were put forward over the years; but it was not until
2018 that details of his disappearance were established by Israeli journalist and author
Ronen Bergman in his book Rise And Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's
Targeted Assassinations. Based on research and interviews with Israeli intelligence
operatives involved in planning the kidnapping of Barka, Bergman concluded that he
was murdered by Moroccan agents and French police, who ended up disposing of his
body.

Mehdi Ben Barka was born January 1920 into a middle class family in Rabat; his father
Ahmed Ben M'hammed Ben Barka was at the beginning of his career, serving as
personal secretary of the Pasha of Tangier, before becoming a businessman in Rabat,
and his mother Lalla Fatouma Bouanane, was a stay-at-home mother.
He was one of the very few Moroccan children not from the bourgeoisie to have access
to a good education. He studied at Collège Moulay Youssef in Rabat, among the
children of the colons and the city's nobility, where he joined the drama club and
excelled in his studies. Meanwhile, in addition to his studies, he worked as a simple
accountant at the wholesale market to help his family. He earned his first diploma in
1938 with high honors at a time when Morocco only produced about 20 or so graduates
of baccalauréat secondary school programs per year.

In response to the Berber Dahir of May 16, 1930, which placed Amazigh populations
under the jurisdiction of the French authorities, 14-year-old Mehdi Ben Barka joined
the Comité d'action marocaine, the first political movement born under the
protectorate.

His outstanding academic performance attracted the attention of the French Résident
Général Charles Noguès, who sent him along with other distinguished students on a
trip to Paris. He studied at Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca from 1938 to 1939, and
received his baccalauréat diploma in mathematics in 1939.

As a 17-year-old, he became one of the youngest members of Allal al-Fassi's National

Party for the Realization of Reforms, which would become the Istiqlal Party a few years
later.

Though he wanted to complete his studies in France, the outbreak of World War II
forced him to continue his studies in mathematics at the University of Algiers, also
under French control in 1940, instead. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics
and became the first Moroccan to do so at an official French school. The Algerian
People's Party influenced him to broaden the scale of his nationalism to incorporate
all of North Africa. He could not disassociate the fate of Morocco from the fate of the
entire Maghreb.

He returned to Morocco in 1942. At 23 years old, as the first Moroccan Muslim

graduate in mathematics of an official French school, he became a professor at the
Royal Academy (Collège Royal), where the future king of Morocco Hassan II was one
of his students. He participated in the creation of the Istiqlal Party, which would play
a major role in Morocco's independence. He was the youngest signatory of the
Proclamation of Independence of Morocco of January 11, 1944. His signature got him
arrested along with other party leaders, and he spent more than a year in prison.
M'hamed Aouad cites Ben Barka as having participated—along with Ahmed Balafrej,
Mohamed Lyazidi , Mohamed Laghzaoui, and Abdeljalil El Kabbaj —in the creation of
the newspaper Al-Alam in 1946. According to Mohammed Lahbabi of the USFP, Mehdi
Ben Barka prepared the Tangier Speech delivered by Sultan Muhammad V April 10,
1947.

He also remained an activist in the nationalist movement, to the extent that the French
General Alphonse Juin described him as the "enemy number 1 of France in Morocco.”
Mehdi Ben Barka was put on house arrest February 1951. In 1955, he participated in
the negotiations that led to the return of Muhammad V, who French authorities had
ousted and exiled, and to the end of the French protectorate.

He left the Istiqlal Party in 1959 after clashes with conservative opponents to found
the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP).
In 1962 he was accused of plotting against King Hassan II. He was exiled from Morocco
in 1963, after calling upon Moroccan soldiers to refuse to fight Algeria in the 1963 Sand
War.

When he was exiled in 1963, Ben Barka became a "traveling salesman of the
revolution" according to the historian Jean Lacouture. He left initially for Algiers,
where he met Che Guevara, Amílcar Cabral and Malcolm X. From there, he went to
Cairo, Rome, Geneva and Havana, trying to unite the revolutionary movements of the
Third World for the Tricontinental Conference meeting that was to be held in January
1966 in Havana. In a press conference, he claimed "the two currents of the world
revolution will be represented there: the current [that] emerged with the October
Revolution and that of the national liberation revolution".

As the leader of the Tricontinental Conference, Ben Barka was a major figure in the
Third World movement and supported revolutionary anti-colonial action in various
states; this provoked the anger of the United States and France. Just before his
disappearance, he was preparing the first meeting of the Tricontinental, scheduled to
take place in Havana. The OSPAAAL (Spanish for "Organization for Solidarity with the
People of Africa, Asia and Latin America") was founded on that occasion.

Chairing the preparatory commission, he defined the objectives; assistance with the
movements of liberation, support for Cuba during its subjection to the United States
embargo, the liquidation of foreign military bases and apartheid in South Africa. For
the historian René Galissot, "The underlying reason for the removal and assassination
of Ben Barka is to be found in this revolutionary impetus of Tricontinentale."

On 29 October 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka was abducted ("disappeared") in Paris by

French policemen and never seen again. On 29 December 1975, Time magazine
published an article titled "The Murder of Mehdi Ben Barka", stating that three
Moroccan agents were responsible for the death of Ben Barka, one of them former
Interior Minister Mohamed Oufkir. Speculation persists as to CIA involvement.
French intelligence agents and the Israeli Mossad were also involved, according to the
article. According to Tad Szulc, Israeli involvement was in the wake of the successful
Moroccan-Israeli collaboration in the 1961–64 Operation Yachin; he claims that Meir
Amit located Ben Barka, whereupon Mossad agents persuaded him to come to Paris
where he was to be arrested by the French police.

In the 1960s Ben Barka's disappearance was enough of a scandale public that
President De Gaulle formally declared his government had not been responsible. After
trial in 1967, two French officers were sent to prison for their role in the kidnapping.
However, the judge ruled that the main guilty party was Moroccan Interior Minister
Mohamed Oufkir. Georges Figon, a freelance barbouze (secret agent) who had testified
earlier that Oufkir stabbed Ben Barka to death, was later found dead, officially a
suicide.

Prefect of Police Maurice Papon (1910–2007), later convicted of crimes against

humanity for his role under the Vichy regime, was forced to resign following Ben
Barka's kidnapping. There are several storylines for the disappearance of Ben Barka.

One story is that of a former member of the Moroccan secret service, Ahmed Boukhari
claimed in 2001 that Ben Barka had died during interrogation in a villa south of Paris.
He said Ben Barka's body was then taken back to Morocco and destroyed in a vat of
acid. Furthermore, he declared that this vat of acid, whose plans were reproduced by
the newspapers, had been constructed under instructions from the CIA agent "Colonel
Martin", who had learnt this technique to make corpses disappear during his
appointment in the Shah's Iran in the 1950s.

Moroccan-French dissident and former Tazmamart prisoner of conscience Ali

Bourequat also claims in his book In the Moroccan King's Secret Garden to have met
a former Moroccan secret agent in a prison near Rabat in 1973–74. The man, Dubail,
recounted how he and some colleagues, led by Colonel Oufkir and Ahmed Dlimi, had
murdered Ben Barka in Paris.

The body was then encapsulated in cement and buried outside Paris, but his head was
brought by Oufkir to Morocco in a suitcase. Thereafter, it was buried in the same
prison grounds where Dubail and Bourequat were held.

Owing to requests made through the Freedom of Information Act, the United States
government acknowledged in 1976 that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
possessed 1,800 documents involving Ben Barka; however, the documents were not
released.

Some secret French documents on the affair were made public in 2001, causing
political uproar. Defence minister Michèle Alliot-Marie had agreed in 2004 to follow
the recommendations of a national defence committee and released the 73 additional
classified documents on the case. However, the son of Mehdi Ben Barka was outraged
at what he called a "pseudo-release of files", insisting that information had been
withheld which could have implicated the French secret services (SDECE), and
possibly the CIA and the Mossad, as well as the ultimate responsibility of King Hassan
II of Morocco–who conveniently was able to put the blame on Oufkir after his failed
coup in 1972.

Driss Basri, Interior Minister of Hassan II and his right-hand man from the early
1980s to the late 1990s, was heard by the judge Patrick Ramaël in May 2006, as a
witness, concerning Ben Barka's kidnapping. Basri declared to the magistrate that he
had not been linked to the Ben Barka affair. He added that "it is possible that the King
knew. It is legitimate to think that de Gaulle possessed some information..."

Ronen Bergman, author and "senior correspondent for military and intelligence
affairs" for Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, in his book Rise And Kill First (2018)
writes that Israel's Mossad intelligence service had established a reciprocal
intelligence-sharing relationship with the government of Morocco's King Hassan II. In
September, 1965 the King had allowed the Mossad to install electronic eavesdropping
devices in "all the meeting rooms and private suites of the leaders of the Arab states
and their military commanders during an Arab summit in Casablanca", giving Israel
"an unprecedented glimpse" of the military and intelligence secrets of its greatest
enemies, and of the mindsets of those countries' leaders. Information transferred to
Israel from the Casablanca summit about the shaky state of the Arab armies was "one
of the foundations for the confidence felt by IDF chiefs" when they recommended their
government to wage war two years later (the 1967 Six-Day War). But just one day after
the Mossad had received the transcripts from this Arab summit, a top Moroccan
intelligence service chief, Ahmed Dlimi requested - on behalf of King Hassan II - that
the Israelis immediately repay the favor by assassinating Ben Barka. According to
Bergman's sources, the Mossad did not actually carry out the killing but played a key
role in locating Barka and giving that information to Moroccan authorities so they
could place him under surveillance; the Mossad created the plan for the kidnapping -
which was to be carried out by the Moroccans themselves. "The Mossad supplied the
Moroccans with safe houses in Paris, vehicles, fake passports, and two different kinds
of poison with which to kill [Barka], as well as shovels and 'something to disguise the
traces'". After the Moroccans, "with the help of corrupt French police officers" tortured
and murdered Barka in a Mossad safe house, a team of Mossad operatives took care of
the disposal of the body, burying it in the Saint-Germain forest outside Paris, carefully
scattering a chemical powder over the grave which would dissolve the body.
"[A]ccording to some of the Israelis involved" what was left of Barka's body was then
moved again and buried either under the road leading to or under the headquarters of
the Louis Vuitton Foundation.

Czech historian Jan Koura revealed in his article “A prominent spy: Mehdi Ben Barka,
Czechoslovak intelligence, and Eastern bloc espionage in the Third World” published
in Intelligence and National Security journal that Ben Barka had collaborated with
Czechoslovak secret service (StB) from 1961 until his abduction in 1965. Ben Barka
made regular trips to Czechoslovakia and his cooperation with the StB revolved around
the exchange of intelligence and the fulfilment of specific intelligence operations for
which he was financially rewarded. The Czechoslovak secret service provided Ben
Barka (codenamed “Sheikh”) with intelligence training in 1965. Barka also asked the
StB to train a small group of UNFP members based in Algeria with the intention of
overthrowing King Hassan II. Although the StB refused his request and was willing to
train Moroccans only on conspiracy methods, surveillance, and anti-surveillance
measures, Ben Barka’s cooperation with the StB and his visits of Czechoslovakia were
no secret to General Mohamed Oukfir and Moroccan intelligence service. According
to Koura, Ben Barka’s kidnapping may have been related to his alleged plan to stage a
coup in Morocco with the help of the Czechoslovak secret service. During his last visit
in Prague in early October 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka complained that the King Hassan
II was taking various measures against him and asked the secret service for a small
handgun to protect himself as he feared assassination.

Victoria Brittain, writing in The Guardian, called Ben Barka a "revolutionary

theoretician as significant as Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara", whose "influence
reverberated far beyond their own continent". His writings have been collected and
translated in French by his son Bachir Ben Barka and published in 1999 under the title
Écrits politiques (1957–1965).

References

1. France accused 44 years on over Moroccan's vanishing by Lizzy Davies, The Guardian, October 29, 2009
2. Abderrahim Ouardighi (1982). "L'itinéraire d'un nationaliste, Mehdi Ben Barka, 1920-1965 : une
biographie". Editions Moncho. p. 17.
3. Muratet, Roger (1967). On a tué Ben Barka (in French). Plon.
4. "Figures de la révolution africaine". La Découverte. 2014. pp. 237–252.
5. American Universities Field Staff Reports Service North Africa Series, Vol. V No. 5 (Morocco)
6. "MOROCCO: The Challenger". Time. 1959-09-21. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
7. Bitton, Simone, (1955- ...)., Réalisateur / Metteur en scène / Directeur ([DL 2010]), Ben Barka
l'équation marocaine, L'Harmattan vidéo [éd., distrib.], ISBN 2-296-10925-X, OCLC 690860373,
retrieved 2021-07-06
8. "Figures de la révolution africaine". La Découverte. 2014. pp. 237–252.)
9. Karen Farsoun and Jim Paul, "War in the Sahara: 1963," MERIP Reports, No. 45 (March 1976).
10. "The Murder of Mehdi Ben Barka". Time. December 29, 1975.
 11. "Officer reveals grim details of Ben Barka's murder". irishtimes.com.
12. Szulc 1991, p. 275: "By mid-1963, Operation Yakhin had become virtually routine. Colonel Oufkir, the
new Interior Minister in Morocco, and Meir Amit, the new chief of the Mossad, concluded a secret pact
that year providing for the training of Moroccan security services by the Israelis and limited covert
military assistance in exchange for a flow of intelligence on Arab affairs and continued free departures of
Jews. In 1965, the Mossad rendered Oufkir the shocking and sinister service of tracking down Mehdi
Ben-Barka, the leader of the leftist opposition in Morocco, whom both the king and his Interior Minister
wished dead. Amit agreed to locate Ben-Barka, and Mossad agents persuaded him to come to Paris from
Geneva under false pretenses. Near a restaurant, French plainclothesmen arrested Ben-Barka and
handed him over to Oufkir’s agents. They then took him to the countryside, killed him and buried him in
a garden. Investigations by the French government uncovered the truth, and the Ben-Barka affair
became a political scandal in France, Morocco and Israel.”
13. Clea Caulcutt (28 October 2010). "Spies, Nazis, gangsters and cops - the mysterious disappearance of
Mehdi Ben Barka". RFI English.
14. "France: L'Affaire Ben Barka". Time. 28 January 1966. Archived from the original on November 5,
2012.
15. Affaire Ben Barka : Driss Basri chez le juge, Le Figaro, 23 May 2006 (in French)
16. French: «Je n'ai été mêlé ni de près, ni de loin, ni à l'époque, ni à aucun moment, à l'affaire qui s'est
déroulée sur le sol français» explique-t-il au Figaro. «Seul un petit groupe, qui a gardé un silence total,
savait. Il est possible que le roi savait. Il est légitime de penser que de Gaulle était en possession
d'informations... Le problème est qu'aujourd'hui les protagonistes sont tous morts» in Affaire Ben
Barka : Driss Basri chez le juge, Le Figaro, 23 May 2006 (in French)
17. "The ghosts of Saint-Germain forest". Ynetnews. 2015-03-23. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
18. Bergman, Ronen (2018). Rise And Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations.
Random House. pp. 86–94. ISBN 978-1-4000-6971-2.
19. Koura, Jan (2020-11-06). "A prominent spy: Mehdi Ben Barka, Czechoslovak intelligence, and Eastern
Bloc Espionage in the Third World during the Cold War". Intelligence and National Security. 36 (3):
318–339. doi:10.1080/02684527.2020.1844363. ISSN 0268-4527. S2CID 228837772.
20. Koura, Jan (2020-11-06). "A prominent spy: Mehdi Ben Barka, Czechoslovak intelligence, and Eastern
Bloc Espionage in the Third World during the Cold War". Intelligence and National Security. 36 (3):
318–339. doi:10.1080/02684527.2020.1844363. ISSN 0268-4527. S2CID 228837772.
21. Africa: A Continent Drenched in the Blood of Revolutionary Heroes by Victoria Brittain, The Guardian,
January 17, 2011
22. Mehdi Ben Barka, Écrits politiques (1957–1965), Syllepse, 1999, ISBN 2907993933

10. BUREH, BAI. (C.1840-1908)

Bai Bureh was born in 1840 in Kasseh, a village near Port Loko in the Northern
Province of Sierra Leone. His father was an important Temne war-chief and his mother
a Loko woman from Makeni. When Bureh was a young man, his father sent him to
Gbendembu, a training school for warriors where he earned the nickname "Kebalai",
meaning "one who never tires of war". When Kebalai return to his home village, he
was crowned ruler of Kasseh.
 Bai Bureh

During the 1860s and 1870’s Bureh had become the top warrior of Port Loko and the
entire Northern Province. He successfully fought and won wars against other villagers
who were against his plan to establish correct Islamic and indigenous practices
throughout Northern Sierra Leone. In 1882, The Susu people from French Guinea
(now Guinea) were involved in a bitter land dispute over Kambia, a town in northern
Sierra Leone. The Susu invaded Kambia and easily crush the local people in Kambia.
The people of Kambia called on Bai Bureh to their rescue. Bai Bureh’s fighters defeated
the Susu, push them back into French Guinea and returned the land to the local
Kambia people. After winning several major wars, his popularity spread. The people
of the northern province felt they have found a warrior who would defend their land.
In 1886, Bai Bureh was crowned as the chief of the entire Northern Province.
As a ruler, Bureh never wanted to cooperate with the British who were living in the
capital city of Freetown. Bai Bureh refused to recognise a peace treaty the British had
negotiated with the Limba without his participation; and on one occasion, his warrior
fighters raided the British troops across the border into French Guinea.

Bai Bureh refused to recognise the hut tax the British had imposed in 1893 in Sierra
Leone. He did not believe the Sierra Leonean people had a duty to pay taxes to
foreigners and he wanted all British to return to Britain and let the Sierra Leoneans
solve their own problems.

After refusing to pay his taxes on several occasions, the British issued a warrant to
arrest Bureh. When the British Governor to Sierra Leone Cardew offered the princely
sum of 100 pounds as a reward for his capture, Bai Bureh reciprocated by offering the
even more staggering sum of five hundred pounds for the capture of the Governor. In
1896 Bureh declared war on British in Sierra Leone. The war later became known as
the Hut Tax War of 1898.

He brought fighters from several temne villages under his command, as well as fighters
from Limba, Loko, Kissi and Kuranko villages. Bai Bureh had the advantage over the
vastly more powerful British for several months of the war. By 19 February, Bai Bureh’s
warrior fighhters had completely severed the British line of communication between
Freetown and Port Loko. They blocked the road and the river from Freetown. Despite
their arrest warrant, the British forces failed to defeat Bureh and his warrior fighters.
Hundreds of British troops were killed, and hundreds of Bureh’s fighters also died
during the war.

Bai Bureh was finally tracked down in swampy, thickly vegetated countryside by a
small patrolling party of the newly organised West African Regiment on November 11,
1898 in Port Loko. His Temne warriors resisted to the last, but they did not evade the
troops for long. Bai Bureh was taken under guard to Freetown, where crowds gathered
around his quarters day and night to gain a glimpse of the great man.

The British sent Bai Bureh in exile to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), along with the
powerful Sherbro chief Kpana Lewis and the powerful Mende chief Nyagua. Both
Kpana Lewis and Nyagua died in exile but Bai Bureh was brought back to Sierra Leone
in 1905, reinstating him as the Chief of Kasseh. Bai Bureh died in 1908.

The significance of Bai Bureh’s war against the British is not a matter of whether he
won or lost the war but that a man who had none of what could be called formal
military training was able to show that for a significant number of months he was able
to take on the British who were very proud of their great military successes across the
globe. The British troops were led by officers trained at the finest military academies
where war is studied in the same way that one studies a subject at university. The fact
that Bai Bureh was not executed after his capture has led some historians to claim that
this was in admiration for his prowess as an adversary to the British.

The tactics employed by Bai Bureh in his fight against the British are very much the
forerunner of tactics employed by guerilla armies worldwide. At the time these tactics
were very revolutionary and he "succeeded" for the good reason he had expert
knowledge of the terrain across which the war took place. Bai Bureh had pursued the
war not just with sound military brain but also a sense of humour. When Governor
Cardew had offered the princely sum of 100 pounds as a reward for his capture, Bai
Bureh had reciprocated by offering the even more staggering sum of five hundred
pounds for the capture of the Governor.

Many Sierra Leoneans view Bai Bureh today as the greatest man to ever come out of
Sierra Leone. Bai Bureh is pictured on several Sierra Leonean paper bills. A football
club called the Bai Bureh Warriors from Port Loko is named after him.

Source: Wikipedia

11. BIKO, BANTU STEPHEN (1946-1977).

Steve Biko (Born Bantu Stephen Biko; Dec. 18, 1946–Sept. 12, 1977) was one of South
Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa's Black
Consciousness Movement. His murder in police detention in 1977 led to his being
hailed a martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle. Nelson Mandela, South Africa's post-
Apartheid president who was incarcerated at the notorious Robben Island prison
during Biko's time on the world stage, lionized the activist 20 years after he was killed,
calling him "the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa."

Stephen Bantu Biko was born on December 18, 1946, into a Xhosa family. His father
Mzingaye Biko worked as a police officer and later as a clerk in the King William’s
Town Native Affairs office. His father achieved part of a university education through
the University of South Africa, a distance-learning university, but he died before
completing his law degree. After his father's death, Biko's mother Nokuzola Macethe
Duna supported the family as a cook at Grey's Hospital.

From an early age, Steve Biko showed an interest in anti-apartheid politics. After being
expelled from his first school, Lovedale College in the Eastern Cape, for "anti-
establishment" behavior—such as speaking out against apartheid and speaking up for
the rights of Black South African citizens—he was transferred to St. Francis College, a
Roman Catholic boarding school in Natal. From there he enrolled as a student at the
University of Natal Medical School (in the university's Black Section).

Briana Sprouse / Getty Images

While at medical school, Biko became involved with the National Union of South
African Students. The union was dominated by White liberal allies and failed to
represent the needs of Black students. Dissatisfied, Biko resigned in 1969 and founded
the South African Students' Organisation. SASO was involved in providing legal aid
and medical clinics, as well as helping to develop cottage industries for disadvantaged
Black communities.

In 1972 Biko was one of the founders of the Black Peoples Convention, working on
social upliftment projects around Durban. The BPC effectively brought together
roughly 70 different Black consciousness groups and associations, such as the South
African Student's Movement, which later played a significant role in the 1976
uprisings, the National Association of Youth Organisations, and the Black Workers
Project, which supported Black workers whose unions were not recognized under the
apartheid regime.

In a book first published posthumously in 1978, titled, "I Write What I Like"—which
contained Biko's writings from 1969, when he became the president of the South
African Students' Organization, to 1972, when he was banned from publishing—Biko
explained Black consciousness and summed up his own philosophy:
"Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call
to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the
black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their
oppression—the blackness of their skin—and to operate as a group to rid themselves
of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude."

Biko was elected as the first president of the BPC and was promptly expelled from
medical school. He was expelled, specifically, for his involvement in the BPC. He
started working full-time for the Black Community Programme in Durban, which he
also helped found.

In 1973 Steve Biko was banned by the apartheid government for his writing and
speeches denouncing the apartheid system. Under the ban, Biko was restricted to his
hometown of Kings William's Town in the Eastern Cape. He could no longer support
the Black Community Programme in Durban, but he was able to continue working for
the Black People's Convention.

During that time, Biko was first visited by Donald Woods, the editor of the East
London Daily Dispatch, located in the province of Eastern Cape in South Africa.
Woods was not initially a fan of Biko, calling the whole Black Consciousness movement
racist. As Woods explained in his book, "Biko," first published in 1978:

"I had had up to then a negative attitude toward Black Consciousness. As one of a tiny
band of white South African liberals, I was totally opposed to race as a factor in political
thinking, and totally committed to nonracist policies and philosophies."

Woods believed—initially—that Black Consciousness was nothing more than

apartheid in reverse because it advocated that "Blacks should go their own way," and
essentially divorce themselves not just from White people, but even from White liberal
allies in South Africa who worked to support their cause. But Woods eventually saw
that he was incorrect about Biko's thinking. Biko believed that Black people needed to
embrace their own identity—hence the term "Black Consciousness"—and "set our own
table," in Biko's words. Later, however, White people could, figuratively, join them at
the table, once Black South Africans had established their own sense of identity.

Woods eventually came to see that Black Consciousness "expresses group pride and
the determination by all blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self" and that "black
groups (were) becoming more conscious of the self. They (were) beginning to rid their
minds of the imprisoning notions which are the legacy of the control of their attitudes
by whites."

Woods went on to champion Biko's cause and become his friend. "It was a friendship
that ultimately forced Mr. Woods into exile," The New York Times noted when Woods'
died in 2001. Woods was not expelled from South Africa because of his friendship with
Biko, per se. Woods' exile was the result of the government's intolerance of the
friendship and support of anti-apartheid ideals, sparked by a meeting Woods arranged
with a top South African official.

Woods met with South African Minister of Police James "Jimmy" Kruger to request
the easing of Biko's banning order—a request that was promptly ignored and led to
further harassment and arrests of Biko, as well as a harassment campaign against
Woods that eventually caused him to flee the country.

Despite the harassment, Biko, from King William's Town, helped set up the Zimele
Trust Fund which assisted political prisoners and their families. He was also elected
honorary president of the BPC in January 1977.

Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September
1977 under Apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation. On August 21, 1977, Biko was
detained by the Eastern Cape security police and held in Port Elizabeth. From the
Walmer police cells, he was taken for interrogation at the security police headquarters.
According to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa" report, on
September 7, 1977:

"Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, after which he acted strangely and
was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him (naked, lying on a mat and
manacled to a metal grille) initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury."

By September 11, Biko had slipped into a continual semi-conscious state and the police
physician recommended a transfer to the hospital. Biko was, however, transported
nearly 750 miles to Pretoria—a 12-hour journey, which he made lying naked in the
back of a Land Rover. A few hours later, on September 12, alone and still naked, lying
on the floor of a cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage.

South African Minister of Justice Kruger initially suggested Biko had died of a hunger
strike and said that his murder "left him cold." The hunger strike story was dropped
after local and international media pressure, especially from Woods. It was revealed
in the inquest that Biko had died of brain damage, but the magistrate failed to find
anyone responsible. He ruled that Biko had died as a result of injuries sustained during
a scuffle with security police while in detention.

The brutal circumstances of Biko's murder caused a worldwide outcry and he became
a martyr and symbol of Black resistance to the oppressive apartheid regime. As a
result, the South African government banned a number of individuals (including
Woods) and organizations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely
associated with Biko.
Demonstrators demand a neutral inquiry into the death of Steve Biko, the Black
Consciousness leader, who died in police custody. Hulton Deutsch / Getty Images

The United Nations Security Council responded by imposing an arms embargo against
South Africa. Biko's family sued the state for damages in 1979 and settled out of court
for R65,000 (then equivalent to $25,000). The three doctors connected with Biko's
case were initially exonerated by the South African Medical Disciplinary Committee.

It was not until a second inquiry in 1985, eight years after Biko's murder, that any
action was taken against them. At that time, Dr. Benjamin Tucker who examined Biko
before his murder lost his license to practice in South Africa.1 The police officers
responsible for Biko's killing applied for amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission hearings, which sat in Port Elizabeth in 1997, but the application was
denied.2 The commission had a very specific purpose:

"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created to investigate gross human
rights violations that were perpetrated during the period of the Apartheid regime from
1960 to 1994, including abductions, killings, torture. Its mandate covered both
violations by both the state and the liberation movements and allowed the commission
to hold special hearings focused on specific sectors, institutions, and
individuals. Controversially the TRC was empowered to grant amnesty to perpetrators
who confessed their crimes truthfully and completely to the commission.
(The commission) was comprised of seventeen commissioners: nine men and eight
women. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu chaired the commission. The
commissioners were supported by approximately 300 staff members, divided into
three committees (Human Rights Violations Committee, Amnesty Committee, and
Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee)."3

Biko's family did not ask the Commission to make a finding on his murder. The "Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa" report, published by Macmillan in
March 1999, said of Biko's murder:
"The Commission finds that the death in detention of Mr Stephen Bantu Biko on 12
September 1977 was a gross human rights violation. Magistrate Marthinus Prins found
that the members of the SAP were not implicated in his death. The magistrate's finding
contributed to the creation of a culture of impunity in the SAP. Despite the inquest
finding no person responsible for his death, the Commission finds that, in view of the
fact that Biko died in the custody of law enforcement officials, the probabilities are that
he died as a result of injuries sustained during his detention."

Woods went on to write a biography of Biko, published in 1978, simply titled, "Biko."
In 1987, Biko’s story was chronicled in the film “Cry Freedom,” which was based on
Woods' book. The hit song "Biko," by Peter Gabriel, honoring Steve Biko's legacy, came
out in 1980. Of note, Woods, Sir Richard Attenborough (director of "Cry Freedom"),
and Peter Gabriel—all White men—have had perhaps the most influence and control
in the widespread telling of Biko's story, and have also profited from it. This is an
important point to consider as we reflect on his legacy, which remains notably small
when compared to more famous anti-apartheid leaders such as Mandela and Tutu. But
Biko remains a model and hero in the struggle for autonomy and self-determination
for people around the world. His writings, work, and tragic murder were all historically
crucial to the momentum and success of the South African anti-apartheid movement.

In 1997, at the 20th anniversary of Biko's murder, then-South African President

Mandela memorialized Biko, calling him "a proud representative of the re-awakening
of a people" and adding:

“History called upon Steve Biko at a time when the political pulse of our people had
been rendered faint by banning, imprisonment, exile, murder and
banishment....While Steve Biko espoused, inspired, and promoted black pride, he
never made blackness a fetish. At the end of the day, as he himself pointed out,
accepting one’s blackness is a critical starting point: an important foundation for
engaging in struggle."

Sources

 Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like. Bowerdean Press, 1978.

 “Cry Freedom.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 6 Nov. 1987.
 “Donald James Woods.” Donald James Woods | South African History Online, sahistory.org.
 Mangcu, Xolela. Biko, A Biography. Tafelberg, 2012.
 Sahoboss. “Stephen Bantu Biko.” South African History Online, 4 Dec. 2017.
 “Steve Biko: The Philosophy of Black Consciousness." Black Star News, 20 Feb. 2020.
 Swarns, Rachel L. “Donald Woods, 67, Editor and Apartheid Foe.” The New York Times, The New York
Times, 20 Aug. 2001.
 Woods, Donald. Biko. Paddington Press, 1978.

Alistair Boddy-Evans

12. BUTA, ALVARO. (d. 1915)

Angolan chief and leader of the resistance to colonialism. He was one of the Baxi Kongo
section of the great Kongo (Ba Kongo) people living on both sides of the lowest part of
the Congo (Zaire) river. The kingdom of Kongo, in which a King entitled Manikongo
ruled over this numerous people, was powerful in the 16th century when it was closely
allied with Portugal and its Kings were for some time Catholics. Later the Kingdom
declined but a remnant of it survived with the capital at Sao Salvador. Some of the
nobility bore the title Tulante, derived from the Portuguese military rank Tenente
(Lieutenant). Alvaro Buta bore this title and is remembered as “Tulante Buta”.
He was a chief of the Madimba region in 1911, when the Portuguese had nominal
control of the Bakongo, although they were able to intervene in the choice of a
successor to the King at Sao Salvador, which was on the Portuguese side of the border
designed by the colonial partition. When King Pedro VI died in 1910 the Portuguese
did not allow choice of a new King because Portugal had become a Republic. On 1st
July 1911, the choice of the King makers, Manuel Martins Kiditu, was installed, but not
as a King, only as a Judge. In that same year Portuguese rule was further enforced on
the peoples of northern Angola, and protests gathered strength. In 1912 many areas
refused to pay the colonial tax. Some people fled into the Belgian Congo (now Zaire)
from increasing oppression. Then in 1913, there was a major uprising among the
Bakongo in Angola, and very soon, Alvaro Buta emerged as the main leader.
The final provocation to the rising was a demand by the Portuguese for labourers for
Sao Tome, where cocoa was grown by importedAngolan workers who were virtually
slaves. Manuel Kiditu provided some and was paid. The revolt which followed spread
from Bassorongo, another Kongo section, to the Baxi Kongo and then others further
east. Most of the 250,000 Bakongo in Angola slipped from precarious Portuguese rule.
From December 1913 Buta’s insurgents fought the Portuguese as well as the
Judge/King Manuel Kididtu, who Buta accused of “selling the country” and told him
to pay back the money paid for the labourers sent to Sao Tome.
The British Baptist Missionaries, working in Sao Salvador since 1878 and a powerful
force by 1913, were suspected by the Portuguese of encouraging the revolt. One of
them, Reverend Bowskill, mediated with the insurgents. As a result, Buta entered Sao
Salvador in December 1913 with a force which rose to 2000 men and emerged in talks
with the Portuguese representative, Moriera. He demanded the dethronement of
Manuel Kiditu and his advisers, the end of the recruitment of “contract labourers”, and
a reduction in taxation. Manuel immediately fled. The Portuguese replaced Moriera,
but although they suspended recruitment for Sao Tome they also abolished the ancient
monarchy and detained some African leaders of the Baptist mission congregation.
Buta then attacked Sao Salvador continually in early 1914, but failed to take it. The
uprising spread and won the sympathy of the Bakongo across the border in the Belgian
Congo and French Equatorial Africa. A Portuguese offensive in mid-1914 had some
success and Buta had to withdraw to his home area, but he remained at large with
many followers. Later events have not been fully recorded in history (the best accounts
are in R. Pelissier, Les Guerres Grises and J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution Vol.1).
But it is clear that Baptist Mission mediation led to surrender by some leading
colleagues of Buta early in 1915, after which, however, they were arrested with another
colleague, Simon Seke, who had stayed in Sao Salvador. He and another Baptist Miguel
Nekaka, who had been arrested earlier were suspected of being instigators by the
government, whose relations with that mission had usually been bad.
Sometime about mid-1915 Buta was invited to a meeting with some Portuguese, who
arrested him. He was taken to Cabinda and then Luanda, where he died of influenza
later in 1915. He and Mandume who was also defeated in 1915, were the last among
the greatest of the major resistance leaders in the region. Although it had been
defeated in 1916, the Kongo rising in Angola was among the biggest uprisings in Africa
in the war against colonialism.

13. CABRAL, AMILCAR. (1924-1973)

(Amilcar Cabral, 1965)

If there was ever such a thing as a practical philosopher, then Amílcar Cabral would
have stood as one of the first of such kind. Amílcar Cabral, born in 1924 in Cape Verde
and assassinated in 1973, is remembered first and foremost as the leader of the
liberation wars in Cape Verde and Guiné Bissau. A brilliant strategist, diplomat and
guerrilla tactician, Amílcar Cabral was further notable for his profoundly humane and
uniquely independent political vision. Though frequently approached as a thinker
through his published speeches, it is difficult to assemble a picture of Cabral’s thought
with no reference to his life, and the gestures with which he filled it (c.f. Chabal, 1983).
Born in Guiné-Bissau and raised in Cape Verde, Cabral’s childhood was marked by
both a love of learning and the witnessing of colonial injustices, in particular during
the 1940s drought and famine (c.f. Villen 2013). In 1945, earning one of very few
scholarships of its kind, Cabral secured a place to learn agronomy in Lisbon. The next
seven years in the ‘Metropolis’ would be highly significant for Cabral in that it would
provide access to the writings of pan-Africanist cultural/political movements; as well
as with connections with fellow lusophone African students (e.g. Mario de Andrade,
Marcelino dos Santos, Agostinho Neto). It would be during these years, and under the
guise of the ‘Centre for African Studies’ in Lisbon, that all important bonds would be
forged between key figures of the liberation struggles in Angola and Mozambique.
Deeply impressed by Leopold Senghor’s and Aimé Cesaire’s Négritude as well as by
Nkrumah’s political visions, Cabral’s emphasis on the need for re-Africanisation had
its root at this time (see Rabaka, 2015). Parallel to this influence, Cabral would also be
introduced to Marxist ideas, ideas he would use during the liberation struggles in a
strongly pragmatic, creative and anti-dogmatic way. Lastly, but also significantly,
Cabral’s seven years in Portugal made him deeply sensitive in his position towards
Portuguese people. Retaining a position of open-heartedness and kindness to what he
saw as misguided people, Cabral quickly identified Portuguese fascism and its renewed
imperialist discourse as the greatest source of immediate political evil.

Returning to Guiné-Bissau in 1952, Cabral was engaged by the colonial Forestry and
Agricultural civil service. In this role he would conduct a comprehensive census of the
country, awarding him with a deep engagement with the social, environmental and
economic conditions of Guiné. At this time, Cabral also began his political work
mobilizing local populations to demand for a better status. This was soon noticed and
culminated in the Colonial Governor asking for him to be ‘transferred’. Unwittingly,
this would lead Cabral to further radicalise his struggles. Returning to Lisbon, Cabral
found work, which, for five years, would send him on long missions in Angola. In these
missions, Cabral would quickly tap into the underground networks agitating for
liberation. Involved simultaneously in the underground anti-colonial networks in
Lisbon, Cabral would in 1955 participate in the Bandung Conference. This
participation, though poorly documented, is crucial to understanding Cabral’s
emphasis on diplomatic mobilization as part of decolonial struggles. This mobilization
was both in terms of coordinating and uniting anti-imperial struggles as well as
mustering international legitimation and support. In Cabral’s own life, this was born
out in uniting Lusophone African struggles under a common front as well as by
tirelessly working on garnering diplomatic and popular support for Guinea’s liberation
war (c.f. Gliejeses 1997, Dadha 1995).

Galvanized by the international momentum against (neo-)colonialism, Cabral would,

in 1956, establish the African Party for the Independence of Guiné and Cabo Verde
(PAIGC). Having spent the first years doing political work in Guiné’s cities, PAIGC
would after 1959 focus its efforts on the countryside. By 1963, PAIGC began its armed
guerrilla insurgency and within ten years achieved control over most of Guiné’s
territory and declared independence. Supremely successful in terms of guerrilla
warfare, Guiné’s liberation was in no small part due to Cabral’s leadership and
foresight into grassroots politics, diplomacy and livelihood improvement. Most
significantly, in Cabral’s life, insurgency emerged as the most fertile site for theory.
Drawing on practical problems in the politics and logistics of insurgency, Cabral
regarded insurgency as the key context in which to conceive and form an African
nationalism that would succeed in overcoming colonial legacies. In Cabral’s thought,
national liberation relied on a unique process of cultural renovation, whereby military
struggle would be actively subsumed under a deeper form of struggle towards the re-
signification of local non-European cultures and the formation of social forms shorn
of colonial subconscious. Indeed, such was Cabral’s insistence on this, that Paulo
Freire saw his pedagogical attitudes as uniquely inspiring (c.f. Pereira and Vittoria,
2012).

A man of action more than words, Cabral’s theories seem to be still fully
understandable by reference to the extraordinary events of the liberation insurgency
of Guiné-Bissau. Assassinated in 1973, before the fall of Portuguese fascism and
colonialism, Cabral’s death left a tragic absence, a foreclosure, in the construction of
independence in lusophone Africa. Remembered as a moral paragon and political
giant in the African liberation wars, Cabral continues to lack the scholarly appreciation
his life and work deserves. Engaging with Cabral, however, remains a worthy,
necessary and empowering project. In his poetry, in his speeches, in his party archives
and in the oral memories of his life, Cabral offers a uniquely visionary and sensitive
approach to the historical task of decolonisation. Living beyond the grave, Cabral’s
incisive, humane, and pragmatic voice may well continue to teach us – if only we listen.

14. CETSHWAYO (c.1826-1884)

Cetshwayo was the king of the Zulu Kingdom from 1873 to 1879 and its leader during
the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. His name has been transliterated as Cetawayo,
Cetewayo, Cetywajo and Ketchwayo. Cetshwayo consistently opposed the war and
sought fruitlessly to make peace with the British, and was defeated and exiled
following the Zulu defeat in the war. He was later allowed to return to Zululand, where
he died in 1884.

Cetshwayo was a son of Zulu king Mpande and Queen Ngqumbazi, half-nephew of
Zulu king Shaka and grandson of Senzangakhona. In 1856 he defeated and killed in
battle his younger brother Mbuyazi, Mpande's favourite, at the Battle of
Ndondakusuka. Almost all Mbuyazi's followers were massacred in the aftermath of the
battle, including five of Cetshwayo's own brothers. Following this he became the ruler
of the Zulu people in everything but name. He did not ascend to the throne, however,
as his father was still alive. Stories from that time regarding his huge size vary, saying
he stood at least between 6 ft 6 in (198 cm) and 6 ft 8 in (203 cm) in height and
weighed close to 25 stone (350 lb; 160 kg).

His other brother, Umthonga, was still a potential rival. Cetshwayo also kept an eye on
his father's new wives and children for potential rivals, ordering the death of his
favourite wife Nomantshali and her children in 1861. Though two sons escaped, the
youngest was murdered in front of the king. After these events Umtonga fled to the
Boers' side of the border and Cetshwayo had to make deals with the Boers to get him
back. In 1865, Umthonga did the same thing, apparently making Cetshwayo believe
that Umtonga would organize help from the Boers against him, the same way his father
had overthrown his predecessor, Dingane.

Furthermore, he had a rival half-brother, named uHamu kaNzibe who betrayed the
Zulu cause on numerous occasions.

Cetshwayo c. 1875.

Mpande died in 1872. His death was concealed at first, to ensure a smooth transition;
Cetshwayo was installed as king on 1 September 1873. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who
annexed the Transvaal to the Cape Colony, crowned Cetshwayo in a shoddy, wet affair
that was more of a farce than anything else, but turned on the Zulus as he felt he was
undermined by Cetshwayo's skillful negotiations for land area compromised by
encroaching Boers and the fact that the Boundary Commission established to examine
the ownership of the land in question actually ruled in favour of the Zulus. The report
was subsequently buried. As was customary, he established a new capital for the nation
and called it Ulundi (the high place). He expanded his army and readopted many
methods of Shaka. He also equipped his impis with muskets, though evidence of their
use is limited. He banished European missionaries from his land. He might have
incited other native African peoples to rebel against Boers in Transvaal.

Cetshwayo (called Cettiwayo in the caption of the photo above), in Cape Town shortly
after his capture in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War. He was exiled from Southern Africa
after his capture, although eventually allowed to return by the British government.
In 1878, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, British High Commissioner for the Cape Colony,
sought to confederate the colony the same way Canada had been, and felt that this
could not be done while there was a powerful Zulu state bordering it. Frere thus began
to demand reparations for Zulu border infractions and ordered his subordinates to
send messages complaining about Cetshwayo's policies, seeking to provoke the Zulu
king. They carried out their orders, but Cetshwayo kept calm, considering the British
to be his friends and being aware of the power of the British Army. He did, however,
state that he and Frere were equals and since he did not complain about how Frere
administered the Cape Colony, the same courtesy should be observed by Frere in
regards to Zululand. Eventually, Frere issued an ultimatum that demanded that
Cetshwayo de facto disband his army. His refusal led to war in 1879, though he
continually sought to make peace after the Battle of Isandlwana, the first engagement
of the war. After an initial decisive but costly Zulu victory over the British at
Isandlwana, and the failure of the other two columns of the three pronged British
attack to make headway – indeed, one was bogged down in the Siege of Eshowe – the
British retreated, other columns suffering two further defeats to Zulu armies in the
field at the Battle of Intombe and the Battle of Hlobane. However, the British follow-
up victories at Rorke's Drift and Kambula prevented a total collapse of the British
military positions. While this retreat presented an opportunity for a Zulu counter-
attack deep into Natal, Cetshwayo refused to mount such an attack, his intention being
to repulse the British offensive and secure a peace treaty.

Cetshwayo visited England in 1882 when this portrait was painted by Karl Rudolf
Sohn.

The British then returned to Zululand with a far larger and better armed force, finally
capturing the Zulu capital at the Battle of Ulundi, in which the British, having learned
their lesson from their defeat at Isandlwana, set up a hollow square on the open plain,
armed with cannons and Gatling guns. The battle lasted approximately 45 minutes
before the British ordered their cavalry to charge the Zulus, which routed them. After
Ulundi was taken and burnt on 4 July, Cetshwayo was deposed and exiled, first to Cape
Town, and then to London. He returned to Zululand in 1883.

From 1881, his cause had been taken up by, among others, Lady Florence Dixie,
correspondent of The Morning Post, who wrote articles and books in his support. This,
along with his gentle and dignified manner, gave rise to public sympathy and the
sentiment that he had been ill-used and shoddily treated by Bartle Frere and Lord
Chelmsford.

Cartoon by E. C. Mountford of 1882, depicting Cetshwayo being lectured by the

anti-imperialist MP for Birmingham, John Bright.

By 1882 differences between two Zulu factions—pro-Cetshwayo uSuthus and three

rival chiefs led by Zibhebhu—had erupted into a blood feud and civil war. In 1883, the
British government tried to restore Cetshwayo to rule at least part of his previous
territory but the attempt failed. With the aid of Boer mercenaries, Chief Zibhebhu
started a war contesting the succession and on 22 July 1883 he attacked Cetshwayo's
new kraal in Ulundi. Cetshwayo was wounded but escaped to the forest at Nkandla.
After pleas from the Resident Commissioner, Sir Melmoth Osborne, Cetshwayo moved
to Eshowe, where he died a few months later on 8 February 1884, aged 57–60,
presumably from a heart attack, although there are some theories that he may have
been poisoned. His body was buried in a field within sight of the forest, to the south
near Nkunzane River. The remains of the wagon which carried his corpse to the site
were placed on the grave, and may be seen at Ondini Museum, near Ulundi.

Cetshwayo Blue Plaque in Kensington, London

Cetshwayo's most prominent role in South African historiography is being the last king
of the Zulu Kingdom. His son Dinuzulu, as heir to the throne, was proclaimed king on
20 May 1884, supported by (other) Boer mercenaries. A blue plaque commemorates
Cetshwayo at 18 Melbury Road, Kensington.

Cetshwayo figures in three adventure novels by H. Rider Haggard: The Witch's Head
(1885), Black Heart and White Heart (1900) and Finished (1917), and in his non-
fiction book Cetywayo and His White Neighbours (1882). He is mentioned in John
Buchan's novel Prester John.

A character in the opera Leo, the Royal Cadet by Oscar Ferdinand Telgmann and
George Frederick Cameron was named in his honour in 1889.

In the 1964 film Zulu, he was played by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, his own maternal
great-grandson and the future leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

In the 1979 film Zulu Dawn, he was played by Simon Sabela.

In the 1986 miniseries Shaka Zulu, he was played by Sokesimbone Kubheka.

There is a brief allusion made to Cetshwayo in the novel Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee
in the line "The new Africans, pot-bellied, heavy-jowled men on their stools of office:
Cetshwayo, Dingane in white skins."

In 2016, the King Cetshwayo District Municipality was named after him.

References

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cetywayo" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University
Press. pp. 776–777.
2. Haggard, Henry Rider (1882). Cetywayo and His White Neighbours: Or, Remarks on Recent Events in
Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal. AMS Press.
3. Morris, Donald R. (1994). The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under
Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879. Pimlico. pp. 190–199. ISBN 978-0-7126-6105-8.
4. John Laband, Historical Dictionary of the Zulu Wars, p.194
5. Meredith, Martin (2007). Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South
Africa. PublicAffairs. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-58648-473-6.
6. "Biography of Cetshwayo kaMpande, the last king of an independent Zulu nation".
africanhistory.about.com. Archived from the original on 2006-12-16. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
7. "Cetshwayo, ka Mpande, King of the Zulus (c.1832–1884)". English Heritage. Archived from the original
on 2011-07-05. Retrieved 2012-07-01.
8. Coetzee, J. M. (1990). Age of Iron. Secker & Warburg.

15. CHAKA, KING (c.1787-1828)

Founder of the Zulu Empire, the son of Senzangakhona, a Zulu prince, and Nandi, a
princess of the Langeni clan. Chaka grew up among his mother’s people because his
parents, who belonged to the same Langeni clan, had separated when he was six owing
to the fact that their marriage had violated Zulu law and custom. Most of his boyhood
was characterised by incessant humiliations based on the circumstances of his birth.
In 1802 Chaka and his mother left the Langenis and found reguge among the Mtetwa.
At the age of 23, Chaka entered military training under Dingiswayo, paramount chief
of the Mtetwa, who was soon immensely impressed with Chaka’s military genius and
skill. In 1816, Chaka’s father Senzangakhona died, leaving a vacant throne for which
Dingiswayo encouraged Chaka to make a bid. Chaka ascended to the throne and
immediately set about introducing stern discipline into a disorganised army. He
forbade his soldiers to marry in order that family commitment may not interfere with
military duty. He was opposed to the wearing of sandals as he saw them as an
impediment to fast movement. His motto was “Either return from battle with your
weapons or not return at all”. With these and other measures of stern discipline, Chaka
commanded an army of over 60,000 men and 10,000 women.
He equipped his soldiers each with a shield and assegai, a long-bladed short-handled
dagger that enabled Chaka’s army to engage the enemy at close quarters with
devastating effect. He organised the army into impi (regiments) based on age groups
and billeted in separate kraals. In one swift campaign after another, Chaka’s army
brought many groups under the rule of the Zulu political empire, which emanated
from present-day Natal. Chaka’s army inspired such great fear among other clans that
many of them fled and set in motion their own destruction which came to be known as
Mfecane, the Crushing.
In 1827 Chaka’s mother, Nandi, died and it is said that the King ordered the death of
many people to mourn and mark the occasion. On 24 September 1828, two of Chaka’s
half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, and an induna or army commander, Mbopa,
assassinated the King, allegedly in order to put a stop to Chaka’s incessant calls for
army operations. Chaka left an empire so strong that it lasted for 50 years after the
death of its founder. A memorial has been erected in Couper Street, Stranger, a town
that was built after Chaka’s death, in the approximate position of his assassination.
The Chaka memorial was built in 1932 by public subscription and declared a historical
monument by the South African Government in 1938, and it is inscribed: “In memory
of Tshaka ka Senzangakhona, the founder, king, and ruler of the Zulu nation. Born
about 1788. Died on 24th September, 1828. Erected by his descendant and heir
Solomon ka Dinuzulu and the Zulu Nation. AD 1932.”

15. CHILEMBWE, REVEREND JOHN. (1870-1915)

Reverend John Chilembwe, the great hero and martyr of Malawi (formerly
Nyasaland), is a person of mythic proportions in his homeland because he was the first
African with a sense of Malawian nationalism. After founding one of the earliest
independent Christian denominations in Africa, he led a dramatic and violent uprising
against colonialism.
Around 1880, Chilembwe became a pupil at the Church of Scotland mission in
Blantyre, but he was converted by Joseph Booth, a British Baptist missionary, and
became his assistant from 1892 until 1895. Booth worked for a number of churches
and had no denominational loyalty; he taught a radical equality that resonated with
Chilembwe’s own sense of black pride. In 1897, Booth took Chilembwe to the United
States, where a Baptist church sponsored him through Virginia Theological College.
Here he seems to have come into contact with contemporary African-American
thinking, especially that of Booker T. Washington. He returned to Nyasaland in 1900
as an ordained Baptist and founded the Providence Industrial Mission, which
developed into seven schools.
Chilembwe preached an orthodox Baptist faith along with a morality that opposed
alcohol and emphasized the values of hard work, personal hygiene, and self-help.
Chilembwe seriously seemed to believe that European-style propriety and etiquette
would bring respect and success from whites. His schools emphasized modern
methods of agriculture and by 1912 had 1,000 pupils, plus 800 in the adult section.
Events after 1912 disillusioned Chilembwe. A famine in 1913 brought great hardship
and starvation to many peasant farmers. Mozambican refugees flooded into
Nyasaland, and Chilembwe deeply resented the way they were exploited by white
plantation owners. When World War I broke out the following year, Africans were
conscripted into the British army, and Chilembwe protested both from the pulpit and
in the local press. The white landowners were infuriated by his nationalist appeal, and
several of his schools were burned down. Added to personal problems of declining
health, financial difficulties, and the death of a beloved daughter, Chilembwe’s sense
of betrayal deepened into fury.
In careful detail, Chilembwe planned an attack on the worst of the area plantations,
which was known for cruelty to its African workers. Whether Chilembwe thought that
his rebellion would spark a general uprising is difficult to determine, because he had
no clear long-term goal. With 200 followers, he struck swiftly, and three plantation
managers were killed. One of these, a cousin of David LIVINGSTONE, was notorious
for burning down tenants’ chapels, whipping workers, and denying them their wages.
His head was cut off and displayed on a pole in Chilembwe’s church. The rebels,
however, scrupulously observed Chilembwe’s orders not to harm any women or
children. The colonial response was immediate and ruthless, resulting in the death of
many Africans. Chilembwe was captured and shot immediately.
Chilembwe must have been aware that the uprising was suicidal when he called on his
men “to strike a blow and die.” It was, nevertheless, the first resistance to colonialism
that went beyond attempts merely to restore earlier traditional African authority; his
rebellion looked toward a future nation. In this sense, Chilembwe and his followers–
mostly educated, Christian, small businessmen–demanded for themselves the same
place in the modern world that they saw Europeans enjoying.
Norbert C. Brockman
1. Lipschutz, Mark R., and R. Kent Rasmussen. Dictionary of African Historical Biography. 2nd edition.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
2. The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th edition. Chicago, IL, 1988.
3. Ewechue, Ralph (ed.). Makers of Modern Africa. 2nd edition. London: Africa Books, 1991.
 16. DINUZULU KA CETSHWAYO (1869-1913).

Commonly misspelled Dinizulu was the king of the Zulu nation from 20 May 1884
until his death in 1913. He succeeded his father Cetshwayo, who was the last king of
the Zulus to be officially recognized as such by the British. Zululand had been broken
up into thirteen smaller territories by the British government after the Anglo-Zulu
War, and Cetshwayo, and subsequently Dinuzulu, administered one of them. The
British later realized the futility of breaking up Zululand into the territories and
restored Cetshwayo as paramount leader of the territories. However, they left one of
Cetshwayo's relatives, Usibepu (Zibhebhu), alone with his lands intact. On 22 July
1883, Usibepu attacked Cetshwayo's new kraal in Ulundi, wounding the king and
causing him to flee.

To contest the succession, Dinuzulu first appealed to the British, but received no
response. He then offered rewards of land to Boer farmers of the Vryheid and Utrecht
districts, to come and fight on his side and restore the Zulu Kingdom. In 1884 a group
of Boer farmers from the districts of Utrecht and Vryheid undertook to help restore
order, in return for land for the formation of an independent republic with access to
the sea. Led by General Louis Botha, they formed Dinuzulu's Volunteers and after
several clashes with Zibhebhu, defeated him at the Battle of Ghost Mountain (also
known as the Battle of Tshaneni) on 5 June 1884.
The Nieuwe Republiek, established in northern Natal on land awarded to Boers by
Dinuzulu, was recognized by Germany and Portugal. It was later incorporated on its
request by the ZAR because of financial problems, after the British annexed the coastal
plains from the Thuhela river (Tugela) northwards in order to prevent the Boers from
building a harbor. After considerable dispute in a Natal arbitration court, Britain
eventually recognized the New Republic, but reduced it in size after annexing the
coastal plains to the Cape Colony, along with the republic's claims to St Lucia for a
harbor. The Niewe Republiek was incorporated on its own request with the Zuid
Afrikaanse Republiek in 1888. No major conflict would occur in the region until the
outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899.

In 1890 Dinuzulu was captured by the British and exiled to the island of Saint Helena
for seven years, for leading a Zulu army against the British due to annexation of the
coastal plains of Zululand.
When Zululand was formally incorporated into Natal in 1897, Dinuzulu was released.
The following year he was installed as the British government's InDuna.
Bambatha rebellion.
In 1906 the so-called Bambatha rebellion broke out. After the rebellion had been put
down, Dinuzulu was accused of giving orders to Bambatha to start the rebellion and
was put on trial for treason. Although he steadfastly protested his innocence, he was
found guilty and sentenced to four years imprisonment in March, 1908.
Two years later an old friend of his, General Louis Botha, became Prime Minister of
the Union of South Africa. Botha ordered that Dinuzulu be released and transported
to the farm Uitkyk in the Transvaal, where he died on 18 October 1913 at the age of 44
or 45. After a state funeral, he was buried at Nobamba in the Khosini Valley (31°16'E;
28°26'S), which lies in the upper White Umfolozi drainage system.
He was succeeded by his son Solomon kaDinuzulu.
A statue of Dinuzulu has been erected next to the statue of General Louis Botha, the
first prime minister of the Transvaal colony, at the corner of Berea Road and Warwick
Avenue in Durban.
Beads from Dinuzulu's necklace—claimed to have been found by Robert Baden-
Powell—were later presented to Scout leaders following Wood Badge leadership
training. Today the Wood Badge beads are replicas of the original beads. To date, there
is conflicting evidence as to how Baden-Powell came upon the beads as well as the
specific purpose and owner of the beads. Alternative stories include that Baden-Powell
took the beads improperly, and that the beads were not war beads but actually
belonged to a woman, such as a wife of Dinuzulu.

1. "The Roots of Inkatha". Archived from the original on 22 February 2012. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
2. Laband, John (2018). The Eight Zulu Kings: From Shaka to Goodwill Zwelithini. Johannesburg, South
Africa: Jonathan Ball Publishers. p. 344. ISBN 978-1-86842-838-0.
3. Buthelezi, Mangosuthu (5 October 2002). "Address at the Mack Omega Shange Scout Competition Rally"
(PDF). Scouts South Africa. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
4. 1936: The Sacred Heart, by Spanish leftists Themed Set: Thomas Hardy.
 17. DOUALA MANGA BELL, PARAMOUNT CHIEF
RUDOLF. (1873-1914)

European-educated and on retainer by the colonial German government, Bell was

hardly the subversive type: rather, as the head of the largest clan of the important
Duala tribe, he was the guy that Berlin looked to to uphold its authority.
This mutually satisfactory relationship began unraveling in 1910, with the Reich’s plan
to abnegate the 1884 treaty under whose auspices it intruded into Kamerun
(Cameroon) in the first place.
Seeking to confine the Duala to a few coastal villages — and subsequently, to push
those Duala to less desirable inland territory — Berlin managed the rare feat of uniting
the tribe’s various families, and pushing Rudolf Manga Bell himself into (surprising,
to Germany) resistance.
When petitions to the Reichstag were ignored, the Duala began (Bell’s own degree of
involvement in this seems to be a disputed point) making noises about holding Berlin
in breach of the colonial treaty and finding itself a new European patron, like France
or England.
“The coming war,” notes Victor T. LeVine, “made it appear that Manga Bell had been
plotting with Germany’s enemies.”
Bell was arrested for treason in the first half of 1914, as the Germans seized prime Bell
land along the Wouri River.
In the conflict that became remembered as World War I, the first declarations of war
were made in the very first days of August; the Central Powers and Triple Entente lined
up against one another in the colonial territories, too, and German administrators in
Kamerun realized that they were about to face an invasion from neighboring British
and French colonies.
So it was in an atmosphere of panic and a view towards desperate internal repression
that Bell was tried for treason on August 7, 1914, along with his friend and fellow-
traveler Martin Paul Samba — and put to death the very next day.
The Allied invasion had taken Duala and the other principal cities of Kamerun from
the Germans by the end of September; over an 18-month campaign, the Germans were
totally defeated in the territory, which France and England claimed as victors’ spoils
after the war. (Also inheriting the tense relationship with the Duala; France was still
trying to sort out the 1914 German expropriations that started the whole mess decades
later.)
As a result, Rudolf Duala Manga Bell’s son, Alexander Ndoumbe Duala Manga Bell,
not only inherited his father’s royal position among the Duala — he became
Cameroon’s first elected representative to the French National Assembly.
It is here that the Germans part ways with Cameroon’s national story, but there was
almost a “peace in our time” diplomatic reconquista.
Although Hitler originally held the colonial movement in great disdain, in the late
1930s his regime ‘adopted’ and coordinated this movement. After 1936 the renewed
campaign for the recuperation of German colonies had its desired results among the
Allied powers. In discussions between the French Foreign Minister, Yvon Delbos, and
the American Ambassador, William Bullitt, proposals were considered for the
appeasement of Germany including tariff reductions, the involvement of the Third
Reich in the development of Africa, and finally the granting of a colony to Germany,
probably the Cameroons. In November 1937, during talks between Premier
Chautemps, Prime Minister Chamberlain, Eden and Delbos, the suggestion was
allegedly made by Chamberlain that France should ‘hand the Cameroons to
Germany at once without any quid pro quo’.
References:
a. Ralph A. Austen, “The Metamorphoses of Middlemen: The Duala, Europeans, and the Cameroon Hinterland,
ca. 1800 – ca. 1960”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1983).
b. Richard A. Joseph, “The German Question in French Cameroun,” Comparative Studies in Society and History,
Vol. 17, No. 1 (1975)

18. ESEKO, CHIEF (D 1901)

Zairean traditional leader of the Budja polity in the Mongala and Lulonga river basins
north of the Zaire River. He distinguished himself in the war of resistance to Belgian
colonialism; his exploits particularly in the climatic Budja rising at the beginning of
this century qualified him as one of the most celebrated soldiers for freedom in the
Central African region. Indeed, chief Eseko could easily be grouped in the category of
Africa’s distinguished freedom fighters, like Paitando Mapoondera of Zimbabwe,
Makombe Hanga of Mozambique, Bai Bureh of Sierra-Leone; Lat Dior of Senegal; and
Abdel Kader of Algeria, whose multi-faceted campaigns against colonialist
encroachment paved way for the second wave of African nationalists who after the
second World War successfully combated colonisations.
The Belgians’ misrule of the Congo Free State was characterised by oppression and
exploitation. An 1891 Decree by King Leopold II of Belgium assigned large areas of the
Congo to the concessionary companies, each of which was given a full monopoly of
forest produce and allowed to collect it in the way it liked; the other areas were
exploited directly by the state. One of these companies was the Societe Anversois de
Commerce au Congo, an Antwerp trading firm which obtained the contract to
monopolized the rubber of Budja.
Like the other concessionary companies operating in the country, the Anversoise was
in practice a state within the state, with boundless powers to police and extort taxes
which were collected in the form of wild rubber that Eseko’s subjects were forced to
harvest in the forest. Huge amounts of this produce was demanded from the villagers;
they had to go all over the forest to find often impossible quantities. It was reported
that sometimes the women and children were held as hostages while the men looked
for rubber. Those failing to find rubber as ordered were often killed by the Force
Publique (the Colonial Army), irregular forces often including criminal elements, and
company police. These militias were said to have used unlimited brutality.
Under the pressure of increasingly heavy rubber demands the Congolese began to
revolt against the Belgian tyranny. These were sporadic mutinies by the Africans from
the late 1890s; the Batetela Soldiers of the Force Publique in 1895-96 and a bigger
mutiny occurred in 1897, lasting for several years. The Luba and Azande polities also
began resisting the exploitation while from 1898 Chief Eseko and other Budja rulers
led the celebrated Budja rising against the Anversoise’s rubber tyranny. All these
however did not curb the colonial excesses and Belgian rule continued to be extremely
repressive, and unpopular with the Congolese long after.
Chief Eseko’s rebellion began in 1898 when the principal Budja Chiefs organised an
armed resistance that was to last for seven years. They attacked and killed the
European agents of the Anversoise company and also captured its Dundusana,
Mankika and Yakombo trading posts. The company’s armed units, supported by the
Force Publique, retaliated with punitive expeditions in which several Budja leaders
were killed. Eseko and some others at first escaped to continue the resistance.
In January 1901, the troops of the Congo Free State launched a major offensive in the
Budja district, which, after five months of fierce fighting fell to the superior military
power of the Europeans. Eseko and his two other principal collaborators, Chief Zengo
and Ekwalanga, were executed soon after, but their people fought on until 1905. Three
years before King Leopold II formally handed the Congo Free State over to Belgium;
henceforth, it was known as the “Belgian-Congo” and is now Zaire.

19. FIRST, RUTH (1925-1982)

Ruth First was a South African socialist, anti-apartheid activist, and scholar. She fled
South Africa in 1963 after serving 117 days in solitary confinement in South African
jails. She worked from exile in England until 1977 when she returned to hands-on
political work in Mozambique. On August 17, 1982, she was killed by a parcel bomb in
Maputo, Mozambique.
Ruth First was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1925, the daughter of socialist
immigrants Tilly and Julius First. Educated in Johannesburg, she completed a
bachelor's degree in sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946. Her
years as a university student were filled with political exploration and set her
commitment to pursue the struggle for social justice for all South Africans. First was
instrumental in the foundation of the non-racial Federation of Progressive Students
and joined the South African Communist Party—the principal party open to whites
forging interracial political activity.

Upon graduation First worked as researcher for the Johannesburg municipality and
taught evening classes in black schools. As a Communist party member she
collaborated in organization of the African Mine Workers Union. When the mine
workers went out on strike in 1946, the government brutally suppressed the strike and
arrested the Communist party's entire executive body. First resigned her research
position to become acting party secretary and ultimately editor of the Johannesburg
edition of the party newspaper, The Guardian.

Throughout the 1950s First engaged in intense investigative journalism, revealing the
brutal reality of South African rule while also publicizing statements by the
increasingly persecuted leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), the
principal anti-apartheid party. She supported the ANC's 1952 Defiance of Unjust Laws
Campaign and in 1954 helped found the Congress of Democrats branch of the Congress
Alliance—a political coalition including the ANC, the South African Indian Congress,
the South African Coloured People's Congress, and the South African Congress of
Trade Unions. She helped draft the Congress Alliance's Freedom Charter, which called
for "… a non-racial South Africa based on equal rights for all."

With the Suppression of Communism Act in 1951, The Guardian was banned. Despite
a series of banning orders which cumulatively circumscribed First's ability to research,
publish, and organize, she and her staff managed to publish a series of newspapers
between 1952 and 1963. In 1956 First, her husband attorney Joe Slovo, and much of
the Congress Alliance leadership was arrested and charged with high treason. After
more than a year of litigation the case was dismissed, but this persecution set the tone
for future events. When Hendrik Verwoerd, the principal architect of apartheid
legislation, became prime minister in 1958, efforts to penetrate, undermine, and
suppress the militant anti-apartheid movement redoubled. Within half a decade the
Congress Alliance leadership was largely dismantled, murdered, imprisoned, or driven
into exile.
First exploited the privileges of her race and sex to remain active in political activity
after her colleagues were jailed. Although she was known to support the ANC and to
be a respected strategist within the movement, First was not arrested in July 1963
when the government raided the underground headquarters of the Congress Alliance
at a Rivonia farm house. Key ANC leaders were taken and charged in the so-called
Rivonia trial (1963-1964). Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, and Walter Sisulu, were
sentenced to life imprisonment. When First was arrested in August 1963 under the 90
day detention act, she was told by a security officer: " … You could have been charged
in the Rivonia case. But we didn't want a woman in that case." Shortly after her
release in late 1963 First, her three daughters, and her mother joined the rest of the
family in exile in England.

Banning and exile did not suffocate First's activism, but encouraged a qualitative
change—from political journalism to activist scholar. Her first major monograph, a
study of South Africa's continuing illegal domination of South West Africa, researched
while under police surveillance in 1961, was widely acclaimed and remains a classic.
Despite banning orders First edited ANC members' speeches and trial addresses and
was instrumental in the publication of Mbeki's South Africa: The Peasants Revolt and
Mandela's No Easy Walk to Freedom. In 1970, with the publication of Power in Africa,
she won international recognition as a key African analyst. She became a lecturer at
the University of Durham and during the 1970s combined scholarship, a sharp critical
eye, and firm political commitment to author and co-author many important works on
South African apartheid, African politics, and an outstanding biography of Olive
Schreiner.

In 1977 First seized the opportunity to return to southern Africa as director of research
at the Center for African Studies in Mozambique. Free from the constraints of banning
orders and the frustration of exile, First flourished under the demanding task of
training Mozambican cadres to develop appropriate, useful, and politically informed
research techniques in an effort to stabilize the fledgling socialist state. She turned her
talents as teacher, activist, strategist, and scholar to strengthen and sharpen the
struggle for social justice.

First was never a politician, yet she was a towering force in political circles—the all
important behind-the-scenes strategist, the gifted problem solver who never left a
stone unturned, a question unasked, or a bold initiative untried. A prolific and
influential writer, First left an important legacy of political analysis of modern Africa,
and her work in Mozambique set the international pace for integrating social science
research into the creation of socialism. She was at a highpoint in her life's work when
she was cut down in 1982.

20. GIBANDA, CHIEF GABANDA (c. 1865-1931)

Zairean traditional ruler who was chief of the Bapende people at the time of the Belgian
occupation; and remembered for leading a revolt against the colonial authorities
following the imposition of punitive taxation in 1931.
Born about 1865 Gibanda belonged to the Kimbai ethnic group and rose to be head of
the Musanga chiefdom, an important Lunda centre on the Kwilu River. He came to the
throne in the early part of the 20th century, at a time of intensive activities by the
colonial powers who sought to establish their control. He son established contact with
the Belgians whose commercial activities and forced labour along the Congo (Zaire)
River and the Kasai tributary, were forcing the local people to migrate southwards to
Musanga country. The worst instances of this oppression were in King Leopold’s
Congo Free State until 1908, but some of it was continued under the Belgian colonial
administration which followed.
The Belgian authorities accorded Gibanda official recognition in December 1920, in
return he granted certain concessions to the Europeans to develop Musanga’s palm
kernels and oil industry. But by the late 1920s relations with the colonial authorities
became strained as the Bapende people were being moved from their homes and
relocated to infertile areas to make room for the development of roads and industries.
The resulting dislocation of community life, and the exploitative conditions under
which the members of the community were made to work in the government
plantations, provoked resentment. The situation was escalated by punitive taxation,
imposed by the colonial government on the plantation workers who were already hard-
hit by low wages.
The resentment against these measures culminated in an open revolt against the
government in 1931. The so-called Bapende Revolt started on 8 June 1931 with a
peaceful demonstration against the taxes being levied by the colonial authorities. As
tempers rose, however, the tax collection post in Kilimba was attacked and the tax
agent, Maximillien Ballot, a Belgian, was killed. Government troops were quickly
despatched to suppress the rebellion and to recover Ballot’s body from the
demonstrators. Chief Gibanda and several of his sub-chiefs and headmen were
arrested and charged for complicity in the death of Ballot. Together with the leaders of
the revolt, they were tortured in prison while awaiting trial, some of the accused died
in custody from ill-treatment.
In October 1931, the chief was brought to trial for allegedly hiding one of the leaders
of the revolt, which he denied. He also pleaded that he had no prior knowledge of the
revolt. But he was found guilty and condemned to death, his execution being carried
out by Force Publique (the Colonial Army) who tortured him, severed his genitals and
weighted him down naked in the sun. he subsequently died a slow, agonising death.
After his death in November 1932, the Belgian authorities admitted that Chief Gibanda
was in fact in the neighbouring Chokwe country during the uprising and that he was
unjustly tortured and executed.
The execution of Gibanda is but one of the indiscriminate atrocities of colonialism in
Africa in Belgian Congo, as in the countries ruled by other European states, resistance,
or even mild criticism by erstwhile collaborators like the Bapende Chief, was brutally
crushed. But this did not curb the tide of nationalism.

21. GOUVEIA, KING (D. 1890)

Mozambican King of the Gorongosa who united several kingdoms in Mozambique

against Portuguese and British imperialism. Gouveia, who was born in Goa, started his
climb to power with a well-armed private army which he used to harass the Portuguese
and protect vulnerable chieftains. His first significant conquest is the protection of the
Sena who were invaded by the Ngoni. Not only did he protect but he also subjugated
minor chieftains thus becoming a territorial overlord.
Within a short period, he ruled the Sena and Tonga people and even maintained the
symbols of Kingship such as the royal drum and stool. He married the daughter of the
Sena chief thus providing himself with prestigious kin. He controlled a secondary state
that encompassed most of the Zambezzi valley.
Some of the Tonga Chiefs under Gouveia had been subjects of King Makombe
Chipapata of the Barue nation. To thwart Gouveia’s imperial ambitions, Chipapata
formed an alliance with Gouveia’s arch-enemy Bonga of the Massangano. Their attack
on Gouveia failed and Chipapata on his defeat offered to aid Gouveia in his invasion of
the Ngoni. Having eliminated the Ngoni thirty-five-year threat, Chipapata gave his
daughter Adriana in marriage to Gouveia. Some of the Barue disapproved of
Chipapata’s appeasement and rebelled, gathering around his son Hanga. They
organised a coup against Gouveia which failed. Despite Hanga’s treachery, Gouveia
named him his successor as ruler in preference to his eldest son.
During the entire period, Lisbon was offering Gouveia a number of gratuities in
exchange for nominal loyalty and collaboration. These included legal titles to land he
had conquered, exemption from taxes and cash payments. He was also given a
prestigious title, Capitao-Mor and was allowed to carry out clandestine slave trade if
he so wished. In 1877 he went to Lisbon where he was received as a hero and made an
official of the Companhia da Zambesia. On his return he refused to surrender his
independence to the Portuguese. It was at that point that Lisbon abandoned its policy
on imposing its authority by agreement. It embarked on a strategy of divide and
conquer. This also proved a failure. It then started a campaign of conquests. With the
help of Gouveia, the Portuguese attacked the Massangano, but poor leadership and
malaria debilitated the European soldiers. This coupled with the tenacity of the
Massangano caused the defeat of the Portuguese. However, Gouveia still clung to his
independence.
In 1890 he was arrested by the British South African Police. Hanga used this period
to mobilise the disaffected Barue in a rebellion against Gouveia. When Gouveia was
released a year later, he led a force of 4000 against Hanga. In the ensuing battle his
forces were routed and he was killed. His death ushered in a new period of anti-
colonial strife led by Hanga.

22. GUNGUNYANE, KING (c.1850-1906)

Gungunyane, the Lion of Gaza

Today, we will talk about one of the greatest chief in Mozambique‘s modern history:
the Shangaan king Gungunyane, of the Gaza Empire. He governed a region which
encompassed parts of eastern Rhodesia (in modern day Zimbabwe), and southern
Mozambique. He was known as the Lion of Gaza.

So who was Gungunyane? Born Mdungazwe (which means ‘one who confuses the
people’ in Zulu) around 1850, he will change his name from Mdungazwe to
Gungunyane upon his ascension to the throne in 1884. Gungunyane was born on the
Gaza territory, which extended from the rivers Zambezi and Incomati, to the
Limpopo river, and would go all the way into modern-day Zimbabwe. He was the son
of Mzila, who reigned from 1861 to 1884. He was also the grandson of Soshangane,
the founder of the Nguni or Gaza empire, after his defeat at the hands of Shaka Zulu
in 1820 in Zululand during the Battle of Mhlatuze river. In its initial stages, the Gaza
empire expanded over 56,000 km2 (22,000 sq mi) of land, with its capital being
Chaimite. At the death of his father Mzila, Gungunyane ascended the throne after a
fratricidal battle with his other brothers.

Picture of a Vatua-Shangaan warrior, taken at the end of the 19th century (Source:
‘Les Africains’, Vol.3, P.182, Ed. J.A. 1977)
At his ascension, the Portuguese sent him emissaries in 1885 who tried to have him
sign treaties to recognize Portugal’s sovereignty in the region promising: to give his
territory to no other than Portugal, to allow that a Portuguese agent reside with him
as advisor, to have Portugal’s colors raised over his kraals, to allow Portuguese subjects
to circulate freely in his territory, to allow only Portuguese to exploit his mines, to allow
the establishment of schools and churches, etc. For which Gungunyane would retain
full jurisdiction over the Gaza territory with the right to administer it, and to raise
taxes. This was unacceptable to Gungunyane who refused to sign.

The southern region of Mozambique was a penetration road for the Portuguese who
had been arming vassals of the Shangaan. Thus in 1888, Gungunyane and his advisors
decided to move their kraals from the Rhodesian plateau to the shores of the Limpopo
river. This decision will end up costing them a lot, as 40,000 to 100,000 people made
the move. Several fractions left in april 1889, while the king himself moved from
Mount Selinda on 15 June 1889. This decision was motivated by the desire
of Gungunyane to settle an old score with chief Speranhana (who was armed by the
Portuguese) of the Chopi people from between the Limpopo and Inharrime, and the
need to recover his father’s land in the region of Bilene. In 1889, the Lion of Gaza
invaded the Chopi territory, and installed a kraal in Manjacaze. However, the battle
against the Chopi will last until the end of his reign, and will greatly weaken the
Shangaan.

Throughout his reign, Gungunyane never signed any treaties, because he never trusted
neither the Portuguese nor the translator (even if the translator was his own son). He
was a skilled negotiator, and would always try to settle everything diplomatically. He
played well the British and Portuguese interests in the region… this might have been
his downfall in the end.

In 1890, Gungunyane prohibited the sale of alcohol by Portuguese merchants on Gaza

territory. In 1891, the Portuguese adopted a decree to ban the sale of alcohol on
Gazaland, and agreed to work with Gungunyane to implement this… but as we all know
the Portuguese never stopped selling alcohol in the region (this seems like a century
old practice from Europeans selling cheap alcohol in Africa, and turning Africans into
drunkards).

Picture of captured Gungunyane on board the ship ‘Africa’ from the Diario
Ilustrado – 15 March 1896

The Portuguese never stopped trying to control Gungunyane who never stopped
wanting more independence (it was his land after all). They kept enforcing treaties. In
1893, the conflict in Matabeleland between the British and Lobengula forced several
Ndebele to seek refuge in the Gaza territory (one of Gungunyane’s sister was married
to Lobengula) creating confusion. In 1894, the Portuguese used a succession quarrel
between Ronga chiefs to attack Gungunyane. No proof was found of Gungunyane’s
involvement into the hostilities. On 22 August 1894, war started, when the Ronga
troops defeated the Afro-Portuguese troops with Ronga chiefs Mahazul and
Matibejana of Zixaxa attacking Lourenço Marques. However, the Ronga chiefs were
defeated by the Portuguese during the battle of Marracuene on 2 February 1895. The
Ronga chiefs thus sought refuge into Gungunyane’s kingdom. Gungunyane kept
negotiating, but now the sine qua non condition to any negotiation was the surrender
of the Ronga chiefs, with other clauses such as the full control of his territory by the
Portuguese, the installation of military bases, the payment of an annual tax of 10,000
pounds, etc. For the Lion of Gaza, this meant the end of his
independence. Negotiations were still ongoing, but by September, the Portuguese had
invaded the territory of Cossine which was an integral part of the Gaza kingdom. On
7 November 1895, on lake Coolela, not far from Manjacaze, the Portuguese crushed 8
Shangaan regiments. Coolela became the Waterloo of Gungunyane. The Lion
gathered his treasures and took off. For almost a month, Portuguese kept looking for
him thinking that he had sought refuge in Transvaal. However, Gungunyane
had sought refuge in Chaimite, the sacred village of the Shangaan people. While many
of his dignitaries, and sons managed to escape into the Transvaal, the Lion never left
Chaimite, and on 28 December 1895, he was captured there by Mousinho de
Albuquerque, the Portuguese military governor of Gaza.

Picture of Gungunyane’s children on board the ship ‘Africa’- from the Diario
Ilustrado -15 March 1896

Gungunyane was first sent to Lisbon, and then later to the island of Terceira on the
Portuguese Azores, with his son Godide, some of his wives, and dignitaries. He will die
there on 23 December 1906.

In exile in Acores, from l to r (top): Zixaxa, Molungo, Godide, and Gungunyane

 Gungunyane and his wives in exile in Acores

Under Gungunyane, the Shangaan empire grew more powerful compared to his
father’s years. The Shangaan system expanded at a time when Mozambique was at the
center of European greed and attacks. Portuguese who had arrived in the area in 1891,
were amazed by Gungunyane’s power, and wrote that the Gaza empire was “the biggest
empire that the negro race had created in oriental Africa.” Many were quite skeptical
when they learnt of the Lion of Gaza’s defeat. A contemporary Portuguese wrote in
1910 that: “the king of the Vatua [Shangaan] empire was a fine diplomat who, knowing
that we did not have the military strength to counter his power, managed to turn us
[the Portuguese] into docile vassals.”

Reference:

1. Les Africains, Vol. 3, C. Julien, editions J.A. 1977

2. VidasLusoFonas, and the book Gungunhana no seu Reino by Maria da Conceicao Vilhena.

23. HAILE SELLASSIE I, EMPEROR (1892-1975)

Haile Selassie I, original name Tafari Makonnen, (born July 23, 1892, near
Harer, Ethiopia—died August 27, 1975, Addis Ababa), emperor of Ethiopia from 1930
to 1974 who sought to modernize his country and who steered it into the mainstream
of post-World War II African politics. He brought Ethiopia into the League of Nations
and the United Nations and made Addis Ababa the major centre for the Organization
of African Unity (now African Union).

Tafari was a great-grandson of Sahle Selassie of Shewa (Shoa) and a son of Ras (Prince)
Makonnen, a chief adviser to Emperor Menilek II. Educated at home by French
missionaries, Tafari at an early age favourably impressed the emperor with his
intellectual abilities and was promoted accordingly. As governor of Sidamo and then
of Harer province, he followed progressive policies, seeking to break the feudal power
of the local nobility by increasing the authority of the central government—for
example, by developing a salaried civil service. He thereby came to represent politically
progressive elements of the population. In 1911 he married Wayzaro Menen, a great-
granddaughter of Menilek II.

When Menilek II died in 1913, his grandson Lij Yasu succeeded to the throne, but the
latter’s unreliability and his close association with Islam made him unpopular with the
majority Christian population of Ethiopia. Tafari became the rallying point of the
Christian resistance, and he deposed Lij Yasu in 1916. Zauditu, Menilek II’s daughter,
thereupon became empress in 1917, and Ras Tafari was named regent and heir
apparent to the throne.

While Zauditu was conservative in outlook, Ras Tafari was progressive and became the
focus of the aspirations of the modernist younger generation. In 1923 he had a
conspicuous success in the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations. In the
following year he visited Jerusalem, Rome, Paris, and London, becoming the first
Ethiopian ruler ever to go abroad. In 1928 he assumed the title of negus (“king”), and,
two years later, when Zauditu died, he was crowned emperor (November 2, 1930) and
took the name of Haile Selassie (“Might of the Trinity”). In 1931 he promulgated a new
constitution, which strictly limited the powers of Parliament. From the late 1920s on,
Haile Selassie in effect was the Ethiopian government, and, by establishing provincial
schools, strengthening the police forces, and progressively outlawing feudal taxation,
he sought to both help his people and increase the authority of the central government.

When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Haile Selassie led the resistance, but in May 1936
he was forced into exile. He appealed for help from the League of Nations in a
memorable speech that he delivered to that body in Geneva on June 30, 1936. With
the advent of World War II, he secured British assistance in forming an army of
Ethiopian exiles in the Sudan. British and Ethiopian forces invaded Ethiopia in
January 1941 and recaptured Addis Ababa several months later. Although he was
reinstated as emperor, Haile Selassie had to recreate the authority he had previously
exercised. He again implemented social, economic, and educational reforms in an
attempt to modernize Ethiopian government and society on a slow and gradual basis.

The Ethiopian government continued to be largely the expression of Haile Selassie’s

personal authority. In 1955 he granted a new constitution giving him as much power
as the previous one. Overt opposition to his rule surfaced in December 1960, when a
dissident wing of the army secured control of Addis Ababa and was dislodged only
after a sharp engagement with loyalist elements.

Haile Selassie played a very important role in the establishment of the Organization of
African Unity in 1963. His rule in Ethiopia continued until 1974, at which time famine,
worsening unemployment, and the political stagnation of his government prompted
segments of the army to mutiny. They deposed Haile Selassie and established a
provisional military government, the Derg, which espoused Marxist ideologies. Haile
Selassie was kept under house arrest in his own palace, where he spent the remainder
of his life. Official sources at the time attributed his death to natural causes, but
evidence later emerged suggesting that he had been strangled on the orders of the
military government.

Haile Selassie was regarded as the messiah of all Black people by the Rastafarian
movement.

24. HANGA, MAKOMBE (D.1910)

Mozambican resistance leader who for some twenty-three years, from 1887 till his
death, led a number of anti-colonial campaigns. King of the Barue contry, a Shona-
related polity south of the Zambezi River, now in modern Mozambique, he was the last
independent ruler of Barue before it fell to the Portuguese. His father Makombe
Chipapata ruled Barue from about 1845 until he was killed in battle in 1887 against
Portuguese agents.
No sooner had hanger commenced his reign in 1887 than there emerged a prolonged
succession crisis, in which the new King had battles with European-backed contenders
for the throne such as Samancande, Chipituta, Cassiche, and Cavunda. In the decisive
1901 battle, Hanga succeeded in ending the challenge to his authority by forcing
Cavunda into exile. This achieved, he turned his attention to establishing relations
with German and British agents in the region. Hanga was particularly interested in
establishing diplomatic relations with the British as a safeguard against possible
Portuguese invasion. In 1898 he sought British assurances of military assistance in the
event of war but his request was rejected. The British officials instead assured him
safety in the British-controlled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) if he should seek refuge
there.
Hanga’s preoccupation with Barue’s independence led to further diplomatic contacts,
this time with his neighbours. He was aware that the survival of Barue was inextricably
linked to that of the neighbours and, accordingly, entered into marriage and political
alliances with them. Among these polities was the Mazoe, under Paitando Mapondera,
across the Zambezi River in Rhodesia. The alliance with Mapondera proved a decisive
force in the subsequent 1902 war against the Portuguese. Prior to the battle, Hanga
had built a fort of about 10,000 soldiers armed with more than 7,000 guns which he
acquired from European dealers who bought Barue’s ivory and gold. Prior to the war
also, he encouraged the development of small ammunition factories at Mungari and
Missongue, two important Barue centres.
During the Portuguese military incursion which began on 30 July 1902, Hanga’s son
Catente was killed. By the end of that year Barue’s army had surrendered to the
superior power of the colonial forces. Hanga led his followers into exile in Southern
Rhodesia where they were later to mastermind the 1904 Shona rebellion against the
British. His lietanants that were captured in the 1902 Barue war were deported to
Portuguese territories in West Africa.
The 1902 defeat and Hanga’s exile marked the end of Barue’s independence and
autonomy. With little or no resistance, the polity was brought under Portuguese rule.
But before he died in 1910 Hanga named his oldest son Chikuwore as successor and
gave him the praise name Nongwe-Nongwe, which means “you shall have to”. In 1917
Nongwe-Nongwe led his people against the Portuguese, in what became known as the
Barue Insurrection.
Hanga’s gallant resistance evidently inspired later generations of Mozambican
politicians who resisted Portuguese rule continuously until 1975 when the Front de
Libertacao de Mocambique (FRELIMO), brought the country to independence.
At independence, President Samora Machel acknowledged this when he said, “From
the resistance of the Muenemutapa to the Insurrection of Barue, Mozambican history
prides itself on the glorious deeds of the masses in the struggle for the defence of
freedom and independence. The defeat of the historic resistance of the people is due
exclusively to the treason of the feudal ruling classes, to their greed and ambition,
which allowed the enemy to divide the people and so conquer it”.
 25. HASSAN I, KING ABU (1836-1894)

King of Morocco. Moulay Hassan was born in 1836 and was the favourite son of his
father, Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abderrahman. He and his six brothers received a
strict education at the University of Fez. His father designated him heir to the throne
as soon as Hassan attained the age of majority and, from an early age, involved him in
the affairs of the kingdom.
During the 18th and the first half of the 19th century, Morocco remained in self-imposed
isolation. During the 1860s, however, it was forced to come to terms with the fact that
its territory was the object of European imperialist ambitions. Britain saw Morocco as
an outlet for her manufactured goods and sought control over the Mediterranean Sea
route; France wished to consolidate its control of the Maghreb and form a link with its
West African possessions. Morocco was thus obliged to clarify its relations with the
principal European colonial powers. A trade treaty was signed with Britain in 1856, a
peace treaty with Spain in 1860 and a convention with France in 1863.
Moulay Hassan’s father, Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abderrahman (1859-1873),
aware of the implications of these dealings with Europe, initiated a programme of
modernisation, calling on European technical assistance and giving impetus to a
modest industrial development. The years 1867-1869 were economically difficult and
the programme suffered a considerable setback as a result.
Hassan’s training for his future role as King included involvement with the attempts
at creating industrial enterprise and frequent contact with European diplomats and
traders, and also had a military component, for he led several military expeditions in
the south of the country.

His accession to the throne on 12 September 1873 aroused some opposition which he
had to supress by force of arms. According to contemporary accounts, it was not simply
his father’s nomination, nor his knowledge of the kingdom’s affairs which fitted
Hassan for this role, but also his character, intelligence and impressive bearing. He
was known for his generosity, simplicity, sense of humour, and religious piety.
Although he had a deep knowledge of Islamic culture, he never learned a European
language and his knowledge of European affairs came from a few European
counsellors and from his reading of newspapers.
Hassan was determined to preserve the territorial integrity of his empire. He decided
early, therefore, that a policy of limited co-operation with the European powers was
the best means of ensuring this and he continued the innovatory programmes of his
father, in terms of the country’s economy and administrative structures. The political
situation in the Mediterranean was more favourable to such a policy than a few years
previously: the defeat of France by the Germans in 1870 had removed the French
threat from Morocco’s eastern border; Spain’s political and financial crisis meant that
Morocco was safe from the north, while Britain was merely concerned to maintain the
status quo. The task facing Hassan, therefore, was that of helping Morocco adapt to a
technically advanced world so that she would be able to withstand the ambitions of the
imperialist European powers.
Ensuring the kingdom’s territorial integrity depended to a large extent on obtaining
and maintaining the loyalty to the crown of the various rival and warring ethnic
groups. Hassan achieved this by employing a mixture of threats, force and truly skilful
diplomacy. His prestige in the south was so great that there was no major revolt there
during his entire reign. He introduced greater administrative flexibility and control in
the plains by splitting up large provinces into a series of small administrative units.
Stability also depended on a careful control of the power wielded by the various
religious leaders and sects; here again, Hassan demonstrated considerable skill in
reassuring some groups while restricting the activity of others. Towards the end of his
reign he made several visits to border areas of the country, conscious that this
reaffirmation of his concern for all parts of the empire would strengthen resistance to
any European attempt at incursion.
Hassan’s financial policies were just as successful. He ensured the regular collection
of taxes, and despite the payment of war reparations until 1886, the payment of
indemnities to European powers and a severe economic crisis between 1878 and 1882,
the Treasury was richer than ever before. With such financial reserves at his disposal,
Hassan was able to strengthen and reorganise the army, a reform which is regarded as
the most important achievement of his reign. He altered traditional recruitment
procedures, created a standing army on the European model, called in European
instructors sent the officer corps to Europe for training and purchased modern arms
and equipment. He also laid the foundations of an armaments industry and navy.
Hassan took vigorous measures towards improving Morocco’s economy. Trade was
given a boost by the authorisation of grain exports, by improvements to the ports and
by altering customs duties in Morocco’s favour. Despite falling prices, external trade
increased by 40 percent overall during Hassan’s reign. Incentives were given to the
production of cash crops, as also to private industrial enterprise, and a postal service
was organised.
If Hassan was not able to extend his reforms as far or as fast as he himself would have
wished, this was due in part to the traditionalism of his people and of those who were
the intermediaries of change, but it can also be ascribed to pressures exerted by the
European colonial powers. Hassan’s dilemma was that he could only hope to resist
these pressures by modernising his country, but that modernisation made inevitable
European assistance in achieving this goal and thus unleashed diplomatic and
economic rivalry. Moulay Hassan had established his own sovereignty in the
traditional manner by obtaining the sworn allegiance of the country’s tribes and minor
sultanates, to whom in return he pledged his protection. This right to protection in
return for a pledge of allegiance came to be manipulated by the European powers for
their own ends and although Hassan sought, both at the Tangiers Conference (1887)
and at the International Conference of Madrid (19 May-3 July 1880) to obtain the
suppression of this “right to protection”, he failed. Thousands of Moroccans
subsequently came under French “protection”, including several important
personalities of the Sherif of Ouezzane, a strategically important area on the border
between Algeria (already a French possession) and Morocco. Thus was Moroccan
sovereignty subtly undermined by the use of those same traditional structures that
Hassan would have wished to eliminate.
Acceding to Spanish and French demands for financial reparation simply removed one
pretext these owners might have had for annexation or conquest. However, it had the
negative effect of putting a break on economic growth and the effort towards
modernisation. Yet another means used by Hassan was to play the rival powers off
against each other by seeking an alliance with whichever power seemed the least
dangerous. He turned first to Britain, then to Germany and later to France. The
necessity of strengthening Morocco’s borders was yet another break on modernisation
because of a drain on resources.
Moulay Hassan died on 6 June 1894, after returning from an expedition on Tafilalet.
In his twenty-years’ reign he had not only ensured his country’s continued
independence, but had initiated a programme of important reforms and
modernisation. But he himself admitted that, although he had succeeded in holding
the European powers at bay, he had not been able to build up the modern state which
would be the only guarantee of future independence. It was eighteen years after his
death, in 1912, that Morocco became a French Protectorate; “pacification” was not
achieved until 1934. But opposition to the colonialists continued, centred around Allal
el-Fassi and his nationalist followers. These were instrumental in gaining Morocco’s
independence in 1956.

26. HASSAN, SAYYID MOHAMMED ABDULLAH (1864-

1920).

Somali nationalist and religious leader. He was born in 1864 in the Nogal valley area,
into the Darod section of the nomadic Somali people of the “Horn of Africa”. He went
to Aden for Islamic studies and travelled to other places also, making the Mecca
pilgrimage several times. He was influenced by reports of the Mahdist movement in
the Sudan and other Islamic revival and reform movements. In Aden he was
particularly influenced by the puritan Ahmadiyya sect (not to be confused with the
missionary “Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam”, founded in India and established now
in Nigeria and Ghana). He followed its teacher Mohammed Salih, who broke with the
sect and founded his own, the Salihiyya, who doctrine Abdullah Hassan would later
preach.
In 1884, Britain occupied a part of Somalia, on the coast east of the new French
territory around Djibouti. Further inland Ethiopia began expanding soon after then in
the Ogaden, peopled by Somalis. East of there, on the coast stretching southwards
from cape Guardafui, Italy started establishing its rule in 1889, with treaties with two
important rival Sultans, those of Mijertein Somalis and of Obbia.

By the time he returned from Aden to Somali territory in 1895, Abdullah Hassan found
it increasingly threatened by Christian powers’ occupation. His preaching led to
heightened Islamic resistance to this occupation. His reform doctrines, being strict,
were not popular at Berbera where he started a school on his return, but later he lived
among the Dolbahanta and his influence spread among the Darod. He became a
Mullah, a Moslem Judge and theologian and by 1899 he had about 3,000 followers,
with whom he occupied important watering holes at Burao and declared a Jihad. The
“holy war” was apparently at first against the Somalis (the majority) who followed the
Qadiriyya school of Islam, which he considered lax, but soon it was directed against
the British and Ethiopians.
He dominated the Ogaden and obtained arms from the Sultan of the Mijerteins and
from raids. In 1901, a joint Anglo-Ethiopian expedition of about 17,000 troops drove
him into the Mijerteins area. The Italians, nominal rulers of that area, allowed the
British to land forces at Obbia to attack the Mullah. But they were defeated and
withdrew in mid-1903. The Mullah, whom the British contemptuously called the “Mad
Mullah”, then occupied all the Nogal valley from Halin to Ilig.
A fourth British expedition, in 1904, drove Abdullah Hassan into the Mijertein country
again. 500 British troops were then landed at Ilig. Thinking the Mullah was nearly
finished, the Britiash offered him a safe conduct into exile at Mecca, but he ignored the
offer. Instead he sought to divide his enemies by making an agreement with the
Italians. The latter, anxious to maintain “indirect rule” and not be obliged to commit
large forces to Somalia, responded to an offer of talks. Under an agreement signed on
3 March 1905, the Mullah occupied territory in the Nogal valley, between Mijertein
and the Obbia sultanate territory. The British agreed to this and allowed Hassan’s
followers to enter British Somaliland in dry-season migrations. For three years there
was relative peace, though the Italians, like the British, feared Abdullah Hassan’s
religious and political power.
In 1908 the Mullah’s followers, who like those of the Sudanese Mahdi were called
“Dervishes”, attacked the Madugh area to establish contact with the Bah Ceri in the
Ogaden further inland. This was the time Abdullah Shahari, a leading colleague of the
Mullah, left him to visit Mohammed Salih at Mecca and brought back a letter,
purportedly from Salih, accusing the Mullah of various misdeeds and telling him to
repent or be expelled from the Salihiyya. Some Dervishes said the letter was a
forgery, but others who believed in it left the Mullah’s following.
In British Somaliland, most of the Mullah’s followers stayed with him. Efforts to
persuade him to surrender failed in 1909, and at the end of that year the British
evacuated their forces from the interior of the colony. The Mullah, with 6,000 rifles,
was thus still very powerful. But in 1910 the Sultan of the Mijerteins, Yusuf Ali, turned
against him; the Mullah, in one of his acts of personal cruelty, killed a daughter of
Yusuf Ali whom he had taken as a wife earlier. The British and Italians now
coordinated action, the Italians established formal rule over the Mijertein Somalis,
and the latter agreed with the Warsangeli to cooperate against the Mullah. Seaborne
arms shipments to him were stopped, and after 1911 the Ethiopians at Harar became
a greater threat to under Tafari (Haile selassie). In 1911 Abdullah was driven out of
Italian Somalia altoghether.
However, he was still a formidable effective ruler over part of British Somaliland and
almost all the Ogaden claimed by Ethiopia. Dervishes raided as far as Berbera once. In
January 1913 he moved to Taleh, where Yemeni stone masons had helped to build a
massive fortress that would be his base for the next seven years. Early in 1920, the
British attacked, using aircraft which were unfamiliar to the Dervishes. After the
bombing of Taleh the Mullah evacuated it and the British occupied the fortress on 12
February 1920.
Abdullah Hassan retreated into the Ogaden, where about 3000 Somalis of the British
forces pursued him with Ethiopia’s permission. Defeated in a battle with those forces,
Abdullah Hassan and his now small band, hit by disease and starvation, retreated to
the banks of the Shebelli, where he died. News reached Mogadishu on 10 February
1921 that he had died on 21 December 1920.
Today Abdullah Hassan is remembered as a hero who led a united force against three
occupiers of Somali territory. He is also remembered as a poet as well as a reformer
and resistance leader whose activities dominated most of the British and Italians’
attention for a considerable period.

27. IDRIS I, MOHAMMED EL-SANUSI (1890-1983)

Idris I, in full Sīdī Muḥammad Idrīs al-Mahdī al-Sanūsī, (born March 13, 1890,
Jarabub, Cyrenaica, Libya—died May 25, 1983, Cairo, Egypt), first king of Libya when
that country gained its independence in 1951.

In 1902 Idris succeeded his father as head of the Sanūsiyyah, an Islamic tariqa, or
brotherhood, centred in Cyrenaica. Because he was a minor, active leadership first
passed to his cousin, Aḥmad al-Sharīf. Ruling in his own right after 1916, Idris’s first
problem was to deal with the Italians, who in 1911 had invaded Libya in an effort to
create a North African empire but were unable to extend their authority much beyond
the coast. By the peace of Arcoma (1917), Idris secured a cease-fire and, in effect,
confirmation of his own authority in inland Cyrenaica. A further agreement in 1919
established a Cyrenaician parliament and a financial grant to Idris and his followers.
When Idris proved unable and unwilling to disarm his tribal supporters as Italy
demanded, however, the Italians invaded the Tripolitanian hinterland in the spring of
1922. Tripolitanian tribesmen offered to submit to Idris’s authority in the hope of
securing greater unity and more effective resistance. Idris saw resistance as futile,
however, and he went into exile in Egypt, where he remained until British forces
occupied Libya in 1942 during World War II (1939–45).

Idris continued to direct his followers from Egypt, not returning to Libya permanently
until 1947, when he would head an official government. His main support came from
conservative tribesmen, who thought in terms of a Sanūsī government ruling over
Cyrenaica, but younger and more urbanized elements looked to a union of the Libyan
provinces. The issue was finally determined by the United Nations in November 1949,
when the General Assembly resolved that the future of Cyrenaica, Fezzan, and
Tripolitania should be decided upon by representatives of the three areas meeting in a
national assembly. This assembly established a constitutional monarchy and offered
the throne to Idris. Libya declared its independence in December 1951.

Under Idris the throne had a preponderance of influence over the parliament and
absolute control over the army. The government was an oligarchy of wealthy
townsmen and powerful tribal leaders who divided the important administrative
positions among themselves and supported the king. This situation, along with the
external support of Western powers and the internal military support of his loyal
tribesmen, enabled Idris to control the affairs of the central government. Many of the
younger army officers and members of the growing urban middle class, however,
resented Idris’s socially conservative policies and his aloofness from the growing
currents of Arab nationalism. In September 1969, while Idris was at a Turkish spa for
medical treatment, the army, led by Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, overthrew the
government. Idris went first to Greece and then was given political asylum in Egypt.
In 1974 he was tried in absentia on charges of corruption and found guilty. He
remained in exile in Cairo until his death.

28. JAJA, KING OF OPOBO (1821-1891).

King Jaja of Opobo (full name: Jubo Jubofem; 1821–1891) was an Igbo merchant
prince and the founder of Opobo city-state in an area that is now the Rivers State of
Nigeria. Born in Umuduruoha Amaigbo in present day Imo State, he was taken to
Bonny by slave raiders as a youth. Jumo Jumofem later took the name "Jaja".

Jaja earned his way out of slavery and rose to head the Anna Pepple House merchant
faction of Bonny Island. Under him, Anna Pepple absorbed other trade houses until a
dispute with the Manilla Pepple House led by Oko Jumbo compelled Jaja to break
away to form the Opobo city-state (26 miles east of Bonny) in 1869.
Opobo came to dominate the region's palm oil trade, and controlled fourteen of what
were formerly Bonny's eighteen trade houses. Jaja blocked the access of British
merchants to the interior effectively monopolizing trade; Opobo also shipped palm oil
directly to Liverpool, independent of British middlemen.

At the 1884 Berlin Conference the Europeans designated Opobo as British territory.
When Jaja refused to cease taxing the British traders, Henry Hamilton Johnston, a
British vice consul, invited Jaja for negotiations in 1887. Jaja was arrested on arrival
aboard a British vessel; he was tried in Accra in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) then
exiled, first to London, and later to Saint Vincent and Barbados in the British West
Indies.
In 1891, Jaja was granted permission to return to Opobo, but died en route. Following
his exile and death, the power of the Opobo state rapidly declined.

29. KABAREGA, MUKAMA (c.1850-1923).

KABAREGA, MUKAMA (c.1850-1923). On the 9th April 1999, it will he 100 years
since the capture off the unsung Great Freedom guerrilla fighter King Cwa II. Kabalega
(1850 - 1923) ruler of ancient large and prosperous Bunyoro Kitara Empire from 1870
to the 9th April 1899.

He resisted colonization and his name symbolizes bravery, resilience, and patriotism.
Unlike most of his contemporary chiefs and kings in the lake region save Chief Rwot
Awich of Chwa and Payira (Acholi) with whom they shared views close to modern
politics and military science. They saw that "in this savage no stranger went anywhere
simply in friendship, he conquered the countries he invaded and automatically turned
their inhabitants into vassals” and Kabalega resisted.

Various small chiefdoms and kingdoms then leaving in perpetual fear of attack from
within and out beyond (Slave traders arid Colonizing Europeans) embraced
colonization for the sake of protection and as the then Order of African Social
organization. They signed treaties with colonizing powers, little comprehending the
conditions therein thus automatically signing away their sovereignty. Kabalega was
the odd nun out and the British just Gould not stomachs it. They declared a determined
and vindictive war an Him and Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom.

“… Were determined to get him out of their way because he was disappointed with
Fellow rulers... Mwanga had betrayed their common cause and interest in admitting,
for the sake of their Beads and Cloth, the Europeans into the Country”

Kitara was overrun and occupied by the British invading forces by March 1894 which
forced King Chwa II. Kabalega to take refuge in neighbouring Lango and Acholi,
although he occasionally sneaking into his Kingdom to command some battles. On the
fateful day in the early morning, that hampered vision in the swamps near Kangai
Dokolo County Lango the enemy finally surrounded him. Across fire bullet shattered
his right arm later amputed, and another bullet hit the thumb of his left arm. His gun
(called Bagwigairebata) fell down and he was captured. He had lost the battle but not
the war for African Independence. Although a captive he still commanded allegiance
from Banyoro People as a result, he was exiled first to Kismayu then to Seychelles
Islands where he arrived aboard the SS “Booldana” to Kismayu on 7th October 1901.
On arrival, he was imprisoned at Pointe Cnad and later at Beau Vallon. Because of ill
health and old age he was released and allowed to return to Bunyoro abroad the SS
“Karapara" on 14th February 1923. He rested at Mpumude (Mpumwire) Jinja, Busoga.
He felt at last he was in safe hands and at home the Basoga have their ancestry from
ancient Bunyoro Kitara and that is evident when they bury their dead with the heads
facing the direction of Bunyoro Kingdom symbolic that the dead has gone to join his
ancestors. He was at home in Jinja Busoga because at the time of the break out of the
war in 1893, prince Nyaika of Busoga who was being groomed to inherit the throne in
Busoga was being brought up in King Cwa II. Kabalega' s palace. And on 6th April
1923, died. His Body was returned to the wailing Banyoro and an 26th April 1923 was
interned at his old Palace now Gasari at Mparo Hoima.

Other famous African Freedom fighters detained in the Seychelles at the time included
Prempeh of Kumasi, Gold coast (Ghana) he was arrested in January 1896 and deported
to the Seychelles where he lived up to 12th September 1924. Two years later alter his
return to Kumasi his people elected him to the office of Chief of the Kumasi tribe until
he died oh 12th May 1931.

Elsewhere, resistance to colonial rule was being felt in Nyasaland (Malawi) "Three
chiefs,

Eliot Yonanne Achirwa, Elliot Kenah Kamwana Achirwa and Willard Mwenda held
mass meetings urging rebellion by preaching the coming of the Messiah, the liberation
of the Blacks and the end of British rule "they were arrested detained for some time in
Africa and Mauritius and in 1919 sent to Seychelles they lived at Anse Royale. In 1928
Mwenda was released the remaining two were allowed to return to their country on
July 13 1937 on board the SS Kenya.

Further, "The Sultan of the Warsangli Tribe Somaliland Mahmood Ina Ali Shirreh was
hostile to British occupation...he was deported to Seychelles, arriving there on board
the SS Odin on May 3 1920" he lived at Anse Etoile during his eight-year exile,
returning to Somaliland abroad the SS Karapara on May 20 1928.

Such was the fate awaiting Africans who refused to bow to the Whiteman. The
aftermath of the brutal military invasion is still evident in present day Bunyoro; sparse
population and underdevelopment. Hoima, Masindi and Kibaale districts were ranked
among the under developed districts in the 1991 House hold census. Col. Colville who
executed the invasion against King Cwa Kabalega in 1893 had a number or objectives
to achieve:

"lt was clear that we were not likely to defeat Kabalega in open fight… but for the peace
of Uganda I considered it absolutely necessary that his power should be permanently
broken...".. my first thought was the belittlement of Kabalega

Sir Harry Johnson Governor of Uganda Protectorate in 1902 wrote "But as a matter of
fact this native prince (Kabalega) deserves no pity ...Col Colvilles set himself to break
Kabalega's power and succeeded in the main in doing so"

“As had information that Kabalega had crossed Nile determined to make another
attempt to capture him or at all events further weaken his prestige” Such was the
ferocity and determination and the follow up alter the conquest was not any kinder
either leading to the Nyangire rebellion.

In a matter of 6 years 1893 - 1899, Bunyoro Kitara was no more

The Banyoro like their captive King Cwa II. Kabalega were broken. They were arrested
in time and space, disillusioned and have ever since been lamenting in a state of
defeatism.

The oppressive and suppressive colonial rule encountered rebellious minds which
decided that Banyoro put on a silent opposition. That bred apathy, mistrust,
individualism, and lack confidence and resilience. The bitter history began dictating
on culture and vice versa. Time came when everything and attempt done by the various
governments to reverse the sad trend or affairs was utter hopelessness. lt was a dead -
end, there were no results. Everybody, Banyoro themselves inclusive have been asking,
“What happened to Bunyoro? What is wrong with Banyoro? What can one do for
Bunyoro?

The Banyoro gave up on life and Ieft providence to shape their destiny much unlike
their hero who "even when near defeated never gave up so long as there was the ghost
of a Chance of arousing his men to resists".

The Whiteman and his Crones were poised to achieve their desire beyond their dreams
and could if not reversed. Bunyoro was set to go into the records of myth and legends
to come like legendary Mayan in Central America.

One observed while in captivity and succumbing to old age Kabalega's spirit was still
alive" there is a Photograph taken of him in his old age that shows him standing with
a walking stick, yet still the gaze of the eyes is direct and fearless; and it is a fine and
indomitable head such as one might expect to see cast on heavy bronze."

When the two Images are compared then Chinwa Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart
was right to say that fire produces ash.

It is time the Banyoro emulated their ancestral’s firebrand, determination and

resilience as to salvage and catapult Kitara onto a new and progress modern course.
The tack is not an easy one but possible with a concerted effort. Together in unison it
shall be done. Come take the.

KAID, AHMED
 Born on March 17, 1921, at Tiaret, Si Ahmed was born into a family of small
landowners installed in Sidi Belgacem. Sidi Belgacem is located in the town of
Tagdempt not far from Mina and on lands of the former capital of Emir Abdelkader.
His father, a former communal guard was tortured and murdered by the French army
in 1957 in Mostaganem.

From a young age, Si Ahmed had the sense of a deeply committed leader with a strong
spirit and a sense of responsibility and action. He continued his primary and secondary
studies at Tiaret. he was made aware of the misdeeds of the colonial policy and the
precarious state of Algerians that resulted. A man of action, he campaigned openly and
realized very early on the situation of segregation suffered by the Algerian people. After
completing his military service during World War II in 1939–45, he campaigned
within UDMA.

Nationalist movement

Then he was elected Municipal Councillor and Deputy Mayor of Tiaret from 1951 to
1954. He became secretary of the UDMA journalist and a daily Oran in August 1953,
and moderated the region of Tiaret an awareness campaign on the situation in the
country and local elections, as well as arrange for three Tagdempt days, the congress
of the youth of UDMA.

Algerian Revolution

Kaïd Ahmed moved to Algiers in 1954 to make contact with various members of the
national movement and with the leaders of CRUA and the OS. In 1955, he carried the
weapon to become the Commander Slimane in the Area 8 of the Wialya 5 along with
Colonel Lotfi, Then becoming a member of the General Staff of the ALN alongside
Colonels Boussouf, Othman including Boumediène Chief of Staff of which he became
a close.

in 1961 he was one of the ALN representatives in the talks and the negotiations with
France, which led to 'ceasefire' and the signing of Evian agreements.

During the war of national liberation, Si Slimane participate actively in structuring the
FLN organization and the supply of weapons of the ALN.

After the independence

In 1962, he became Deputy Minister of Tourism and Government of the first People's
Democratic Republic of Algeria; He left in 1964 after a 'blurring' with President Ben
Bella. On 19 June 1965 he returned as a Member of Council of the Revolution and
Minister of Finance, over four years he made strong efforts to organize the country's
financial ins*utions, plan and launch initial development plans as well as the first
special plans Wilaya. In 1969, he was appointed Head of the FLN party until 1974,
when he disagreed with President Boumédiène regarding the implementation of the
Agrarian Revolution and the injustice it would create. He left Algeria for security
reasons and moved to France and later to Morocco where he died at March 5, 1978 in
Rabat from a heart attack, he was repatriated and buried in Tiaret
References

 Algerian Ministry of Moudjahidine (Arabic)

 Contradictions des cl*es au sein des m*es by Kaïd Ahmed
 Bouchama, Kamel. Kaı̈d Ahmed, réflexions d'un visionnaire / Alger:: ENAG
Éditions, , ISBN:9789931008439

El-KANEMI, SHEIKH MUHAMMED EL-AMIN (c.1779-1835).

Shehu al-Hajj Muhammad al-Amîn ibn Muhammad al-Kânemî (1776–1837)

was an Islamic scholar, teacher, religious and political leader who advised and
eventually supplanted the Sayfawa dynasty of the Kanem-Bornu Empire. In 1846, Al-
Kanemi's son Umar I ibn Muhammad al-Amin became the sole ruler of Borno, an
event which marked the end of the Sayfawa dynasty's eight hundred year rule. The
current Shehu of Bornu, a traditional ruler whose seat remains in modern Borno State,
Nigeria, is descended from Al-Kanemi.

Born to a Kanembu father and an Arab mother near Murzuk in what is today Libya,
Al-Kanemi rose to prominence as a member of a rural religious community in the
western provinces of what was then a much atrophied Borno Empire.
The Fulani jihadists, under Usman dan Fodio's banner tried to conquer Borno, under
Mai Dunama IX Lefiami, in 1808. They partly succeeded. They burnt the capital,
Ngazargamu and defeated the main army of the mai of Borno. Dunama called for the
help of Al-Kanemi to repel his Fulani opponents.
By planning, inspiration, and prayer, Al-Kanemi attracted a following, especially from
Shuwa Arab networks and Kanembu communities extending far outside Borno's
borders. The mai (monarch), Dunama IX Lefiami rewarded him with control over a
Bornu province on the Western march. Taking only the title "Shehu" ("Sheikh"), and
eschewing the traditional offices, al-Kanemi gathered a powerful following, becoming
both the voice of Bornu in negotiations with Sokoto, as well as a semi independent
ruler of a trade rich area with a powerful military. Dunama was deposed by his uncle
in 1809, but the support of al-Kanemi brought him back to power in 1813.
Al Kanemi waged his war against Sokoto not only with weapons but also with letters
as he desired to thwart dan Fodio’s jihad with the same ideological weapons. He
carried on a series of theological, legal and political debates by letter with the Sultan
of Sokoto Usman dan Fodio, and later with his son, Muhammed Bello. As the
expansion of Sokoto was predicated upon a struggle against paganism, apostasy, and
misrule, Al-Kanemi challenged the right of his neighbours to strike at a state which
had been Muslim for at least 800 years. These debates, often on the nature of Jihad
and Muslim rule, remain points of contention in modern Nigeria.

ElKanemi-1823-Reception of Denham and Clapperton, Kukawa, Bornu Empire,

Nigeria
When El-Kanemi rose to power after the Fulani jihad, he did not totally reorganise the
Sayfawa kingdom: he only tried to insert his men in the existing framework of the
Sayfawa territorial fiefs, the chima chidibe. Cohen argued that the main political
organisation of nineteenth century Borno was based on personal relationship and that
Al-Kanemi initiated a more formal patron-client relationship. Al-Kanemi's rule and
his successors is marked by the production of a remarkable written administrative and
diplomatic production. More than a hundred diplomatic letters are preserved between
1823 and 1918. They all bear validation marks that show a strong visual identity and
the work of an established administration.
Six men support al-Kanemi's rise to power in Bornu. They include his childhood friend
Al-Hajj Sudani, a Toubou trader and family friend al-Hajj Malia, his eldest brother-in-
law from his wife's family who led the Kanembu Kuburi in Kanem as Shettima Kuburi,
and three Shuwa Arabs: Mallam Muhammad Tirab of Baghirimi, Mallam Ibrahim
Wadaima of Wadai, and Mallam Ahmed Gonomi.
In 1814, al-Kanemi constructed the new city of Kukawa. This new city became the de
facto capital of Borno, as al-Kanemi took the title Shehu.
About 1819-20, Mai Dunama rose up in revolt against al-Kanemi, and was
subsequently killed in battle. Al-Kanemi then made Dunama's brother, Ibrahim, Mai.
Then in the 1820s, al-Kanemi drove the Fulani out of Bornu, challenging the Sokoto
Caliphate, and occupying the Deya-Damaturu area. This was followed by the
occupation of the Kotoko kingdom city states of Kusseri, Ngulfai, and Logone, after
defeating the Bagirmi in 1824.
Sayfawa mais remained titular monarchs after El-Kameni's death in 1837.

Tomb of Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi, Kukawa, Borno State, Nigeria

In 1846 the last mai, in league with the Ouaddai Empire, precipitated a civil war,
resisted by El-Kanemi's son, Umar (1837–1881). It was at that point that Umar became
sole ruler, thus ending one of the longest dynastic reigns in African history.

However, as Last mentioned, we still ignore to what extent Al-Kanemi was dominating
the whole territory of Borno after the Fulani jihad. Was he only at the head of a
personal principality as Last suggested, or did he totally overthrow the power of the
mai? This process which may have been longer than Brenner suggested is not very well
documented. Oral history and European explorers’ narratives only retain Al-Kanemi’s
irresistible rise to power. In this version of early nineteenth century history, Al-Kanemi
assumed power in the 1810s without any competition from mai Dunama IX Lefiami
before 1820. El-Kanemi, not just the face of Borno to foreign leaders, became more
and more indispensable to the mai. Some in mai Dunama's coterie were believed to
have been behind an attempt to kill the Shehu in 1820. At this date, mai Dunama and
king Burgomanda of Baguirmi plotted to get rid of El-Kanemi. This foreign
intervention in Bornuese politics was a failure and mai Dunama was replaced by mai
Ibrahim. El-Kanemi, while still titular subject of the new mai, had his own seals struck
as Shehu of all Bornu.
In February 1823, a British expedition led by Major Dixon Denham and Captain Hugh
Clapperton arrived in Borno. They were introduced to Al-Kanemi. In his travel
narrative published in 1826, Dixon Denham described Al-Kanemi:
Nature has bestowed on him all the qualifications for a great commander; an
enterprising genius, sound judgment, features engaging, with a demeanour gentle and
conciliating: and so little of vanity was there mixed with his ambition, that he refused
the offer of being made sultan

 Brenner, Louis, The Shehus of Kukawa: A History of the Al-Kanemi Dynasty of

Bornu, Oxford Studies in African Affairs (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973).
 Cohen, Ronald, The Kanuri of Bornu, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (New
York: Holt, 1967).
 Denham, Dixon and Captain Clapperton and the Late Doctor Oudney, Narrative of
Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, (Boston: Cummings,
Hilliards and Co., 1826).
 Isichei, Elizabeth, A History of African Societies to 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), pp. 318–320, ISBN 0-521-45599-5.
 Lange, Dierk, 'The kingdoms and peoples of Chad', in General history of Africa, ed.
by Djibril Tamsir Niane, IV (London: Unesco, Heinemann, 1984), pp. 238–265.
 Last, Murray, ‘Le Califat De Sokoto Et Borno’, in Histoire Generale De l'Afrique,
Rev. ed. (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1986), pp. 599–646.
 Lavers, John, "The Al- Kanimiyyin Shehus: a Working Chronology" in Berichte des
Sonderforschungsbereichs, 268, Bd. 2, Frankfurt a. M. 1993: 179-186.
 Oliver, Roland & Anthony Atmore (2005). Africa Since 1800, Fifth Edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83615-8.
 Palmer, Herbert Richmond, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London: John Murray,
1936).
 Taher, Mohamed (1997). Encyclopedic Survey of Islamic Dynasties A Continuing
Series. New Delhi: Anmol Publications PVT. LTD. ISBN 81-261-0403-1.

KAOCEN, AG MOHAMMED WAU TEGUIDA (c. 1880-1919).

Kaocen Ag Geda (1880–1919) (also known as Kaocen, Kaosen, Kawen) was a

Tuareg noble and clan leader. Born in 1880 near wadi Tamazlaght Aïr (modern Niger),
Kaocen from tribe of Ikazkazan berber, a subset of the Kel Owey confederation. He led
the Kaocen revolt, a rebellion against French colonial rule of the area around the Aïr
Mountains of northern Niger, during 1916-17. After the defeat of the revolt, Kaocen
fled north; he was captured and hanged in 1919 by local forces in Mourzouk, Libya.

Born into the wuro's family tribe of Ikazkazan Tuareg in what is now (Aïr Mountains)
the north of Niger, his exact lineage is debated. His brother Mokhtar Kodogo was his
second in command throughout his life, and survived only a year after his death, killed
while leading a revolt amongst the Toubou Fula in the Sultanate of Damagaram.

n adherent to the militantly anti-French Sanusiya Sufi religious order, Kaocen engaged
in numerous, mostly unsuccessful battles against French forces from at least 1909. He
raided French columns in what is today eastern Niger and western Chad. He
participated in several raids in the Borkou, Ennedi and Tibesti area, including the 1909
battle at Galakka. Under the direct orders of the Sanusiya leader, he commanded
forces at Ennedi in 1910, only to be defeated by the French and forced to retreat to the
border of Darfur. Returning first to Ounianga Kabir then the Fezzan (the center of
Sanusiya power), Kaocen rallied both tribal subjects and other nomads (not all Tuareg)
who were loyal to the Sanusiya.
There, in October 1914, the Sanusiya leadership declared a jihad against the French
colonialists. In 1916, Kaocen's forces began attacking towns in the Aïr Mountains. With
the aid of the Sultan of Agadez, Kaocen's forces placed the garrison under siege on 17
December 1916. They seized all the major towns of the Aïr, including Ingall, Assodé,
and Aouderas, placing what is today northern Niger under rebel control for over three
months.

On 3 March 1917 a large French force dispatched from Zinder relieved the Agadez
garrison, and Kaocen's forces retreated to Tibesti, conducting raids against the French
and local towns until he was eventually driven north to the Fezzan. There he was
captured and hanged in 1919 by local forces in Mourzouk hostile to the Sanusiya.

Today Kaocen is remembered by Tuareg nationalists as a hero, and his name is a

popular given name in Tuareg communities. Memory of the revolt, and the killings in
its wake, remain fresh in the minds of modern Tuareg. The episode is seen both as a
part of a larger anti-colonial struggle, and amongst some as part of the post
independence struggle for autonomy of the existing governments of Niger and its
neighbors.
The Kaocen revolt can also be placed in a longer history of Tuareg conflict with ethnic
Songhay and Hausa in the south central Sahara which goes back to at least the seizure
of Agadez by the Songhay Empire in 1500 CE, or even the first migrations of Berber
Tuaregs south into the Aïr in the 11th to 13th centuries CE. Conflicts have persisted
since independence, with major Tuareg risings in Mali's Adrar des Ifoghas during
1963-64, the 1990s insurgencies in both Mali and Niger, and a renewed series of
insurgencies beginning in the mid-2000s

References

 Samuel Decalo. Historical Dictionary of Niger. Scarecrow Press, London and New
Jersey (1979). ISBN 0-8108-1229-0
 Jolijn Geels. Niger. Bradt London and Globe Pequot New York (2006). ISBN 1-
84162-152-8.
 J. D. Fage, Roland Anthony Oliver. The Cambridge History of Africa. Cambridge
University Press (1975), p199. ISBN

KARNOU (c.1890-1928).

KASSA, RAS ASSERATE-MEDHIN (1922-1974)

Leul Ras (Prince) Aserate Kasa (also Aserate Kassa, Asrate Kassa and Aserate-
Medhin Kassa) GCVO (30 April 1922 – 23 November 1974) was a Viceroy of the
Province of Eritrea and a member of the nobility of the Ethiopian Empire. He was the
fourth son of Ras Kassa Haile Darge, and his wife Princess (Le'ilt) Tsige Mariam
Beshah. Prince Aserate Kassa was educated at Monkton Combe School in the United
Kingdom between 1937 and 1938. He was married to (Le'ilt) Zuriashwork Gebre-
Igziabiher, daughter of Jantirar Gebre-Igziabiher, and granddaughter of Empress
Menen Asfaw, consort of Emperor Haile Selassie I. Prince Aserate Kassa was the head
of the Selalle sub-branch of the Shewan branch of Ethiopia's Imperial Solomonic
dynasty.

Over the years Haile Selassie I ruled Ethiopia, Aserate held several positions including
Governor of Arsi, and of Shewa. In 1964, he was appointed Viceroy of Eritrea. His chief
rival was Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wold. The rivalry between the two prominent
figures was caused by the suspicions between the conservative court faction made up
largely but not exclusively of the nobility and church hierarchy, and led by Prince
Aserate, and the faction of reformers led by the commoner technocrats led by the
Prime Minister and officials largely of humble birth that owed their education and
appointment to positions of power to the Emperor.
In 1966, Aserate Kassa was raised from Dejazmach to Ras. His elevation followed the
death of his father Leul Ras Kassa, and his assumption of the headship of the Selalle
line of the dynasty.
Ras Aserate struggled with the growing unrest in Eritrea. One part of his response was
to create two armed groups under his direct control and funding: a commando force
made primarily of Christian Eritreans and trained by the Israelis, and an Eritrean
security force. The other part was to engage in discrete negotiations in hope of
reconciling most of the populace based on appeals to shared highland Christian
heritage. However, growing violence by the rebels enabled Aklilu Habte-Wold to
undercut his authority and encourage the army to take harsher measures. By 1968 the
rebels were fighting pitched battles against Ethiopian military forces. Israeli advisors
failed to effectively control the tendency of Ethiopian commanders to use brutal
tactics, which drove civilians to seek protection from the rebels. Only with difficulty
did Ras Asrate dissuade Emperor Haile Selassie from listening to Aklilu and his
generals and declare martial law in Eritrea in early 1970. Nevertheless, the Emperor
authorized major military campaigns, which not only failed to defeat the insurgents
but caused the death of the commanding general. Aklilu's faction was able to convince
the Emperor to recall Ras Aserate, declare martial law in Eritrea, and appoint General
Debebe Haile Mariam military governor.
Despite this loss of prestige, Haile Selassie selected Ras Aserate in July 1971 as
President of the Crown Council, to rejuvenate that body and oversee an orderly
transfer of power on Haile Selassie's death to his designated successor, Crown Prince
Asfaw Wossen. When the Emperor was deposed and the Derg took power, Aserate
Kassa was imprisoned and later executed along with 60 other imperial officials on 23
November 1974. His widow Princess Zuriashwork endured 14 years of harsh
imprisonment before being released with the other women of the Imperial dynasty.
His son Asfa-Wossen Asserate is a political analyst and consultant for African and
Middle-Eastern Affairs in Germany.

KHALED, EMIR (1875-1936).

Emir Khaled (1875 in Syria , 1936 in Damascus ; Khalid Al-Hashimi bin Abd al-
Qadir Al-Jasairi) was a French officer of Algerian descent and politician during
French colonial rule in Algeria.
Emir Khaled was the grandson of Abd el-Kader , a major leader in the resistance to the
French conquest. He was born in his grandfather's Syrian exile and spent his childhood
there. He completed his school education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris . Khaled
was trained as an officer at the Saint-Cyr Military School. He took part in combat
operations in Morocco and made it up to the captain .

Emir Khaled called for the Muslim-Algerian population to be assimilated as citizens of

equal value in the French Republic without them having to give up their cultural
origins. He called for Muslims to be able to obtain French citizenship without having
to give up being bound by Islamic Sharia law, which is valid in private law. He was
inspired by the Young Turks and justified his demands by stating that the French state
could not call Algerians into conscription, but could continue to exclude them from
political participation. Emir Khaled soon became the most prominent figure among
the Muslim-Algerian politicians who sought assimilation and published his own
newspaper under the title Ikdam.
Within Muslim society, Emir Khaled opposed parts of the Islamic clergy under Sheikh
Ben Badis , who refused any assimilation into French society. Emir Khaled was exiled
in Damascus in 1923 at the instigation of politicians from the settlers. He died there in
1936. His death caused national mourning in the colony.

1. John Ruedy: Modern Algeria - The Origins and Development of a Nation . 2nd
Edition. Bloomington, 2005, pp. 109-113, pp. 130 f.
2. Martin Evans: Algeria: France's undeclared War. Oxford, 2012, pp. 43-45. P. 55

KHIDER, MOHAMMED (1914-1967).

Mohamed Khider March 13, 1912, Biskra, Algeria – January 4, 1967, Madrid, Spain)
was an Algerian politician.

Mohamed Khider was one of the original leaders of the Front de Libération nationale
(FLN), having been previously active in its nationalist predecessors, the Étoile Nord-
Africaine and Parti du Peuple Algerien (PPA) of Messali Hadj. From 1946 to 1951 he
was a member of the French National Assembly as a representative of the Movement
for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD). He played an important role during
the first years of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), mainly in representing
the FLN externally. In 1956, he was part of a group of FLN politicians (Khider, Ahmad
Ben Bella, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf and Rabah Bitat) captured by France
in an airplane hijacking. Two years later, while incarcerated in France, he was an
elected member of the GPRA exile government, holding the symbolical post of
Minister of State. He was released as Algeria became independent in 1962.
After returning to Algeria, Khider joined Ahmed Ben Bella and the FLN army's chief
of staff, Col. Houari Boumédiène, in forming a Political Bureau of the FLN to replace
the GPRA, over which they had no control. Boumédiène's army, built up outside the
war zone in Morocco and Tunisia, quashed resistance among GPRA loyalists and
guerrilla units inside Algeria, as it moved in from its border area bases.
Khider then took on the role as Secretary-General of the post-war Party of FLN, with
control over finances, but quickly fell out with President Ben Bella. Among the causes
were political differences, personal rivalries, and opposition to Ben Bella's increasingly
autocratic rule. Ben Bella refused Khider's requests to allow the FLN into the decision-
making process, and replaced him as Secretary-General.
In 1963, Khider went into exile in Switzerland, bringing $12 million (or $14 million) of
party funds with him, saying they would be used to finance a political opposition to
continue the "genuine" nationalist tradition of the FLN. In 1967, he was assassinated
in Madrid, Spain. Most observers blamed his death on Col. Boumédiène, who had
toppled Ben Bella two years earlier, and to whom Khider had declared his continued
opposition.
He was posthumously rehabilitated by Boumédiène's successor, Chadli Bendjedid, in
1984.

References

1. Jr, Richard A. Lobban; Dalton, Chris H. (2017-01-26). African Insurgencies:

From the Colonial Era to the 21st Century. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781440839955.
2. "Mohamed Khider, Algerian Politician. Portrait de l'homme politique..." Getty
Images. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
3. "Algeria - The Algerian War of Independence". Encyclopedia Britannica.
Retrieved 2019-11-12.
4. "Milestones: Jan. 13, 1967". Time. 1967-01-13. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved
2019-11-12.
5. Studies, American University (Washington, D. C. ) Foreign Area (1979).
Algeria, a Country Study. [Department of Defense], Department of the Army.
KIGERI IV, RWABUGIRI (1860-1895).

Kigeli IV Rwabugiri (1840? - November 1895) was the king (mwami) of the
Kingdom of Rwanda in the late 19th century. He was among the last Nyiginya kings in
a ruling dynasty that had traced their lineage back four centuries to Gihanga, the first
'historical' king of Rwanda whose exploits are celebrated in oral chronicles. He was a
Tutsi with the birth name Rwabugiri. He was the first king in Rwanda's history to
come into contact with Europeans. He established an army equipped with guns he
obtained from Germans and prohibited most foreigners, especially Arabs, from
entering his kingdom.
Rwabugiri held authority from 1853 to 1895. He died in November 1895, during an
expedition in modern-day Congo, shortly after the arrival of the German explorer
Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen. His adopted son, Mibambwe IV Rutarindwa, was
proclaimed the next king.
By the end of Rwabugiri's rule, Rwanda was divided into a standardized structure of
provinces, districts, hills, and neighborhoods, administered by a hierarchy of chiefs.
The chiefs were predominantly Tutsi at the higher levels and with a greater degree of
mutual participation by Hutus.
He defended the borders of the Rwandan kingdom against invading neighboring
kingdoms, slave traders, and Europeans. Rwabugiri was a warrior king and is regarded
as one of Rwanda's most powerful kings. Some Rwandans see him as the last true King
of Rwanda due to the tragic assassination of his successor Rutarindwa and coup by his
stepmother Kanjogera who installed her son Musinga. By the beginning of the 20th
century, Rwanda was a unified state with a centralized military structure.
Rwabugiri is sometimes attributed for the tactics used by the RPF during the Rwandan
genocide to retain Tutsi superiority.
Tradition has it that the kingdom of Rwanda was originally occupied by a number of
Bantu chieftainships which were conglomerated during the 10th century by Tutsi
pastoralists from the North who brought ideas of caste systems and a political society.
By the 19th century, the state had become much more centralized. Rwabugiri
established a royal court that collected labor dues and claimed tributary food in
Rubengera around 1870. This served the purpose of channeling food across the
country and becoming a center of commerce. During periods of food shortages, most
of the country would suffer while the very rich Tutsi who resided in Rubengera would
be able to find food and livestock. The royal court was prepared for this situation
usually, however, and controlled the production of produce as to always create a
surplus. This was meant to serve as a famine strategy. This surplus would then be
distributed by the king's order to the poorest citizens in exchange for their labor.
Ethnicity became an important factor during the period of state expansion that began
in the late 19th century. Rwabugiri gained increasing control over land, cattle, and
people in Central Africa. Rwabugiri not only saw a personal increase in power over the
land, but also consolidated power among political elites that became known either
officially or informally as Tutsi. Previously, they had mostly been local chieftains who
were now finding themselves as part of a complex network that allowed the Mwami to
build national cohesion in newly acquired regions.[8] The appointed chieftains were
occasionally met with local resistance. For example, in the Northwest region the Balera
group challenged the power of the Nduga who had been appointed to the region by the
royal court. The contestation was along clan, rather than ethnic, lines, as both groups
were considered Tutsi under the then ethnic understanding. During this period, there
was an increase in the long-standing traditions of ubuhake and ubureetwa, a practice
of vassalage under which labor and resources are exchanged for political favor. Many
of the lands that Rwabugiri had annexed, such as Bugoyi, Bwishaza and Kingogo in the
east had no previous contact with Tutsi pastoralists and had been entirely inhabited
by Hutu. The period following annexation saw a heavy influx of Tutsi into these areas.
At first, the relationship between Tutsi and Hutu in these areas were mostly peaceful
and commercial. After Rwabugiri instated a stronger administrative machinery,
however, he used force to pacify resistance which led to a series of brutal encounters
between Hutu and Rwabugiri's forces.
Rwanda was unlike other African states in that was it initially not divided among the
colonial powers during the Berlin Conference in 1884. Instead, Rwanda was assigned
to the German Empire in the later 1890 conference in Brussels. Still, there were no
expeditions made until 1893, when the German explorer, Count Gustav Adolf von
Götzen led an expedition into Tanzania. Germany had made little effort to establish a
colonial administration at the time, as they had limited forces in East Africa, and
Rwanda was a densely populated territory with an existing strict administrative
network. The death of Kigeli IV, however, and the subsequent coup weakened the state
and opened a window for German direct colonization in 1897.
After Kigeli IV died, his son Rutalindwa was declared king. The new mwami's queen
mother, however, was not his biological mother but was another wife of Kigeli IV;
Kanjogera of the Bega clan. Rutalindwa's birth mother was from a politically weak
clan, the Abakono. The Nyiginya Clan, to which the old and new mwami belonged, was
also weak at this particular time because Kigeli IV had killed chiefs from this lineage
of clans who had showed too much independence. As such, the Bega clan was in a
unique position after the death of Kigeli IV to change the status quo and assume power.
Together with her brother Kabare, chief of the Bega clan, Kanjogera carried out a coup
d'état at Rucunshu where Rutalindwa was killed and Kanjogera's own son, Musinga,
was named mwami under the name Yuhi V Musinga. Kanjogera and her brother were
effectively in charge at his point, as Musinga was still too young to rule. The two
continued to purge the Nyinga who had survived Kigeli IV's purge, as to avoid the
possibility that they would return to power. It was under this conflict that German
colonialists began to exercise control over the Mwami by supporting their royal forces.

References
 1. Centrale, Musée Royal de l'Afrique (1964). Annalen - Koninklijke Museum voor
Midden-Afrika, Tervuren, België. Reeks in-80. Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale.
p. 473.
2. "RwandaNet - Documents histoire".
3. Cambridge University Press (1946). "Abstracts of Some Recent Papers".
International African Institute. 16: 126 – via JSTOR.
4. Gourevitch, Philip (1999). We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be
Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux. pp. 47. ISBN 978-0312243357.
5. Alex Kagame
6. Lemarchand, René (April 1998). "Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which
Genocide? Whose Genocide?". African Studies Review. 41 (1): 3–16.
doi:10.2307/524678. JSTOR 524678.
7. Pottier, Johan P. (April 1986). "The Politics of Famine Prevention: Ecology,
Regional Production and Food Complementarity in Western Rwanda". African
Affairs. 85 (339): 207–237. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097775.
JSTOR 723013.
8. Palmer, Nicola (2015). Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in
Post-Genocide Rwanda Front Cover. Manhattan, New York: Oxford University
Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-19-939819-5. Retrieved 28 April 2019.
9. Lemarchand, René (1966). "Power and Stratification in Rwanda: A
Reconsideration". Cahiers d'Études Africaines. 6 (24): 598–599.
doi:10.3406/cea.1966.3083. JSTOR 4390945.
10. Twagilimana, Aimable (2007). Historical Dictionary of Rwanda. United
Kingdom: Scarecrow Press Inc. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-8108-5313-3. Retrieved 28
April 2019.

KIMATHI, DEDAN (1920-1957).

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri (31 October 1920 – 18 February 1957), born Kimathi wa
Waciuri in what was then British Kenya, was the senior military and spiritual leader
of the Mau Mau Uprising. Widely regarded as a revolutionary leader, he led the armed
military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his
capture in 1956 and execution in 1957. Kimathi is credited with leading efforts to create
formal military structures within the Mau Mau, and convening a war council in 1953.
He, along with Musa Mwariama and Muthoni Kirima, was one of three Field Marshals.
Kenyan nationalists view him as the heroic figurehead of the Kenyan freedom struggle
against British colonial rule, while the British government saw him as a terrorist.
Despite being viewed with disdain by the first two presidents of independent Kenya,
Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, Kimathi and his fellow Mau Mau rebels were
officially recognised as heroes in the struggle for Kenyan independence under the
Mwai Kibaki administration, culminating in the unveiling of a Kimathi statue in 2007.
This was reinforced by the passage of a new Constitution in 2010 calling for
recognition of national heroes.

Kimathi was born in Thegenge Village, Tetu division, Nyeri District. His father died in
September 1920, a month before Kimathi was born. Kimathi was raised by his mother,
Waibuthi, one of his father's three wives. He had two brothers, Wambararia and
Wagura, and two sisters. At the age of fifteen, he enrolled at the local primary school,
Karuna-ini, where he perfected his English. He continued his education in the
secondary school Tumutumu CMS School. He was a passionate writer, and wrote
extensively before and during the Mau Mau uprising. He was a Debate Club member
in his school and also showed ability in poetry. Kimathi balked at any efforts to
discipline or control him, and was constantly in trouble with his teachers; as a result,
he drifted in and out of the educational system. Tumutumu could not contain his
rebellious nature. It is alleged he even tried to paralyze learning at the institution by
stealing the school bell. His associates said he took the bell and rang it loudly while
atop the Tumutumu hill. The missionaries were however lenient, his name still
remains in the preserved school register. In 1940, Kimathi enlisted in the British Army,
but was discharged after a month, allegedly for drunkenness and persistent violence
against his fellow recruits. He moved from job to job, from swineherd to primary
school teacher, from which he was dismissed after accusations of violence against his
pupils. His close associates however said he was dismissed for ranting about the school
administration.

Around 1947 or 1948, whilst working in Ol Kalou, Kimathi came into contact with
members of the Kenya African Union (KAU). By 1950 he had become secretary to the
KAU branch at Ol Kalou, which was controlled by militant supporters of the Mau Mau
cause. The Mau Mau began as the Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), a militant Kikuyu,
Embu and Meru army which sought to reclaim land, which the British settlers had
gradually stripped away from them. As the group's influence and membership widened
it became a major threat to the colonial government.

Upon taking the oath of the Mau Mau, Kimathi in 1951 joined the Forty Group, the
militant wing of the defunct Kikuyu Central Association. As branch secretary, Kimathi
presided over oath-taking. He believed in compelling fellow Kikuyu by way of oath to
bring solidarity to the independence movement. To achieve this he administered
beatings and carried a double-barrelled shotgun. His activities with the group made
him a target of the colonial government, and he was briefly arrested that same year but
escaped with the help of local police. This marked the beginning of his involvement in
the uprising, and he formed the Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest
fighters in 1953.

Kimathi's fight for an independent Kenya came to an end in 1956. On 21 October of

that year, Ian Henderson, a British colonial police officer who had been on an
"obsessive hunt" for Kimathi, managed to trap him in his hide-out in the forest.
Kimathi was shot in the leg and captured by a Tribal Policeman called Ndirangu Mau
who found Kimathi armed with a panga (a bladed African tool like a machete). His
capture marked the beginning of the end of the forest war; the image of Kimathi being
carried away on a stretcher was printed in leaflets by the British (over 120,000 were
distributed), to demoralise the Mau Mau and their supporters. Kimathi was charged
with possession of a .38 Webley Scott revolver.

A court presided over by Chief Justice O'Connor and with an all-black jury of Kenyans
sentenced him to death while he lay in a hospital bed at the General Hospital Nyeri.
His appeal was dismissed, and the death sentence upheld.

The day before his execution, he wrote a letter to a Father Marino asking him to get
his son an education: "He is far from many of your schools, but I trust that something
must be done to see that he starts earlier under your care." He also wrote about his
wife, Mukami, saying "She is detained at Kamiti Prison and I suggest that she will be
released some time. I would like her to be comforted by sisters e.g. Sister Modester,
etc. for she too feels lonely. And if by any possibility she can be near the mission as
near Mathari so that she may be so close to the sisters and to the church."

He asked to see his wife, and the morning of the execution Mukami was allowed to see
Kimathi. The two chatted for close to two hours. He told her that "I have no doubt in
my mind that the British are determined to execute me. I have committed no crime.
My only crime is that I am a Kenyan revolutionary who led a liberation army... Now If
I must leave you and my family I have nothing to regret about. My blood will water the
tree of Independence."

In the early morning of 18 February 1957 he was executed by hanging at the Kamiti
Maximum Security Prison. He was buried in an unmarked grave, and his burial site
remained unknown for 62 years until 25 October 2019 when the Dedan Kimathi
Foundation reported that the grave-site had been identified at the Kamiti Prison
grounds.

Kimathi was married to Mukami Kimathi. Among their children are sons Wachiuri
and Maina and daughters Nyambura, Waceke,Wangeci, Nyakinyua Nyawira
,Muthoni, Wangui and Wanjugu. The government constructed a three-bedroomed
house for Mukami at her farm in Kinangop, Nyandarua County in 2009 and provided
her with a double cabin pickup for private use in 2012. In 2010, Kimathi's widow
requested that the search for her husband's body be renewed so she could give him a
proper burial.

On 11 November 2003, the Kibaki government formally registered the Mau Mau
movement, disregarding the colonial-era legislation that had outlawed the
organisation and branded its members "terrorists". In his remarks during the handing
over of the certificate, Vice President Moody Awori regretted that it had taken 40 years
for the group to be officially registered despite the sacrifices the Mau Mau had made
for Kenya's independence.[

The Kibaki government erected a 2.1 metre bronze statue titled Freedom Fighter
Dedan Kimathi on a graphite plinth, in central Nairobi. The statue is at the junction of
Kimathi Street and Mama Ngina Street. Kimathi, clad in military regalia, holds a rifle
in the right hand and a dagger in the left, the last weapons he held in his struggle. The
foundation stone for the statue was laid by Vice President Awori on 11 December 2006
and the completed statue unveiled by President Kibaki on 18 February 2007 coinciding
with the 50th anniversary of the day he was executed. In his remarks, Kibaki paid
homage to Kimathi as a man who not only paid the ultimate price for Kenya's
liberation but also inspired others to fight against oppression.

The statue attracted praise from Kenyans as a long overdue recognition of the Mau
Mau for their part in the struggle for independence. This was in marked contrast to
the post-colonial norm of the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi governments'
regard of the Mau Mau as terrorists.

On 12 September 2015, the British government unveiled a Mau Mau memorial statue
in Nairobi's Uhuru Park that it funded "as a symbol of reconciliation between the
British government, the Mau Mau, and all those who suffered". This followed a June
2013 decision by Britain to compensate more than 5,000 Kenyans tortured and abused
during the Mau Mau insurgency.

Kimathi was held in high regard by anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. In July
1990, five months after his release from 27 years of imprisonment by South Africa's
apartheid regime, Mandela visited Nairobi and requested to see Kimathi's grave and
meet his widow Mukami. Mandela's request was an embarrassing moment for the Moi
administration, which had largely ignored Kimathi, like Jomo Kenyatta's government
before it. It was an awkward moment searching for her in the village where she and
her family lived forgotten in poverty. Mandela's request was not met. During a public
address at the Kasarani Stadium in Nairobi before he left the country, Mandela stated
his admiration for Kimathi, Musa Mwariama, Waruhiu Itote and other Mau Mau
leaders who inspired his own struggle against injustice. It was only 15 years later in
2005, during his second visit to Kenya, that Mandela finally managed to meet Mukami
as well as two of Kimathi's children.

Mandela's respect for Kimathi by the early 1960s is also alluded to in My Moment with
a Legend by Ronnie Kasrils, the former intelligence chief of the ANC’s armed wing
Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) and defence minister in Mandela’s government.

KOKO, KING FREDERICK WILLIAM (c.1853-1898).

King Frederick William Koko, Mingi VIII of Nembe (1853–1898), known as

King Koko and King William Koko, was an African ruler of the Nembe Kingdom
(also known as Nembe-Brass) in the Niger Delta, now part of southern Nigeria.
A Christian when chosen as king of Nembe in 1889, Koko's attack on a Royal Niger
Company trading post in January 1895 led to reprisals by the British in which his
capital was sacked. Following a report on the Nembe uprising by Sir John Kirk which
was published in March 1896, finding that forty-three of Koko's hostages had been
murdered and ceremoniously eaten, Koko was offered a settlement of his grievances
but found the terms unacceptable, so was deposed by the British. He died in exile in
1898.
King Koko of Fantippo, a character in the Doctor Dolittle books of Hugh Lofting
(1886–1947), appears to be based on the real King Koko.

King Koko in His War Canoe on His Way down the River, from The Daily Graphic of

An Ijaw, Koko was a convert to Christianity who later returned to the local traditional
religion. Before becoming king (amanyanabo), he had served as a Christian
schoolteacher, and in 1889 this helped him in his rise to power. The leading chiefs of
Nembe, including Spiff, Samuel Sambo, and Cameroon, were all Christians, and after
having ordered the destruction of Juju houses a large part of their reason for choosing
Koko as king in succession to King Ockiya was that he was a fellow-Christian. However,
there was at the same time a coparcenary king, the elderly Ebifa, who ruled at
Bassambiri and was Commander-in-Chief until his death in 1894.

With the settlement of European traders on the coast, Nembe had engaged in trade
with them, but it was poorer than its neighbours Bonny and Calabar. Since 1884,
Nembe had found itself included in the area declared by the British as the Oil Rivers
Protectorate, within which they claimed control of military defence and external
affairs. Nembe was the centre of an important trade in palm oil, and it had refused to
sign a treaty proposed by the British, opposing the Royal Niger Company's aim of
bringing all trade along the kingdom's rivers into its own hands.

Admiral Bedford, who

routed Koko's forces in 1895

HMS Thrush

By the 1890s, there was intense resentment of the Company's treatment of the people
of the Niger delta and of its aggressive actions to exclude its competitors and to
monopolize trade, denying the men of Nembe the access to markets which they had
long enjoyed. As king, Koko aimed to resist these pressures and tried to strengthen his
hand by forming alliances with the states of Bonny and Okpoma. He renounced
Christianity and in January 1895, after the death of Ebifa, he threw caution to the
winds and led more than a thousand men in a dawn raid on the Royal Niger Company's
headquarters at Akassa. Arriving on 29 January with 22 war canoes and 1,500 foot
soldiers from different parts of the Ijo nation to attack the RNC depot in Akassa. They
destroyed the warehouses and offices, vandalised official and industrial machines, and
burnt down the entire depot. While about 70 men were said to have been captured, 25
were killed, and 32 white men were taken hostage as part of the spoils of war to Nembe
and 13 were not accounted for. Many of the white men were later executed in cold
blood at the "Sacrifice Island" the next day, January 30, 1895.

Koko then sought to negotiate with the Company for the release of the hostages, his
price being a return to free trading conditions,[11] and on 2 February he wrote to Sir
Claude MacDonald, the British consul-general, that he had no quarrel with Queen
Victoria but only with the Niger Company. MacDonald noted of what Koko said of
the Company that it was "complaints it had been my unpleasant duty to listen to for
the last three and a half years without being able to gain for them any redress".
Despite this, the British refused Koko's demands, and more than forty of the hostages
were then ceremoniously eaten. On 20 February the Royal Navy counter-attacked.
Koko's city of Nembe was razed and some three hundred of his people were killed.
Many more of his people died from a severe outbreak of smallpox.

Sir Claude MacDonald, British

consul-general at Brass

Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, who had led the British forces against Koko, sent
the following telegram to the Admiralty from Brass on 23 February:

Left Brass on February 20, with HMS Widgeon, HMS Thrush, two steamers of the
Niger Company, and the boat of HMS St George, with marines and Protectorate
troops; anchored off Nimbi Creek and seized Sacrifice Island the same afternoon; the
approach was obstructed by stockades, which are also under construction on the
island; 25 war canoes came out and opened an ineffectual fire; three were sunk, and
the rest retired. On February 21 the intricate channels were buoyed and the creek
reconnoitred. At daybreak on February 22 we attacked, and, after an obstinate
defence of a position naturally difficult, a landing was gallantly effected and Nimbi
completely burned. In the evening the force was withdrawn, after King Koko's and
other chiefs' houses were destroyed.

Bedford sent a further despatch from Brass on 25 February:

Fishtown destroyed today. Brass chiefs and people implicated in attack Akassa have
now been punished. No more casualties. Wounded progressing favourably. No
further operations contemplated. Consul-General concurs. I am leaving for Loanda
to-morrow evening. Two ships remain in vicinity for present.

On 23 March Sir Claude MacDonald arrived at Brass in his yacht Evangeline towing
sixteen of Koko's war canoes which had been surrendered, but the king himself had
not been captured. Towards the end of April 1895, the area returned to business as
usual, with MacDonald fining the men of Brass £500, an amount which sympathetic
traders on the river volunteered to pay. Koko assured the British that his part in the
rising had been exaggerated, and returned several cannon and a machine-gun looted
from Akassa. There was then an exchange of prisoners. Public opinion in Britain came
down against the Royal Niger Company and its director George Goldie, who was seen
as having goaded Koko into hostilities. The Colonial Office commissioned the explorer
and anti-slavery campaigner Sir John Kirk to write a report on the events at Akassa
and Brass, and in August Koko came to Brass to meet MacDonald, who was about to
sail for England, but quickly took to the bush again. On MacDonald's arrival at
Liverpool he told reporters that the people of Nembe-Brass were waiting for the
outcome of Kirk's report.

Sir John Kirk's Report was presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of
Her Majesty the Queen in March 1896. One key finding was that forty-three of Koko's
prisoners had been murdered and eaten. In April 1896 Koko refused the terms of a
settlement offered to him by the British and was declared an outlaw. Reuters reported
that the Niger stations were strongly defended in preparation for a possible new attack.
However, no attack came. A reward of £200 was unsuccessfully offered for Koko, who
was forced to flee from the British, hiding in remote villages.

On 11 June 1896, in reply to a question by Sir Charles Dilke in the House of Commons,
George Nathaniel Curzon, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, said

The Commissioner has in his possession a plan prepared by the chairman of the Royal
Niger Company for the admitting of the Brass men into markets hitherto closed to
them on the Niger. It was, however, subject to acceptance by King Koko, which it has
been impossible to obtain as, since the attack on Akassa and subsequent cannibalism
of captives in his capital, he has declined to meet any of the British authorities,
including Sir John Kirk. In consequence of this behaviour he has been deposed. The
settlement is now dependent upon the organization of a new native government in
Brass, and will, it is hoped, very soon be arrived at.
Koko fled to Etiema, a remote village in the hinterland, where he died in 1898 in a
suspected suicide. The next year, the charter of the Royal Niger Company was revoked,
an act seen as partly a consequence of the short war with Koko, and with effect from 1
January 1900 the Company sold all its possessions and concessions in Africa to the
British government for £865,000.

In his book for children Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923), Hugh Lofting created the
West African kingdom of Fantippo, ruled over by a king named Koko. Before his
encounters with Dolittle, the fictional King Koko had sometimes made war on others
and had sold some of his prisoners as slaves. The main stated purpose of the British in
the Anglo-Aro War of 1901–1902 was to suppress the slave trade still being carried on
by some African states in what is now Nigeria.

References:

 Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, The Akassa Raid, 1895 (Ibadan University Press, 1960)
 Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, The small brave city-state: a history of Nembe-Brass in
the Niger Delta (Ibadan University Press and University of Wisconsin Press,
1964)
 Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, Beke you mi: Nembe against the British Empire
(Onyoma Research Publications, 2001) ISBN 9783507567
 Livingston Borobuebi Dambo, Nembe: the divided kingdom (Paragraphics,
2006)
 Sir John Kirk, Report by Sir John Kirk on the disturbances at Brass (Colonial
Office, 1896)

…?KOUYATE, TIEMOKO GARAN (1902-1942).

Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté, teacher, journalist and political activist was a pioneer for
African nationalism and one of the first Communists in Africa. He was born on April
27, 1902 in Ségou, French Soudan. Kouyaté was regarded as the most influential
personality among the West African migrant community in France according to
French intelligence assessments. Kouyaté was also among the first generation of
Western-educated Africans in French Soudan. He was from the Bambara ethnic group
of Mali. He was first educated at a primary school in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
Kouyaté arrived in France after he was awarded a scholarship to further his studies at
the Ecole Normale at Aix en Provence.
In 1926 Kouyaté, alongside Lamine Senghor, a Senegalese nationalist and World War
I veteran, created the Ligue de Defense de la Race Nègre (the League for the Defense
of the Negro Race, or LDRN). It was one of the most important pan-African political
movements to emerge from interwar Paris. A key characteristic of the LDRN is that it
demanded full citizenship for all colonial subjects[5] and was funded by the French
Communist Party. Kouyaté took over the direction of the LDRN after the death of
Senghor a year after its creation. Assuming the role of secretary general, he
constructed a program that called for the independence of African colonies and the
establishment of socialism in Africa. Under Kouyaté’s leadership, the league supported
Garveyism and the United States National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. On interactions with W.E.B Du Bois, famous African American leader on April
29, 1929 he described the aim of the league as “the political, economic, moral, and
intellectual emancipation of the whole of the Negro race. It is a matter of winning back,
all honorable means, the national independence of the Negro peoples in the colonial
territories of France, England, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal…and of setting up in
Black Africa a great Negro state.” Consequently, in 1927 and 1928, La Race Nègre.
published articles of cultural interest about blacks in the United states as well as the
cultural achievements of Africans throughout history and the eyewitness accounts of
abuses committed by the colonial administrators. French colonial authorities
considered the LDRN a dangerous and inflammatory organization and banned La
Race Nègre in the colonies. Kouyaté was under close watch by French authorities after
the Colonial Ministry requested background information on him. This led to
information on him being dispatched in the French West African monthly propaganda
reports.
After attending a conference in Frankfurt at the end of July in 1929, he visited Berlin,
where his contact with Wilhelm Münzenberg, German Communist political activist
and publisher, allowed him to gain access to the African community there.
In 1931 the League for the Defense of the Negro Race, acquiring a new leader split.
This led to the creation of the Union des Travailleurs Nègres (Union of the Negro
Workers), an association made up of both communists and ex-communists. From this
emerged a new journal titled Le Cri des Nègres (Cry of the Negroes). The magazine
focused on the poor treatment of Black people globally and published an article by the
Guadeloupian communist Stephane Rosso where he described the Scottsboro rape
trial in the United States and the deaths of Africans in the construction of the Congo-
Ocean railroad. The article reached Dakar in Senegal almost immediately.
Kouyaté was banished from the French Communist Party as well as the Union Des
Travailleurs Nègres in October 1933. After being accused of being in contact with
enemies of the revolutionary trade union movement and of not facing responded to
requests of justifications, Kouyaté’s name and photograph were published in the
Communist Party’s blacklist which explained he was “kicked out of the party for being
anti-communist, indelicacy and having a disaggregated attitude”.
In 1935, Kouyaté wrote a letter to the Ethiopian leader, Haile Selassie where he
pledged to do everything possible, including the provision of material support, to
defend the country against the Italian invasion. As part of movement against the war
and the occupation of Ethiopia by fascist Italy, Kouyaté also participated in the
founding of the Ethiopian Defense Committee, going as far as writing articles on the
county in El Ouma, the organization’s journal. In addition to that, he organized
protests against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. In December 1935, he created a
monthly magazine named Africa in which he used to continue his campaign for the
independence of the colonies and call for the reforms for the benefit of Africans.
The specific circumstances surrounding the death of Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté’s are
uncertain. One theory believes that he was entrusted with money for propaganda by
the Germans but kept it for himself leading to his demise during the Nazi occupation
of France.

References
Shillington, Kevin, ed. (2013-07-04). Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set.
Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-48386-2.
Genova, James E. (2001). "The Empire Within: The Colonial Popular Front in France,
1934-1938". Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. 26 (2): 175–209. ISSN 0304-3754.
KUTAKO, CHIEF HOSEA (1870-1970).

chief Hosea Katjikururume Komombumbi Kutako (1870 – 18 July 1970), was

an early Namibian nationalist leader and a founder member of Namibia's first
nationalist party, the South West African National Union (SWANU).

"During his life, he experienced the transition from independence to colonization, and
the destruction of Herero society and the loss of its lands, although he struggled to
regain the freedom and self-determination that he and his society had previously
known. Initially Kutako campaigned only for his own people, yet at a very early stage
he began campaigning for the freedom and self-determination of all the inhabitants of
Namibia. In this, Hosea Kutako can be described as the country’s first truly nationalist
politician, a man who strove for the greater good not only for himself but for all. Hosea
Kutako was born as a Herero royal, but into a position which, but for the course of
history, would never have enabled him to claim leadership of the Herero, let alone of
the people of Namibia" Jan-Brand Gewald

Hosea Komombumbi Kutako was born in 1870 at Okahurimehi, near Kalkfeld.

In 1920, Hosea Kutako was officially appointed as leader of the Herero people by
Frederik Maharero. Mahahero had been empowered to transfer power by his father,
Herero chief Samuel Maharero, who had been exiled after the Herero War and was
since banned from entering the country by the South African Mandatory
Administration. Hosea Kutako took over his role as a commitment to preserve the
memory of the Herero before and during the German colonisation as well as of the
Battle of Waterberg. The aftermath of this battle was recognised in 2004 by
Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development aid minister, as being
equivalent to genocide.
The seat of his Kutako's chieftaincy was situated at the settlement of Toasis in the
Aminuis area.

Also in 1920, he founded the Green Flags, an association to keep up tradition, and went
on by founding the Red Flags in 1923, after Samuel Maharero’s death. Kutako
prompted and organised the transfer of Samuel Maharero’s body and its funeral on
Okahandja next to the grave of Jonker Afrikaner. Kutako also founded the
Truppenspieler association. It was intended to attain military importance, but this was
opposed both by the South African authorities and by Sam Nujoma, the co-founder of
the South West African People's Organisation SWAPO. So, the Truppenspieler had to
content themselves with an accompanying role at Herero Day.
Kutako became deputy chief of Namibia's Traditional Leaders Council, and also
became Chief of the Botswana Mbanderu people in 1951. Along with the British
Anglican priest Rev. Michael Scott, he submitted numerous petitions to the United
Nations during the 1950s and 1960s calling on the world body to end South African
rule and grant Namibia independence. This eventually led to the UN's recognition of
Namibia as a sovereign country under colonial administration by South Africa and the
historic 1971 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that South Africa's
continued administration of Namibia was illegal in terms of international law. Hosea
Kutako is considered a national hero in Namibia.
He died on 18 July 1970 in the Aminuis Reserve, in the remote eastern part of the
Omaheke Region of Namibia.
Hosea Kutako is one of nine national heroes of Namibia that were identified at the
inauguration of the country's Heroes' Acre near Windhoek. Founding president Sam
Nujoma remarked in his inauguration speech on 26 August 2002 that:
Chief Hosea Komombumbi Kutako [...] participated on the anti colonial wars of 1904
as one of the leading commanders. He also played an historic and significant role in
petitioning the United Nations Organisation demanding the placement of the then
South West Africa under the United Nations trusteeship system. [...] In this way, he
played a major role in Namibia's struggle for freedom and independence. To his
revolutionary spirit and his visionary memory we humbly offer our honor and
respect.
Kutako is honoured in form of a granite tombstone with his name engraved and his
portrait plastered onto the slab.[4]
Windhoek's international airport, the country's primary international airport, is
named after him.
In July 2010, Kutako's former home in the Omaheke Region was nominated by the
Omaheke Regional Council to become a national heritage site.
References:

1. Dierks, Klaus. "Biographies of Namibian Personalities: K". klausdierks.com.

Retrieved 1 January 2020.
2. "German minister says sorry for genocide in Namibia" (15 August 2004) The
Guardian
3. Matundu-Tjiparuro, Kae (14 January 2013). "Police implored to act against
stock theft". New Era. Archived from the original on 19 February 2013.
4. Nujoma, Sam (26 August 2002). "Heroes' Acre Namibia Opening Ceremony -
inaugural speech". via namibia-1on1.com.
5. Chief Kutako's house could become a heritage site New Era, 26 July 2010

LOBENGULA, KING (c.1836-1894).

From the second decade of the 19th century to about 1840 southern Africa had been
convulsed in turmoil and destruction. Shaka the Great had usurped the Zulu throne in
or about 1818 and had created a powerful military machine with which he laid waste
large parts of southern Africa in the bid to create a united Zulu nation.

One of the most brilliant commanders of this period of destruction, which the Zulu call
Imfecane, was Mzilikazi. He had been chief of the Kumalo clan and one of Shaka's
ablest generals. After a quarrel with Shaka, Mzilikazi fled Zululand with his people and
fought his way into what is now Rhodesia, where he established the Ndebele
(Matabele) kingdom. Lobengula was his son.

Lobengula ruled the Ndebele during a time of crisis in central Africa. The Berlin
Conference (1884-1885) was to cut Africa into spheres of influence for the European
powers eager to establish colonies. The Ndebele kingdom's geographic position made
it the center across which the ambitions of the Europeans collided.

Coming from the south, over what is now known as Botswana, the British worked
through Cecil Rhodes to establish themselves in Lobengula's land. Rhodes, then
premier of the Cape Colony, wanted to carve out a vast British colony which would
stretch from the Cape of Good Hope to Egypt. The railway line he planned to build to
link Cape Town and Cairo would run through Ndebele territory. He also wanted a
British presence in central Africa to block Boer movement northward. The Portuguese
dreamed of a link between Angola and Mozambique across Ndebele country, and the
Germans wanted one between South-West Africa and Tanganyika. From the Congo
the Belgians were pressing southward toward Lobengula's domains. The Boers from
the Transvaal had their eyes on the fertile lands on the northern side of the Limpopo.

The British sent a missionary, John Smith Moffat, to Lobengula's court to keep an eye
on British interests. Moffat was the son of a missionary who had made a name for
himself among the Botswana to the south. Lobengula welcomed him as a bearer of
spiritual tidings. The missionary persuaded the King to sign a treaty with the British
by which Lobengula undertook not to cede land to any power without the consent of
the British. Sections of the army opposed the treaty on the score that it surrendered
the sovereignty of the Ndebele to the British. Lobengula believed and argued that the
man of God wanted a friendship which would protect that very sovereignty.

Rhodes followed the Moffat maneuver with a delegation to Lobengula which asked for
and got permission for Rhodes to trade, hunt, and prospect for precious minerals in
Ndebele territory. This came to be known as the Rudd Concession (1888). In return
Rhodes offered 1, 000 Martini-Henry rifles, 100, 000 rounds of ammunition, an
annual stipend of £1, 200, and a steamboat on the Zambezi. He formed the British
South Africa Company to explore the concession and organized 200 pioneers,
promising each a 3, 000-acre farm on Ndebele land, and sent them north with a force
of 500 company police.

Rhodes's plans infuriated the Ndebele. Lobengula canceled the concession and
ordered the British out of his country. As he had only spears to ensure respect for his
commands, the British ignored his order, proceeded to complete the road link with the
south, and brought in more settlers.

Lobengula next tried diplomacy, an art in which he had never excelled. He gave a
concession to Edouard Lippert from Johannesburg in the Boer Republic. Lippert was
to make an annual payment to Lobengula for a lease which gave him the right to grant,
lease, or rent parts of Ndebele land in his name for 100 years. This attempt to play the
Boers against the British was Lobengula's undoing. Lippert turned round and sold the
concession to the very company Lobengula had expelled. The company cut up
Lobengula's land and distributed the promised farms to the pioneers.

The company's British shareholders were pleased with Rhodes's stratagem.

Encouraged by his victory, Rhodes next planned to extend the railway line from
Mafeking northward. This line was to run through Ndebele territory. But by this time
Lobengula and his people were no longer in the mood to allow further incursions into
their lands. Rhodes had to start thinking of war.

British telegraph wires were cut near Victoria. The company's police seized the cattle
found near the scene of the crime. It turned out that the animals belonged to
Lobengula. The Ndebele military clamored for their return. War was averted by the
British negotiating a settlement.

While these developments were taking place, the British extended their control over
land which Lobengula claimed. Black communities which had owed allegiance to
Lobengula were encouraged to come under British rule. This was not difficult to do
because Lobengula had not treated his weaker neighbors with much understanding. It
became clear that British intentions and Lobengula's independence were
incompatible. War broke out toward the end of 1893. The Ndebele army was crushed,
and Lobengula died about a month later.

Reference:

Charles L. Norris-Newman, Matabeleland and How We Got It (1895); Ian D. Colvin,

The Life of Jameson (2 vols., 1922); Eric A. Walker, A History of Southern Africa (3d
ed. 1957; originally published in 1928 as A History of South Africa); and Gustav
Preller, Lobengula: The Tragedy of a Matabele King (1963).

Bhebe, Ngwabi. Lobengula of Zimbabwe, London: Heinemann Educational, 1977.

Cooper-Chadwick, J. Three years with Lobengula and experiences in South Africa,

Bulawayo: Books of Rhodesia, 1975.

LUMUMBA, PATRICE (1925-1961).

"Lumumba" redirects here. For other people and topics using the name Lumumba, see
Lumumba (disambiguation).

Patrice Émery Lumumba (alternatively styled Patrice Hemery Lumumba; 2

July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who
served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the
Congo (then Republic of the Congo) from June until September 1960. He played a
significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an
independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and pan-Africanist, he led
the Congolese National Movement (MNC) party from 1958 until he was assassinated.

Shortly after Congolese independence in 1960, a mutiny broke out in the army,
marking the beginning of the Congo Crisis. Lumumba appealed to the United States
and the United Nations for help to suppress the Belgian-supported Katangan
secessionists led by Moïse Tshombe. Both refused due to suspicions among the
Western world that Lumumba ambiguously held pro-communist views. These
suspicions appeared to be supported when Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for
assistance, which the CIA described as a "classic communist takeover". This led to
growing differences with President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and chief-of-staff Joseph-
Désiré Mobutu, as well as with the United States and Belgium, who opposed the Soviet
Union in the Cold War.
After Mobutu's military coup, Lumumba attempted to escape to Stanleyville to join his
supporters who had established a new anti-Mobutu rival state called the Free Republic
of the Congo. Lumumba was captured and imprisoned en route by state authorities
under Mobutu and executed by a firing squad under the command of the Katangan
authorities. Following his assassination, he was widely seen as a martyr for the wider
Pan-African movement. In 2002, Belgium formally apologised for its role in the
assassination.

Patrice Lumumba was born on 2 July 1925 to Julienne Wamato Lomendja, and her
husband, François Tolenga Otetshima, a farmer, in Onalua in the Katakokombe region
of the Kasai province of the Belgian Congo. He was a member of the Tetela ethnic
group and was born with the name Élias Okit'Asombo. His original surname means
"heir of the cursed" and is derived from the Tetela words okitá ("heir, successor") and
asombó ("cursed or bewitched people who will die quickly").He had three brothers
(Charles Lokolonga, Émile Kalema, and Louis Onema Pene Lumumba) and one half-
brother (Tolenga Jean). Raised in a Catholic family, he was educated at a Protestant
primary school, a Catholic missionary school, and finally the government post office
training school, where he passed the one-year course with distinction. He was known
for being a vocal, precocious young man, regularly pointing out the errors of his
teachers in front his peers, often to their chagrin. This outspoken nature would come
to define his life and career. Lumumba spoke Tetela, French, Lingala, Swahili, and
Tshiluba.
Outside of his regular studies, Lumumba took an interest in the Enlightenment ideals
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. He was also fond of Molière and Victor Hugo.
He wrote poetry, and many of his works had an anti-imperialist theme.
He worked as a traveling beer salesman in Léopoldville and as a postal clerk in a
Stanleyville Post Office for eleven years. In 1951, he married Pauline Opangu.
In the period following World War II, young leaders across Africa increasingly worked
for national goals and independence from the colonial powers. In 1955, Lumumba
became regional head of the Cercles of Stanleyville and joined the Liberal Party of
Belgium. He edited and distributed party literature. After a study tour in Belgium in
1956, he was arrested on charges of embezzlement of $2500 from the post office. He
was convicted and sentenced one year later to 12 months' imprisonment and a fine.
After his release, Lumumba helped found the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC)
party on 5 October 1958, and quickly became the organization's leader.
The MNC, unlike other Congolese parties developing at the time, did not draw on a
particular ethnic base. It promoted a platform that included independence, gradual
Africanisation of the government, state-led economic development, and neutrality in
foreign affairs. Lumumba had a large popular following, due to his personal charisma,
excellent oratory, and ideological sophistication. As a result, he had more political
autonomy than contemporaries who were more dependent on Belgian connections.[15]
Lumumba was one of the delegates who represented the MNC at the All-African
Peoples' Conference in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958. At this international
conference, hosted by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Lumumba further
solidified his Pan-Africanist beliefs. Nkrumah was personally impressed by
Lumumba's intelligence and ability.
In late October 1959, Lumumba, as leader of the MNC, was arrested for inciting an
anti-colonial riot in Stanleyville; 30 people were killed. He was sentenced to 6 months
in prison. The trial's start date of 18 January 1960 was the first day of the Congolese
Round Table Conference in Brussels, intended to make a plan for the future of the
Congo.
Despite Lumumba's imprisonment, the MNC won a convincing majority in the
December local elections in the Congo. As a result of strong pressure from delegates
upset by Lumumba's trial, he was released and allowed to attend the Brussels
conference.
The conference culminated on 27 January 1960 with a declaration of Congolese
independence. It set 30 June 1960 as the independence date with national elections to
be held from 11–25 May 1960. The Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) won a
plurality in the election.
Six weeks before the date of independence, Walter Ganshof van der Meersch was
appointed as the Belgian Minister of African Affairs. He lived in Léopoldville, in effect
becoming Belgium's de facto resident minister in the Congo, administering it jointly
with Governor-general Hendrik Cornelis. He was charged with advising King
Baudouin on the selection of a formateur. On 8 June 1960, Ganshof flew to Brussels
to meet with Baudouin. He made three suggestions for formateur: Lumumba, as the
winner of the elections; Joseph Kasa-Vubu, the only figure with a reliable national
reputation who was associated with the coalescing opposition; or some to-be-
determined third individual who could unite the competing blocs.
Ganshof returned to the Congo on 12 June 1960. The following day he appointed
Lumumba to serve as the delegate (informateur) tasked with investigating the
possibility of forming a national unity government that included politicians with a
wide range of views, with 16 June 1960 as his deadline.[20] The same day as Lumumba's
appointment, the parliamentary opposition coalition, the Cartel d'Union Nationale,
was announced. Though Kasa-Vubu was aligned with their beliefs, he remained
distanced from them. The MNC-L was also having trouble securing the allegiances of
the PSA, CEREA (Centre de Regroupement Africain), and BALUBAKAT (Association
Générale des Baluba du Katanga). Initially, Lumumba was unable to establish contact
with members of the cartel. Eventually several leaders were appointed to meet with
him, but their positions remained entrenched. On 16 June 1960, Lumumba reported
his difficulties to Ganshof, who extended the deadline and promised to act as an
intermediary between the MNC leader and the opposition. Once Ganshof had made
contact with the cartel leadership, he was impressed by their obstinacy and assurances
of a strong anti-Lumumba polity. By evening Lumumba's mission was showing even
less chance of succeeding. Ganshof considered extending the role of informateur to
Cyrille Adoula and Kasa-Vubu, but faced increasing pressure from Belgian and
moderate Congolese advisers to end Lumumba's assignment.
The following day, on 17 June 1960, Ganshof declared that Lumumba had failed and
terminated his mission. Acting on Ganshof's advice, Baudouin then named Kasa-Vubu
formateur. Lumumba responded by threatening to form his own government and
present it to Parliament without official approval. He called a meeting at the OK Bar
in Léopoldville, where he announced the creation of a "popular" government with the
support of Pierre Mulele of the PSA.
Meanwhile, Kasa-Vubu, like Lumumba, was unable to communicate with his political
opponents. He assumed that he would secure the Presidency, so he began looking for
someone to serve as his prime minister. Most of the candidates he considered were
friends who had foreign support similar to his own, including Albert Kalonji, Joseph
Iléo, Cyrille Adoula, and Justin Bomboko. Kasa-Vubu, was slow to come to a final
decision. On 18 June 1960, Kasa-Vubu announced that he had completed his
government with all parties except the MNC-Lumumba. That afternoon Jason
Sendwe, Antoine Gizenga, and Anicet Kashamura announced in the presence of
Lumumba that their respective parties were not committed to the government. The
next day, on 19 June 1960, Ganshof summoned Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba to a
meeting so they could forge a compromise. This failed when Lumumba flatly refused
the position of prime minister in a Kasa-Vubu government. The following day, on 20
June 1960, the two rivals met in the presence of Adoula and diplomats from Israel and
Ghana, but no agreement was reached.

Lumumba (left center) poses with his government outside the Palais de la Nation
immediately following its investiture
Most party leaders refused to support a government that did not include Lumumba.
The decision to make Kasa-Vubu the formateur was a catalyst that rallied the PSA,
CEREA, and BALUBAKAT to Lumumba, making it unlikely that Kasa-Vubu could
form a government that would survive a vote of confidence. When the Chamber met,
on 21 June 1960, to select its officers, Joseph Kasongo of the MNC-L was elected
president with 74 votes (a majority), while the two vice presidencies were secured by
the PSA and CEREA candidates, both of whom had the support of Lumumba. With
time running out before independence, Baudouin took new advice from Ganshof and
appointed Lumumba as formateur.
Once it was apparent that Lumumba's bloc controlled Parliament, several members of
the opposition became eager to negotiate for a coalition government in order to share
power. By 22 June 1960, Lumumba had a government list, but negotiations continued
with Jean Bolikango, Albert Delvaux, and Kasa-Vubu. Lumumba reportedly offered
Alliance of Bakongo (ABAKO) the ministerial positions for Foreign Affairs and Middle
Classes, but Kasa-Vubu instead demanded the Ministry of Finance, a minister of state,
the Secretary of State for the Interior, and a written pledge of support from the MNC-
L and its allies for his presidential candidacy. Kalonji was presented with the
agriculture portfolio by Lumumba, which he rejected, although he was suitable due to
his experience as an agricultural engineer. Adoula was also offered a ministerial
position, but refused to accept it.
By the morning of 23 June 1960, the government was, in the words of Lumumba,
"practically formed". At noon, he made a counter-offer to Kasa-Vubu, who instead
responded with a letter demanding the creation of a seventh province for the Bakongo.
Lumumba refused to comply and instead pledged to support Jean Bolikango in his bid
for the Presidency. At 14:45, he presented his proposed government before the press.
Neither ABAKO nor the MNC-Kalonji (MNC-K) were represented among the
ministers, and the only PSA members were from Gizenga's wing of the party. The
Bakongo of Léopoldville were deeply upset by their exclusion from Lumumba's
cabinet. They subsequently demanded the removal of the PSA-dominated provincial
government and called for a general strike to begin the following morning. At 16:00,
Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu resumed negotiations. Kasa-Vubu eventually agreed to
Lumumba's earlier offer, though Lumumba informed him that he could not give him
a guarantee of support in his presidential candidacy. The resulting 37-strong
Lumumba Government was very diverse, with its members coming from different
classes, different tribes, and holding varied political beliefs. Though many had
questionable loyalty to Lumumba, most did not openly contradict him out of political
considerations or fear of reprisal
At 22:40 on 23 June 1960, the Chamber of Deputies convened in the Palais de la
Nation to vote on Lumumba's government. After Kasongo opened the session,
Lumumba delivered his main speech, promising to maintain national unity, abide by
the will of the people, and pursue a neutralist foreign policy.[37] It was warmly received
by most deputies and observers. The Chamber proceeded to engage in a heated debate.
Though the government contained members from parties that held 120 of the 137
seats, reaching a majority was not a straightforward task. While several leaders of the
opposition had been involved in the formative negotiations, their parties as a whole
had not been consulted. Furthermore, some individuals were upset they had not been
included in the government and sought to personally prevent its investiture. In the
subsequent arguments, multiple deputies expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of
representation of their respective provinces and/or parties, with several threatening
secession. Among them was Kalonji, who said he would encourage people of Kasaï to
refrain from participating in the central government and form their own autonomous
state. One Katangese deputy objected to the same person being appointed as premier
and as head of the defence portfolio.
When a vote was finally taken, only 80 of the 137 members of the Chamber were
present. Of these, 74 voted in favor of the government, five against, and one abstained.
The 57 absences were almost all voluntary. Though the government had earned just as
many votes as when Kasongo won the presidency of the Chamber, the support was not
congruent; members of Cléophas Kamitatu's wing of the PSA had voted against the
government while a few members of the PNP, PUNA, and ABAKO voted in favor of it.
Overall, the vote was a disappointment for the MNC-L coalition. The session was
adjourned at 02:05 on 24 June 1960.
The Senate convened that day to vote on the government. There was another heated
debate, in which Iléo and Adoula expressed their strong dissatisfaction with its
composition. Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga (CONAKAT) members
abstained from voting. When arguments concluded, a decisive vote of approval was
taken on the government: 60 voted in favor, 12 against, while eight abstained. All
dissident arguments for alternative cabinets, particularly Kalonji's demand for a new
administration, were rendered impotent, and the Lumumba government was officially
invested.[41] With the institution of a broad coalition, the parliamentary opposition was
officially reduced to only the MNC-K and some individuals.
At the onset of his premiership, Lumumba had two main goals: to ensure that
independence would bring a legitimate improvement in the quality of life for the
Congolese and to unify the country as a centralised state by eliminating tribalism and
regionalism. He was worried that opposition to his government would appear rapidly
and would have to be managed quickly and decisively.
To achieve the first aim, Lumumba believed that a comprehensive "Africanisation" of
the administration, in spite of its risks, would be necessary. The Belgians were opposed
to such an idea, as it would create inefficiency in the Congo's bureaucracy and lead to
a mass exodus of unemployed civil servants to Belgium, whom they would be unable
to absorb into the government there. It was too late for Lumumba to enact
Africanisation before independence. Seeking another gesture that might excite the
Congolese people, Lumumba proposed to the Belgian government a reduction in
sentences for all prisoners and an amnesty for those serving a term of three years or
less. Ganshof feared that such an action would jeopardize law and order, and he evaded
taking any action until it was too late to fulfill the request. Lumumba's opinion of the
Belgians was soured by this affair, which contributed to his fear that independence
would not appear "real" to the average Congolese.
In seeking to eliminate tribalism and regionalism in the Congo, Lumumba was deeply
inspired by the personality and undertakings of Kwame Nkrumah and by Ghanaian
ideas of the leadership necessary in post-colonial Africa. He worked to seek such
changes through the MNC. Lumumba intended to combine it with its parliamentary
allies—CEREA, the PSA, and possibly BALUBAKAT—to form one national party, and
to build a following in each province. He hoped it would absorb other parties and
become a unifying force for the country.

The independence ceremony for the Congo, 30 June 1960, at which Lumumba
delivered his independence speech.
Independence Day was celebrated on 30 June 1960 in a ceremony attended by many
dignitaries, including King Baudouin of Belgium and the foreign press. Baudouin's
speech praised developments under colonialism, his reference to the "genius" of his
great-granduncle Leopold II of Belgium, glossing over atrocities committed during his
reign over the Congo Free State. Belgian prime minister Gaston Eyskens, who checked
the text, thought this passage went too far. He wanted to drop this reference to Léopold
II. The King had limited political power in Belgium, but he was free to write his own
speeches (after revision by the government). The King continued, "Don't compromise
the future with hasty reforms, and don't replace the structures that Belgium hands
over to you until you are sure you can do better. Don't be afraid to come to us. We will
remain by your side, give you advice". President Kasa-Vubu thanked the King.
Lumumba, who had not been scheduled to speak, delivered an impromptu speech that
reminded the audience that the independence of the Congo had not been granted
magnanimously by Belgium:
“[...] For this independence of the Congo, although being proclaimed today by
agreement with Belgium, an amicable country, with which we are on equal terms,
no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting
that it has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in
which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our
strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood,
to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to
put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force. [...]”
Most European journalists were shocked by the stridency of Lumumba's speech. The
Western media criticised him. Time magazine characterized his speech as a
"venomous attack". In the West, many feared that the speech was a call to arms that
would revive Belgian-Congolese hostilities, and plunge the former Belgian colony into
chaos.
"Every morning at seven o'clock he sat at the huge desk, embellished with the forgotten
coat of arms of colonial Belgium; a golden lion in a blue shield. There the Premier first
received his immediate assistants, set up the schedule for the day, went over
correspondence, which he answered. Without a stop until evening he was receiving
salesmen, petitioners, donors, experts, businessmen, and diplomats, the most
variegated crowd that ever walked on the market...everybody wanted to deal
exclusively with Lumumba."
-Prime Minister's Press Secretary Serge Michel
Independence Day and the three days that followed it were declared a national holiday.
The Congolese were preoccupied by the festivities, which were conducted in relative
peace. Meanwhile, Lumumba's office was overtaken by a flurry of activity. A diverse
group of individuals, Congolese and European, some friends and relatives, hurried
about their work. Some undertook specific missions on his behalf, sometimes without
direct permission. Numerous Congolese citizens showed up at the office at whim for
various reasons. Lumumba, for his part, was mostly preoccupied with a lengthy
itinerary of receptions and ceremonies.
On 3 July Lumumba declared a general amnesty for prisoners, but it was never
implemented. The following morning he convened the Council of Ministers to discuss
the unrest among the troops of the Force Publique. Many soldiers hoped that
independence would result in immediate promotions and material gains, but were
disappointed by Lumumba's slow pace of reform. The rank-and-file felt that the
Congolese political class—particularly ministers in the new government—were
enriching themselves while failing to improve the troops' situation. Many of the
soldiers were also fatigued from maintaining order during the elections and
participating in independence celebrations. The ministers decided to establish four
committees to study, respectively, the reorganisation of the administration, the
judiciary, and the army, and the enacting of a new statute for state employees. All were
to devote special attention to ending racial discrimination. Parliament assembled for
the first time since independence and took its first official legislative action by voting
to increase the salaries of its members to FC 500,000. Lumumba, fearing the
repercussions the raise would have on the budget, was among the few to object,
dubbing it a "ruinous folly".
On the morning of 5 July 1960, General Émile Janssens, commander of the Force
Publique, in response to increasing excitement among the Congolese ranks,
summoned all troops on duty at Camp Léopold II. He demanded that the army
maintain its discipline and wrote "before independence = after independence" on a
blackboard for emphasis. That evening the Congolese sacked the canteen in protest of
Janssens. He alerted the reserve garrison of Camp Hardy, 95 miles away in Thysville.
The officers tried to organise a convoy to send to Camp Léopold II to restore order, but
the men mutinied and seized the armoury. The crisis which followed came to dominate
the tenure of the Lumumba Government.

Official portrait of Prime Minister Lumumba, 1960

The next day Lumumba dismissed Janssens and promoted all Congolese soldiers one
grade, but mutinies spread out into the Lower Congo. Although the trouble was highly
localized, the country seemed to be overrun by gangs of soldiers and
looters.[clarification needed] The media reported that Europeans were fleeing the
country. In response, Lumumba announced over the radio, "Thoroughgoing reforms
are planned in all sectors. My government will make every possible effort to see that
our country has a different face in a few months, a few weeks." In spite of government
efforts, the mutinies continued. Mutineers in Leopoldville and Thysville surrendered
only upon the personal intervention of Lumumba and President Kasa-Vubu.
On 8 July, Lumumba renamed the Force Publique as the "Armée Nationale
Congolaise" (ANC). He Africanised the force by appointing Sergeant Major Victor
Lundula as general and commander-in-chief, and chose junior minister and former
soldier Joseph Mobutu as colonel and Army chief of staff. These promotions were
made in spite of Lundula's inexperience and rumours about Mobutu's ties to Belgian
and US intelligence services. All European officers in the army were replaced with
Africans, with a few retained as advisers. By the next day the mutinies had spread
throughout the entire country. Five Europeans, including the Italian vice-consul, were
ambushed and killed by machine gun fire in Élisabethville, and nearly the entire
European population of Luluabourg barricaded itself in an office building for safety.
An estimated two dozen Europeans were murdered in the mutiny. Lumumba and
Kasa-Vubu embarked on a tour across the country to promote peace and appoint new
army commanders.
Belgium intervened on 10 July, dispatching 6,000 troops to the Congo, ostensibly to
protect its citizens from the violence. Most Europeans went to Katanga Province,
which possessed much of the Congo's natural resources. Though personally angered,
Lumumba condoned the action on 11 July, provided that the Belgian forces acted only
to protect their citizens, followed the direction of the Congolese armed forces, and
ceased their activities once order was restored. The same day the Belgian Navy
bombarded Matadi after it had evacuated its citizens, killing 19 Congolese civilans.
This greatly inflamed tensions, leading to renewed Congolese attacks on Europeans.
Shortly thereafter Belgian forces moved to occupy cities throughout the country,
including the capital, where they clashed with Congolese soldiers. On the whole, the
Belgian intervention made the situation worse for the armed forces.
The State of Katanga declared independence under regional premier Moïse Tshombe
on 11 July, with support from the Belgian government and mining companies such as
Union Minière. Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu were denied use of Élisabethville's airstrip
the following day and returned to the capital, only to be accosted by fleeing Belgians.
They sent a protest of the Belgian deployment to the United Nations, requesting that
they withdraw and be replaced by an international peacekeeping force.
The UN Security Council passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 143,
calling for immediate removal of Belgian forces and establishment of the United
Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC). Despite the arrival of UN troops, unrest
continued. Lumumba requested UN troops to suppress the rebellion in Katanga, but
the UN forces were not authorised to do so under their mandate. On 14 July Lumumba
and Kasa-Vubu broke off diplomatic relations with Belgium. Frustrated at dealing with
the West, they sent a telegram to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, requesting that
he closely monitor the situation in the Congo.
 Lumumba arriving in New York on 24 July 1960
Lumumba decided to travel to New York City in order to personally express the
position of his government to the United Nations. Shortly before his departure, he
announced that he had signed an economic agreement with a U.S. businessman who
had created the Congo International Management Corporation (CIMCO). According
to the contract (which had yet to be ratified by Parliament), CIMCO was to form a
development corporation to invest in and manage certain sectors of the economy. He
also declared his approval of the second Security Council resolution, adding that
"[Soviet] aid was no longer necessary" and announced his intention to seek technical
assistance from the United States. On 22 July Lumumba left the Congo for New York
City. He and his entourage reached the United States two days later after brief stops in
Accra and London. There they rendezvoused with his UN delegation at the Barclay
Hotel to prepare for meetings with UN officials. Lumumba was focused on discussing
the withdrawal of Belgian troops and various options for technical assistance with Dag
Hammarskjöld. African diplomats were keen that the meetings would be successful;
they convinced Lumumba to wait until the Congo was more stable before reaching any
more major economic agreements (such as the CIMCO arrangement). Lumumba saw
Hammarskjöld and other staff of the UN Secretariat over three days on 24, 25, and 26
July. Though Lumumba and Hammarskjöld were restrained towards one another,
their discussions went smoothly. In a press conference, Lumumba reaffirmed his
government's commitment to "positive neutralism".
On 27 July, Lumumba went to Washington, D.C., the United States capital. He met
with the US Secretary of State and appealed for financial and technical assistance. The
US government informed Lumumba that they would offer aid only through the UN.
The following day he received a telegram from Gizenga detailing a clash at Kolwezi
between Belgian and Congolese forces. Lumumba felt that the UN was hampering his
attempts to expel the Belgian troops and defeat the Katangan rebels. On 29 July,
Lumumba went to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to request help. The Canadians
rebuffed a request for technicians and said that they would channel their assistance
through the UN. Frustrated, Lumumba met with the Soviet ambassador in Ottawa and
discussed a donation of military equipment. When he returned to New York the
following evening, he was restrained towards the UN. The United States government's
attitude had become more negative, due to reports of the rapes and violence
committed by ANC soldiers, and scrutiny from Belgium. The latter was chagrined that
Lumumba had received a high-level reception in Washington. The Belgian
government regarded Lumumba as communist, anti-white, and anti-Western. Given
its experience in the Congo, many other Western governments gave credence to the
Belgian view.
Frustrated with the UN's apparent inaction towards Katanga as he departed the US,
Lumumba decided to delay his return to the Congo. He visited several African states.
This was apparently done to put pressure on Hammarskjöld and, failing that, to seek
guarantees of bilateral military support to suppress Katanga. Between 2 and 8 August,
Lumumba toured Tunisia, Morocco, Guinea, Ghana, Liberia, and Togoland. He was
well received in each country and issued joint communiques with their respective
heads of state. Guinea and Ghana pledged independent military support, while the
others expressed their desire to work through the United Nations to resolve the
Katangan secession. In Ghana, Lumumba signed a secret agreement with President
Nkrumah providing for a "Union of African States". Centred in Léopoldville, it was to
be a federation with a republican government. They agreed to hold a summit of African
states in Léopoldville between 25 and 30 August to further discuss the issue.
Lumumba returned to the Congo, apparently confident that he could now depend
upon African military assistance. He also believed that he could procure African
bilateral technical aid, which placed him at odds with Hammarskjöld's goal of
funneling support through ONUC. Lumumba and some ministers were wary of the UN
option, as it would supply them with functionaries who would not respond directly to
their authority.
"The government has declared a state of emergency throughout the whole
country...Those who confuse subversive maneuvers with freedom, obstruction with
democratic opposition, or their personal interest with that of the nation will soon be
judged by the people. Those who are paid today by the enemies of freedom for the
purpose of maintaining sedition movements across the country and thereby disturbing
the social peace will be punished with the utmost energy..."
On 9 August Lumumba proclaimed an état d'exception (or state of emergency)
throughout the Congo. He subsequently issued several orders in an attempt to reassert
his dominance on the political scene. The first outlawed the formation of associations
without government sanction. A second asserted the government's right to ban
publications that produced material likely to bring the administration into disrepute.
On 11 August the Courrier d'Afrique printed an editorial which declared that the
Congolese did not want to fall "under a second kind of slavery". The editor was
summarily arrested and four days later publication of the daily ceased. Shortly
afterward, the government shut down the Belga and Agence France-Presse wire
services. The press restrictions garnered a wave of harsh criticism from the Belgian
media. Lumumba decreed the nationalisation of local Belga offices, creating the
Agence Congolaise de Presse, as a means of eliminating what he considered a centre
of biased reporting, as well as creating a service through which the government's
platform could be more easily communicated to the public. Another order stipulated
that official approval had to be obtained six days in advance of public gatherings. On
16 August Lumumba announced the installation of a régime militaire spécial for the
duration of six months.
Throughout August Lumumba increasingly withdrew from his full cabinet and instead
consulted with officials and ministers he trusted, such as Maurice Mpolo, Joseph
Mbuyi, Kashamura, Gizenga, and Antoine Kiwewa. Lumumba's office was in disarray,
and few members of his staff did any work.[99] His chef de cabinet, Damien Kandolo,
was often absent and acted as a spy on behalf of the Belgian government. Lumumba
was constantly being delivered rumors from informants and the Sûreté, encouraging
him to grow deeply suspicious of others. In an attempt to keep him informed, Serge
Michel, his press secretary, enlisted the assistance of three Belgian telex operators,
who supplied him with copies of all outgoing journalistic dispatches.
Lumumba immediately ordered Congolese troops to put down the rebellion in
secessionist South Kasai, which was home to strategic rail links necessary for a
campaign in Katanga. The operation was successful, but the conflict soon devolved
into ethnic violence. The army became involved in massacres of Luba civilians. The
people and politicians of South Kasai held Lumumba personally responsible for the
actions of the army. Kasa-Vubu publicly announced that only a federalist government
could bring peace and stability to the Congo. This broke his tenuous political alliance
with Lumumba and tilted the political favour in the country away from Lumumba's
unitary state. Ethnic tensions rose against him (especially around Leopoldville), and
the Catholic Church, still powerful in the country, openly criticised his government.
Even with South Kasai subdued, the Congo lacked the necessary strength to retake
Katanga. Lumumba had summoned an African conference in Leopoldville from 25–31
August, but no foreign heads of state appeared and no country pledged military
support. Lumumba demanded once again that UN peacekeeping soldiers assist in
suppressing the revolt, threatening to bring in Soviet troops if they refused. The UN
subsequently denied Lumumba the use of its forces. The possibility of a direct Soviet
intervention was thought increasingly likely.
President Kasa-Vubu began fearing a Lumumbist coup d'état would take place. On the
evening of 5 September, Kasa-Vubu announced over radio that he had dismissed
Lumumba and six of his ministers from the government for the massacres in South
Kasai and for involving the Soviets in the Congo. Upon hearing the broadcast,
Lumumba went to the national radio station, which was under UN guard. Though they
had been ordered to bar Lumumba's entry, the UN troops allowed the prime minister
in, as they had no specific instructions to use force against him. Lumumba denounced
his dismissal over the radio as illegitimate, and in turn labeled Kasa-Vubu a traitor and
declared him deposed. Kasa-Vubu had not declared the approval of any responsible
ministers of his decision, making his action legally invalid. Lumumba noted this in a
letter to Hammarskjöld and a radio broadcast at 05:30 on 6 September. Later that day
Kasa-Vubu managed to secure the countersignatures to his order of Albert Delvaux,
Minister Resident in Belgium, and Justin Marie Bomboko, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
With them, he announced again his dismissal of Lumumba and six other ministers at
16:00 over Brazzaville radio.
Lumumba and the ministers who remained loyal to him ordered the arrest of Delvaux
and Bomboko for countersigning the dismissal order. The latter sought refuge in the
presidential palace (which was guarded by UN peacekeepers), but early in the morning
on 7 September, the former was detained and confined in the Prime Minister's
residence. Meanwhile, the Chamber of Deputies convened to discuss Kasa-Vubu's
dismissal order and hear Lumumba's reply. Delvaux made an unexpected appearance
and took to the dais to denounce his arrest and declare his resignation from the
government. He was enthusiastically applauded by the opposition. Lumumba then
delivered his speech. Instead of directly attacking Kasa-Vubu ad hominem, Lumumba
accused obstructionist politicians and ABAKO of using the presidency as a front for
disguising their activities. He noted that Kasa-Vubu had never before offered any
criticism of the government and portrayed their relationship as one of cooperation. He
lambasted Delvaux and Minister of Finance Pascal Nkayi for their role in the UN
Geneva negotiations and for their failure to consult the rest of the government.
Lumumba followed his arguments with an analysis of the Loi Fondemental and
finished by asking Parliament to assemble a "commission of sages" to examine the
Congo's troubles.
The Chamber, at the suggestion of its presiding officer, voted to annul both Kasa-
Vubu's and Lumumba's declarations of dismissal, 60 to 19. The following day
Lumumba delivered a similar speech before the Senate, which subsequently delivered
the government a vote of confidence, 49 to zero with seven abstentions. According to
Article 51, Parliament was granted the "exclusive privilege" to interpret the
constitution. In cases of doubt and controversy, the Congolese were originally
supposed to appeal constitutional questions to the Belgian Conseil d'État. With the
rupture of relations in July this was no longer possible, so no authoritative
interpretation or mediation was available to bring a legal resolution to the dispute.
Numerous African diplomats and newly appointed ONUC head Rajeshwar Dayal
attempted to get the president and prime minister to reconcile their differences, but
failed. On 13 September, the Parliament held a joint session between the Chamber of
Deputies and the Senate. Though several members short of a quorum, they voted to
grant Lumumba emergency powers.
On 14 September Mobutu announced over the radio that he was launching a "peaceful
revolution" to break the political impasse and therefore neutralising the President,
Lumumba's and Iléo's respective governments, and Parliament until 31 December. He
stated that "technicians" would run the administration while the politicians sorted out
their differences. In a subsequent press conference, he clarified that Congolese
university graduates would be asked to form a government, and further declared that
all Eastern Bloc countries should close their embassies. Lumumba was surprised by
the coup and that evening he travelled to Camp Leopold II in search of Mobutu to try
and change his mind. He spent the night there but was attacked in the morning by
Luba soldiers, who blamed him for the atrocities in South Kasaï. A Ghanaian ONUC
contingent managed to extricate him, but his briefcase was left behind. Some of his
political opponents recovered it and published documents it supposedly contained,
including letters from Nkrumah, appeals for support addressed to the Soviet Union
and the People's Republic of China, a memorandum dated 16 September declaring the
presence of Soviet troops within one week, and a letter dated 15 September from
Lumumba to the provincial presidents (Tshombe excepted) entitled "Measures to be
applied during the first stages of the dictatorship". Some of these papers were genuine,
while others, especially the memorandum and the letter to the provincial presidents,
were almost certainly forgeries.
Despite the coup, African diplomats still worked towards a reconciliation between
Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu. According to the Ghanaians, a verbal agreement of
principle concerning closer co-operation between the Head of State and the
government was put into writing. Lumumba signed it, but Kasa-Vubu suddenly
refused to reciprocate. The Ghanaians suspected that Belgium and the United States
were responsible. Kasa-Vubu was eager to re-integrate Katanga back into the Congo
through negotiation, and Tshombe had declared that he would not participate in any
discussions with a government that included the "communist" Lumumba.
After consultation with Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba, Mobutu announced that he would
summon a round table conference to discuss the political future of the Congo. His
attempts to follow through were disrupted by Lumumba who, from his official
residence, was acting as though he still held the premiership. He continued to hold
meetings with members of his government, senators, deputies, and political
supporters, and to issue public statements. On numerous occasions he left his
residence to tour the restaurants of the capital, maintaining that he still held power.
Frustrated by the way he was being treated by Lumumba and facing intense political
pressure, by the end of the month Mobutu was no longer encouraging reconciliation;
he had aligned with Kasa-Vubu. He ordered ANC units to surround Lumumba's
residence, but a cordon of UN peacekeepers prevented them from making an arrest.
Lumumba was confined to his home. On 7 October Lumumba announced the
formation of a new government that included Bolikango and Kalonji, but he later
proposed that the UN supervise a national referendum that would settle the split in
the government.
On 24 November, the UN voted to recognize Mobutu's new delegates to the General
Assembly, disregarding Lumumba's original appointees. Lumumba resolved to join
Deputy Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga in Stanleyville and lead a campaign to regain
power. On 27 November he left the capital in a convoy of nine cars with Rémy
Mwamba, Pierre Mulele, his wife Pauline, and his youngest child. Instead of heading
with all haste to the Orientale Province border—where soldiers loyal to Gizenga were
waiting to receive him—Lumumba delayed by touring villages and making
conversation with the locals. On 1 December Mobutu's troops caught up with his party
as it crossed the Sankuru River in Lodi. Lumumba and his advisers had made it to the
far side, but his wife and child were left to be captured on the bank. Fearing for their
safety, Lumumba took the ferry back, against the advice of Mwamba and Mulele, who
both, fearing they would never see him again, bid him farewell. Mobutu's men arrested
him. He was moved to Port Francqui the next day and flown back to Léopoldville.
Mobutu claimed Lumumba would be tried for inciting the army to rebellion and other
crimes.
Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld made an appeal to Kasa-
Vubu asking that Lumumba be treated according to due process. The Soviet Union
denounced Hammarskjöld and the First World as responsible for Lumumba's arrest
and demanded his release.
The United Nations Security Council was called into session on 7 December 1960 to
consider Soviet demands that the UN seek Lumumba's immediate release, the
immediate restoration of Lumumba as head of the Congo government, the disarming
of the forces of Mobutu, and the immediate evacuation of Belgians from the Congo.
The Soviets also requested the immediate resignation of Hammarskjöld, the arrests of
Mobutu and Tshombe, and the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces. Hammarskjöld,
answering Soviet criticism of his Congo operations, said that if the UN forces were
withdrawn from the Congo, "I fear everything will crumble."
The threat to the UN cause was intensified by the announcement of the withdrawal of
their contingents by Yugoslavia, the United Arab Republic, Ceylon, Indonesia,
Morocco, and Guinea. The pro-Lumumba resolution was defeated on 14 December
1960 by a vote of 8–2. On the same day, a Western resolution that would have given
Hammarskjöld increased powers to deal with the Congo situation was vetoed by the
Soviet Union.

Lumumba (center) before transport to Thysville

Lumumba was sent first on 3 December 1960 to Thysville military barracks Camp
Hardy, 150 km (about 100 miles) from Léopoldville. He was accompanied by Maurice
Mpolo and Joseph Okito, two political associates who had planned to assist him in
setting up a new government. They were fed poorly by the prison guards, as per
Mobutu's orders. In Lumumba's last documented letter, he wrote to Rajeshwar Dayal:
"in a word, we are living amid absolutely impossible conditions; moreover, they are
against the law".
In the morning of 13 January 1961, discipline at Camp Hardy faltered. Soldiers refused
to work unless they were paid; they received a total of 400,000 francs ($8,000) from
the Katanga Cabinet. Some supported Lumumba's release, while others thought he
was dangerous. Kasa-Vubu, Mobutu, Foreign Minister Justin Marie Bomboko, and
Head of Security Services Victor Nendaka Bika personally arrived at the camp and
negotiated with the troops. Conflict was avoided, but it became apparent that holding
a controversial prisoner in the camp was too great a risk. Harold Charles d'Aspremont
Lynden, the last Belgian Minister of the Colonies, ordered that Lumumba, Mpolo, and
Okito be taken to the State of Katanga.
Lumumba was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elisabethville on 17 January 1961.
On arrival, he and his associates were conducted under arrest to the Brouwez House,
where they were brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers, while
President Tshombe and his cabinet decided what to do with him.
Later that night, Lumumba was driven to an isolated spot where, according to reports,
three firing squads had been assembled and commanded by Belgian contract officer
Julien Gat. A Belgian commission of inquiry found that the execution was carried out
by Katanga's authorities. It reported that Katanga president Tshombe and two other
ministers were present, with four Belgian officers under alleged command of Katangan
authorities. According to Ludo De Witte, however, the last stage of the operation was
personally controlled and led by Belgians. Police Commissioner Frans Verscheure,
who had operational command, led Lumumba and the other two to their place of
execution, where Gat ordered the firing. Lumumba, Mpolo, and Okito were lined up
against a tree and shot one at a time. The execution is thought to have taken place on
17 January 1961, between 21:40 and 21:43 (according to the Belgian report). The
bodies were thrown into a shallow grave. Allegedly, the following morning, on orders
of Katangan Interior Minister Godefroid Munongo who wanted to make the bodies
disappear and thereby prevent a burial site from being created, Belgian Gendarmerie
officer Gerard Soete and his team dug up and dismembered the corpses, and dissolved
them in sulfuric acid while the bones were ground and scattered.
No statement was released until three weeks later, despite rumours that Lumumba
was dead. Katangan Secretary of State of Information Lucas Samalenge was one of the
very first individuals, or perhaps the first individual, to reveal Lumumba's death, on
18 January. According to Ludo De Witte, Samalenge went to the bar Le Relais in
Élisabethville and told everyone that Lumumba was murdered and he kicked his
corpse. He then went around, drunkenly repeating the story until the police took him
away.
On 10 February, the radio announced that Lumumba and two other prisoners had
escaped. His death was formally announced over Katangan radio on 13 February: it
was alleged that he was killed by enraged villagers three days after escaping from
Kolatey prison farm.
After the announcement of Lumumba's death, street protests were organized in
several European countries; in Belgrade, protesters sacked the Belgian embassy and
confronted the police, and in London, a crowd marched from Trafalgar Square to the
Belgian embassy, where a letter of protest was delivered and where protesters clashed
with police. In New York City, a demonstration at the United Nations Security Council
turned violent and spilled over into the streets.
Both Belgium and the United States were affected by the Cold War in their attitude to
Lumumba, as they feared he was increasingly subject to communist influence. They
thought he was gravitating toward the Soviet Union, although, according to journalist
Sean Kelly, who covered the events as a correspondent for the Voice of America, that
was not because Lumumba was a communist, but because he felt that USSR was the
only power which would support his country's effort to rid itself of colonial rule. The
US was the first country from which Lumumba requested help. Lumumba, for his part,
denied being a communist, and said that he found colonialism and communism to be
equally deplorable. He professed his personal preference for neutrality between the
East and West.
On 18 January, panicked by reports that the burial of the three bodies had been
observed, members of the execution team dug up the remains and moved them for
reburial to a place near the border with Northern Rhodesia. Belgian Police
Commissioner Gerard Soete later admitted in several accounts that he and his brother
led the original exhumation. Police Commissioner Frans Verscheure also took part. On
the afternoon and evening of 21 January, Commissioner Soete and his brother dug up
Lumumba's corpse for a second time, cut it up with a hacksaw, and dissolved it in
concentrated sulfuric acid.
In the late 20th and early 21st century, Lumumba's assassination was investigated. In
a 1999 interview on Belgian television, in a program about his assassination, Soete
displayed a bullet and two teeth that he claimed he had saved from Lumumba's body.
According to the 2001 Belgian Commission investigating Lumumba's assassination:
(1) Belgium wanted Lumumba arrested, (2) Belgium was not particularly concerned
with Lumumba's physical well being, and (3) although informed of the danger to
Lumumba's life, Belgium did not take any action to avert his death. The report
concluded that Belgium had not ordered Lumumba's assassination. In February 2002,
the Belgian government formally apologized to the Congolese people, and admitted to
a "moral responsibility" and "an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that
led to the death of Lumumba".
Lumumba's execution was carried out by a firing squad led by Belgian mercenary
Julien Gat; Katangan Police Commissioner Verscheure, who was Belgian, had overall
command of the execution site. The separatist Katangan regime was heavily supported
by the Belgian mining conglomerate Union Minière du Haut-Katanga.
In the early 21st century, writer Ludo De Witte found written orders from the Belgian
government that had requested Lumumba's execution, and documents on various
arrangements, such as death squads. He published a book in 2003 about the
assassination of Lumumba.
The 2001 report by the Belgian Commission describes previous U.S. and Belgian plots
to kill Lumumba. Among them was a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored attempt
to poison him, which was possibly ordered by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb, a key person in the plan, devised a poison resembling
toothpaste. In September 1960, Gottlieb brought a vial of the poison to the Congo with
plans to place it on Lumumba's toothbrush. The plot was abandoned, allegedly because
Larry Devlin, CIA Station Chief for the Congo, refused permission.
As Madeleine G. Kalb points out in her book, Congo Cables, the record shows that
many communications by Devlin at the time urged elimination of Lumumba. As well,
the CIA station chief helped to direct the search to capture Lumumba for transfer to
his enemies in Katanga. Devlin was involved in arranging Lumumba's transfer to
Katanga, and the CIA base chief in Elizabethville was in direct touch with the killers
the night Lumumba was killed. John Stockwell, a CIA officer in the Congo and later a
CIA station chief, wrote in 1978 that a CIA agent had the body in the trunk of his car
in order to try to get rid of it. Stockwell, who knew Devlin well, believed that Devlin
knew more than anyone else about the murder.
The inauguration of John F. Kennedy in January 1961 caused fear among Mobutu's
faction, and within the CIA, that the incoming Democratic administration would favor
the imprisoned Lumumba. While awaiting his presidential inauguration, Kennedy had
come to believe that Lumumba should be released from custody, though not be
allowed to return to power. Lumumba was killed three days before Kennedy's
inauguration on 20 January, though Kennedy did not learn of the killing until 13
February.
In 1975, the Church Committee went on record with the finding that CIA chief Allen
Dulles had ordered Lumumba's assassination as "an urgent and prime objective".
Furthermore, declassified CIA cables quoted or mentioned in the Church report, and
in Kalb (1982), mention two specific CIA plots to murder Lumumba: the poison plot
and a shooting plot.
The Committee later found that while the CIA had conspired to kill Lumumba, it was
not directly involved in the murder.
In the early 21st century, declassified documents revealed that the CIA had plotted to
assassinate Lumumba. The documents indicate that the Congolese leaders who killed
Lumumba, including Mobutu Sese Seko and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, received money and
weapons directly from the CIA. The same disclosure showed that, at the time, the U.S.
government believed that Lumumba was a communist, and feared him because of
what it considered the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
In 2000, a newly declassified interview with Robert Johnson, who was the
minutekeeper of the U.S. National Security Council at the time in question, revealed
that U.S. President Eisenhower had said "something [to CIA chief Allen Dulles] to the
effect that Lumumba should be eliminated". The interview from the Senate
Intelligence Committee's inquiry on covert action was released in August 2000.
In 2013, the U.S. State Department admitted that President Eisenhower authorized
the murder of Lumumba. However, documents released in 2017 revealed that an
American role in Lumumba's murder was only under consideration by the CIA. CIA
Chief Allan Dulles had allocated $100,000 to accomplish the act, but the plan was not
carried out.
In June 2001, newly-discovered documents by Belgian historian Ludo De Witte
revealed that while the US and Belgium actively plotted to murder Lumumba, the
British government secretly wanted him "got rid of" because they believed he posed a
serious threat to British interests in the Congo, such as mining facilities in Katanga.
Howard Smith, who became head of MI5 in 1979, said, "I can see only two possible
solutions to the problem. The first is the simple one of ensuring Lumumba's removal
from the scene by killing him. This should solve the problem...".
In April 2013, in a letter to the London Review of Books, British parliamentarian David
Lea reported having discussed Lumumba's death with MI6 officer Daphne Park
shortly before she died in March 2010. Park had been posted to Leopoldville at the
time of Lumumba's death, and was later a semi-official spokesperson for MI6 in the
House of Lords. According to Lea, when he mentioned "the uproar" surrounding
Lumumba's abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had
"something to do with it", Park replied, "We did. I organised it." The BBC reported
that, subsequently, "Whitehall sources" described the claims of MI6 involvement as
"speculative".
In Susan Williams' book White Malice: The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa
(2021), she ellaborates further on the UK's involvement.
In May 2021, Belgian officials announced that they would return the remains of
Lumumba to his family, which was just a single tooth as his body was dissolved in acid
following his assassination in 1961. The handover ceremony t00k place on 21–22 June
2021 in Brussels.
Lumumba did not espouse a comprehensive political or economic platform. He was
the first Congolese to articulate a narrative of the Congo that contradicted traditional
Belgian views of colonisation, and he highlighted the suffering of the indigenous
population under European rule. Lumumba was alone among his contemporaries in
encompassing all Congolese people in his narrative (the others confined their
discussions to their respective ethnicities or regions), and he offered a basis for
national identity that was predicated upon having survived colonial victimisation, as
well as the people's innate dignity, humanity, strength, and unity. Lumumba's ideal of
humanism included the values of egalitarianism, social justice, liberty, and the
recognition of fundamental rights. He viewed the state as a positive advocate for the
public welfare and its intervention in Congolese society necessary to ensure equality,
justice, and social harmony.
Full accounts of Lumumba's life and death were printed within weeks of his demise.
Beginning in 1961 and continuing for several years thereafter, some biographies on
him were published. Most were highly partisan. Several early works on the Congo
Crisis also discussed Lumumba at length. In the years after his death, misconceptions
of Lumumba persisted by both his supporters and his critics. Serious study of him
faded over the following decades. Academic discussion of his legacy was largely
limited until the later stages of Mobutu's rule in the Congo; Mobutu's opening of the
country to multi-party politics beginning in 1990 revived interest in Lumumba's death.
Belgian literature in the decades following the Congo Crisis portrayed him as
incompetent, demagogic, aggressive, ungrateful, undiplomatic, and communist. Most
Africanists of the 20th century, such as Jean-Claude Willame, viewed Lumumba as an
intransigent, unrealistic idealist without any tangible programme who distanced
himself from his contemporaries and alienated the Western world with radical anti-
colonial rhetoric. They saw him as greatly responsible for the political crisis that
resulted in his downfall. A handful of other writers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, shared
the belief that Lumumba's goals were unattainable in 1960 but nevertheless viewed
him as a martyr of Congolese independence at the hands of certain Western interests
and the victim of events over which he had little control. According to sociologist Ludo
De Witte, both of these perspectives overstate the political weaknesses and isolation
of Lumumba.
A conventional narrative of Lumumba's premiership and downfall eventually
emerged; he was an uncompromising radical who provoked his own murder by
angering domestic separatists. Within Belgium, the popular narrative of his death
implicated the involvement of some Belgian individuals, but stressed that they were
acting "under orders" of African figures and that the Belgian government was
uninvolved. Some Belgian circles peddled the notion that the United States—
particularly the Central Intelligence Agency—had arranged the killing. These
assumptions were severely challenged by De Witte's 2001 work, The Assassination of
Patrice Lumumba, which provided evidence that the Belgian government—with the
complicity of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the UN—was largely
responsible for his death. Media discussion of Lumumba, spurred by the release of the
book as well as a feature film in 2000, Lumumba, became significantly more positive
afterwards. A new narrative subsequently emerged, holding Western espionage at
fault for Lumumba's death, and emphasising the threat his charismatic appeal posed
to Western interests. Lumumba's role in the Congolese independence movement is
well-documented, and he is typically recognised as its most important and influential
leader. His exploits are usually celebrated as the work of him as an individual and not
that of a larger movement.
"Despite his brief political career and tragic death—or perhaps
because of them—Lumumba entered history through the front
door: he became both a flag and a symbol. He lived as a free man,
and an independent thinker. Everything he wrote, said and did
was the product of someone who knew his vocation to be that of
a liberator, and he represents for the Congo what Castro does for
Cuba, Nasser for Egypt, Nkrumah for Ghana, Mao Tse-tung for
China, and Lenin for Russia."
Thomas Kanza, friend and colleague of Lumumba, 1972.
Due to his relatively short career in government, quick removal from power, and
controversial death, a consensus has not been reached on Lumumba's political legacy.
His downfall was detrimental to African nationalist movements, and he is generally
remembered primarily for his assassination. Numerous American historians have
cited his death as a major contributing factor to the radicalisation of the American civil
rights movement in the 1960s, and many African-American activist organisations and
publications used public comment on his death to express their ideology. Popular
memory of Lumumba has often discarded his politics and reduced him to a symbol.
Within the Congo, Lumumba is primarily portrayed as a symbol of national unity,
while abroad he is usually cast as a Pan-Africanist and anticolonial revolutionary. The
ideological legacy of Lumumba is known as Lumumbisme (French for Lumumbism).
Rather than a complex doctrine, it is usually framed as a set of fundamental principles
consisting of nationalism, Pan-Africanism, nonalignment, and social progressivism.
Mobutism built off of these principles. Congolese university students—who had up
until independence held little respect for Lumumba—embraced Lumumbisme after
his death. According to political scientist Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, Lumumba's
"greatest legacy...for the Congo is the ideal of national unity". Nzongola-Ntalaja
further posited that, as a result of Lumumba's high praise of the independence
movement and his work to end the Katangese secession, "the people of the Congo are
likely to remain steadfast in their defense of national unity and territorial integrity,
come hell or high water." Political scientist Ali Mazrui wrote, "It looks as if the memory
of Lumumba may contribute more to the 'oneness' of the Congolese than anything
Lumumba himself actually did while he was still alive."
Following the suppression of the rebellions of 1964 and 1965, most Lumumbist
ideology was confined to isolated groups of intellectuals who faced repression under
Mobutu's regime. By 1966 there was little popular devotion to him outside of the
political elite. Centres of Lumumba's popularity in his lifetime underwent a gradual
decline in fidelity to his person and ideas. According to Africanist Bogumil
Jewsiewicki, by 1999 "the only faithful surviving Lumumbist nucleus is located in
Sankuru and Maniema, and its loyalty is questionable (more ethnical, regional, and
sentimental than ideological and political)." Lumumba's image was unpopular in
southern Kasai for years after his death, as many Baluba remained aware of the
military campaign he ordered in August 1960 that resulted in violent atrocities against
their people. At least a dozen Congolese political parties have claimed to bear
Lumumba's political and spiritual heritage. Despite this, few entities have attempted
or succeeded in incorporating his ideas into a comprehensible political program. Most
of these parties have enjoyed little electoral support, though Gizenga's Parti
Lumumbiste Unifié was represented in the Congolese coalition government formed
under President Joseph Kabila in 2006. Aside from student groups, Lumumbist ideals
play only a minor role in current Congolese politics. Congolese presidents Mobutu,
Laurent-Désiré Kabila, and Joseph Kabila all claimed to inherit Lumumba's legacy and
paid tribute to him early on in their tenures.
"[O]ne thing is clear: while he lived he was essentially a
factional hero rather than a national one. But after his
death the myth of Lumumba was rapidly nationalized."
Political scientist Ali Mazrui, 1968.
The circumstances of Lumumba's death have led him to often be portrayed as a martyr.
While his demise led to an outburst of mass demonstrations abroad and quick creation
of a martyr image internationally, the immediate reaction to his death in the Congo
was not as uniform. Tetela, Songye, and Luba-Katanga peoples created folks songs of
mourning for him, but these were groups which had been involved in political alliances
with him and, at the time, Lumumba was unpopular in large segments of the Congolese
populace, particularly in the capital, Bas-Congo, Katanga, and South Kasai. Some of
his actions and the smearing of him as a communist had also generated disaffection in
the army, civil service, labour unions, and the Catholic Church. Lumumba's reputation
as a martyr in the collective memory of the Congolese was only cemented later, partly
due to the initiatives of Mobutu. In Congolese collective memory, it is perceived that
Lumumba was killed through Western machinations because he defended the Congo's
self-determination. The killing is viewed in the context of the memory as a symbolic
moment in which the Congo lost its dignity in the international realm and the ability
to determine its future, which has since been controlled by the West. Lumumba's
determination to pursue his goals is extrapolated upon the Congolese people as their
own; securing the Congo's dignity and self-determination would thus ensure their
"redemption" from victimisation by Western powers. Historian David Van Reybrouck
wrote,
"In no time Lumumba became a martyr of decolonisation...He owed this status more
to the horrible end of his life than to his political successes."
Journalist Michela Wrong remarked that "He really did become a hero after his death,
in a way that one has to wonder if he would have been such a hero if he had remained
and run the country and faced all the problems that running a country as big as
Congo would have inevitably brought."
Drama scholar Peit Defraeya wrote, "Lumumba as a dead martyr has become a more
compelling figure in liberationist discourse than the controversial live politician."
Historian Pedro Monaville wrote that
"his globally iconic status was not commensurate with his more complex legacy in
[the] Congo." Cooptation of Lumumba's legacy by Congolese presidents and state
media has generated doubts in the Congolese public about his reputation.
 USSR commemorative stamp, 1961
In 1961 Adoula became Prime Minister of the Congo. Shortly after assuming office he
went to Stanleyville and laid a wreath of flowers at an impromptu monument
established for Lumumba. After Tshombe became Prime Minister in 1964, he also
went to Stanleyville and did the same. On 30 June 1966, Mobutu rehabilitated
Lumumba's image and proclaimed him a "national hero". By a presidential decree, the
Brouwez House, site of Lumumba's torture on the night of his murder, became a place
of pilgrimage in the Congo. He declared a series of other measures meant to
commemorate Lumumba, though few of these were ever executed aside from the
release of a banknote with his visage the subsequent year. This banknote was the only
paper money during Mobutu's rule that bore the face of a leader other than the
incumbent president. In following years state mention of Lumumba declined and
Mobutu's regime viewed unofficial tributes to him with suspicion. Following Laurent-
Désiré Kabila's seizure of power in the 1990s, a new line of Congolese francs was issued
bearing Lumumba's image. In January 2003 Joseph Kabila, who succeeded his father
as president, inaugurated a statue of Lumumba. In Guinea Lumumba was featured on
a coin and two regular banknotes despite not having any national ties to the country.
This was an unprecedented occurrence in the modern history of national currency, as
images of foreigners are normally reserved only for specially-released commemorative
money. As of 2020, Lumumba has been featured on 16 different postage stamps. Many
streets and public squares around the world have been named after him. The Peoples'
Friendship University of the USSR was renamed "Patrice Lumumba Peoples'
Friendship University" in 1961. It was renamed again in 1992. One of the student
dormitories used by University of Belgrade students is named after Lumumba.
Lumumba is viewed as one of the "fathers of independence" of the Congo. The image
of Lumumba appears frequently in social media and is often used as a rallying cry in
demonstrations of social defiance. His figure is prevalent in art and literature, mostly
outside of the Congo. He was referenced by numerous African-American writers of the
American civil rights movement, especially in their works of the post-civil rights era.
Malcolm X declared him "the greatest black man who ever walked the African
continent".
Numerous songs and plays have been dedicated to Lumumba. Many praise his
character, contrasting it with the alleged irresponsible and undisciplined nature of the
Congolese people. Among the most prominent works featuring him are Aimé Césaire's
1966 play, Une saison au Congo, and Raoul Peck's 1992 documentary and 2000 feature
film, Lumumba, la mort d'un prophète and Lumumba, respectively. Congolese
musicians Franco Luambo and Joseph Kabasele both wrote songs in tribute to
Lumumba shortly after his death. Other musical works mentioning him include
"Lumumba" by Miriam Makeba, "Done too Soon" by Neil Diamond and "Waltz for
Lumumba" by the Spencer Davis Group. His name is also mentioned in rap music;
Arrested Development, Nas, David Banner, Black Thought, Damso, Baloji, Médine,
Sammus and many others have mentioned him in their work. In popular painting he
is often paired with notions of sacrifice and redemption, even being portrayed as a
messiah, with his downfall being his passion. Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu painted a
series chronicling Lumumba's life and career. Lumumba is relatively absent from
Congolese writing, and he is often portrayed with only subtle or ambiguous references.
Congolese authors Sony Lab'ou Tansi's and Sylvain Bemba's fictional Parentheses of
Blood and Léopolis, respectively, both feature characters with strong similarities to
Lumumba. In written tributes to Mobutu, Lumumba is usually portrayed as an adviser
to the former. Writer Charles Djungu-Simba observed, "Lumumba is rather
considered as a vestige of the past, albeit an illustrious past".His surname is often used
to identify a long drink of hot or cold chocolate and rum.

References:

 African Studies Review. 48. New Brunswick: African Studies Association. 2005.
ISSN 1555-2462.
 Blommaert, Jan; Verschueren, Jef, eds. (1991). The Pragmatics of International
and Intercultural Communication. 3. John Benjamins Publishing.
ISBN 9789027285966.
 Bouwer, Karen (2010). Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of
Patrice Lumumba (illustrated ed.). Springer. ISBN 9780230110403.
 Bustin, Edouard (2001). "Reviewed Work: The Assassination of Lumumba by
Ludo de Witte, Ann Wright, Renée Fenby". The International Journal of African
Historical Studies. 34 (1): 177–185. doi:10.2307/3097312. JSTOR 3097312.
 Chronologie Internationale (in French). Paris: Documentation française. 1960.
OCLC 186691838.
 Covington-Ward, Yolanda (January 2012). "Joseph Kasa-Vubu, ABAKO, and
Performances of Kongo Nationalism in the Independence of Congo". Journal of
Black Studies. 43 (1): 72–94. doi:10.1177/0021934711424491. ISSN 0021-9347.
JSTOR 23215196. S2CID 144014323.
MAHARERO, CHIEF c.1820-1890).

Maharero kaTjamuaha (Otjiherero: Maharero, son of Tjamuaha, short:

Maharero; c. 1820 – 7 October 1890) was one of the most powerful paramount chiefs
of the Herero people in South-West Africa, today's Namibia.

Maharero, was born about 1820 at Okahandja. In 1843 he went with his father
Tjamuaha to Windhoek to stay with Jonker Afrikaner, Captain of the Oorlam
Afrikaners. Tjamuaha was an ally of Jonker Afrikaner until his death in 1861, albeit in
a subordinate position. Maharero a leader of Ovaherero community in (1861-1890)
was born in ca 1820 at Otjikune near Okahandja and he was the son of Tjamuaha and
his chief wife Tjorozumo. He had several brothers and half-brothers, amongst them
were Kavezeri, Kariteova, Kavikunua and Rijarua.
Like his father, Maharero became an ally of Jonker Afrikaner in 1843. As from 1863
onwards, he refused to accept the dominance of the Afrikaners and was recognized by
both Herero’s and the European in the country as the representative of all the Hereros.
Shortly afterwards he emerged as the first Herero paramount chief though his
leadership was not uncontested. He sought to consolidate his position by marrying
into all the important Hereros families and he apparently had over 60 wives by the
time he was old.
In 1885 he signed a treaty accepting German protection over the country. When he
died on October 5, 1890 a serious dispute about his succession erupted. Maharero’s
brother Kavezeri, who was born in 1845, became custodian of the sacred fire. His other
brother Kavikunua, who had already died in 1858, had a son named Nikodemus
(Kambahahiza). Owing to Nikodemus powerful personality he had been in a strong
position to become paramount chief of Hereroland but had obviously not been
successful. As a result, Maharero requested his son Samuel Maharero to succeed as
chief of the Hereros living in the east and Ovambanderu under Kahimemua and
Tjetjoo. His request was supported by the German governor, who subsequently
appointed Nikodemus in his new position. Sadly this brought so many arguments on
this leadership style, which finally led to both Nikodemus and Kahimemua being
captured and executed in Okahandja in 1896.
When Jonker Afrikaner died, he was succeeded by Christian Afrikaner. Due to this,
Maharero rebelled against the Afrikaners. They subsequently attacked Maharero's
men at Otjimbingwe on 15 June 1863, a battle in which Christian Afrikaner was killed.
Christian's successor, Jan Jonker Afrikaner did not want to allow the Hereros to
escape from his overlordship, and so hostilities continued for several years.
Some traders at Otjimbingwe, notably C.J. Andersson and Frederick Green,
considered that the war was bad for trade, and took a hand in organising and leading
the Herero army. Green led a force that captured most of the Oorlams cattle, and on
22 June 1864 there was a decisive battle in which Jan Jonker Afrikaner's forces were
defeated.
Dispensing with the services of the traders, Maharero won more battles, and took
control of Damaraland, and even sent his forces into Namaqualand. Eventually in 1870
a peace was brokered by missionary Carl Hugo Hahn of the Rhenish Missionary
Society.
In the decade that followed, many more white traders entered Damaraland, mostly
from the Cape Colony. More serious still were the Boer incursions into the Herero
lands from the Boer republics to the east. Maharero complained to the governor of the
Cape Colony about Boers entering the eastern part of the territory. The Cape
government sent the Palgrave Commission, and later annexed Walvis Bay in 1878,
though this was not actually part of Maharero's territory.
In 1880, there were renewed hostilities between Maharero and Jan Jonker Afrikaner.
What was originally a dispute over grazing escalated into a pogrom against all Nama
living in Maharero's territory, and over 200 were killed. One who escaped with his life
was Hendrik Witbooi, who thereafter led the opposition to Maharero.
Also faced with repeated attacks by the Khowesin, a subtribe of the Khoikhoi under
Hendrik Witbooi, Maharero signed a protection treaty with Imperial Germany's
colonial governor Göring on 21 October 1885 but did not cede the land of the Herero.
Due to lack of German support against Witbooi, Maharero renounced this treaty in
1888 and reopened negotiations with the government of the Cape Colony. But by that
time the Scramble for Africa was under way, and the Cape Colony government was
powerless to intervene, even if it had wanted to. The European powers had by then
recognised South West Africa as a German sphere of influence. Maharero reaffirmed
the treaty with the Germans in May 1890.
Maharero died on 7 October 1890 in Okahandja. Historian Heinrich Vedder claims
that his main wife Kataree poisoned him in order to prevent him from changing his
mind on who his successor should be. His eldest son Samuel Maharero succeeded him
as chief of the Herero.

References

Shampapi, Shiremo (14 October 2011). "Maharero kaTjamuaha: The Consolidator of

the Ovaherero Polity (1820-1890) Part II". New Era.

Dierks, Klaus. "Biographies of Namibian Personalities, T. Entry for Ua Tjirwe

Tjamuaha". Retrieved 24 June 2010.

Dierks, Klaus. "Biographies of Namibian Personalities, A. Entry for Christian

Afrikaner". Retrieved 24 June 2010.

Dierks, Klaus. "Biographies of Namibian Personalities, M. Entry for Maharero".

klausdierks.com. Retrieved 10 June 2011.
MAHARERO, CHIEF SAMUEL (1854-1923).

Samuel Maherero (ca. 1854-1923) was the Supreme Chief of the Herero nation, who
led his people in revolt against German occupation of Herero lands.

Samuel Maharero (1907)

The scramble for Africa by the European powers at the close of the 19th century had
tragic consequences for the Herero people of South West Africa. In its quest for a
presence in southern Africa, the German imperial government claimed territory along
the Atlantic Coast, north of British-and Afrikaner-settled South Africa, and south of
Portuguese Angola. The Germans claimed it as German South West Africa (now the
independent country of Namibia), and German interests vied for land with the cattle-
herding Herero and Nama peoples of the territory. The settlers' demands for land and
cattle and the ruthless policies of a German military leader resulted in the almost
complete annihilation of the Herero people under the leadership of paramount chief
Samuel Maherero.

In 1904, when Samuel Maherero led his people in an uprising against the Germans,
the Herero population was approximately 80,000. In little more than a year, more
than 64,000 had been killed in battle or died in the desert where they had been chased
by German troops. Some historians consider the German policy of extermination of
the Herero as a prelude to German policy of genocide against the Jews in Europe 30
years later.

Before 1884, the presence of Germans in South West Africa was limited to Rhenish
(German) missionaries who had set up missions in the early 1800s under the auspices
of the London Missionary Society. Later in the century, German and British
prospectors came in search of gold and diamonds. The imperial German government
raised its flag in 1884 over Angra Pequena and a stretch of coast purchased from a
chief of the Nama people. At the time, the German foreign office was more interested
in blocking the British from access to the interior than in settling the area; a governor-
general and a small contingent of troops were sent to administer the territory.

Initially the presence of a few German civil servants made little impact. When the
Germans arrived, the Herero controlled vast areas of the interior, running from the
Atlantic Coast in the west to the Kalahari Desert in the east. They had the largest
population and were the wealthiest of the peoples of South West Africa. Unlike most
Bantu-speakers, the Herero were nomadic cattle herders whose sole basis for wealth
was the size of their cattle herds.

To the south of the Hereros lived the Nama, descendants of the Khoikhoin, a nomadic
pastoral people who are thought to be the earliest inhabitants of southwestern Africa.
With a population in the late 1880s of about 20,000, the Namas ranged from the
Orange River in the south up to a rough border along the Swakop River, separating
them from the Herero.

Despite the vastness of the area (320,827 square miles) and the small population
groups, the several African chiefs and their people competed for control over grazing
lands. The Nama asked the Oorlams, recent newcomers from South Africa skilled in
the use of rifles, to help push the Herero out of their territory and back to the north of
the Swakop River. Fighting as "commando" units, the Oorlams forced the Herero
beyond the Auas Mountains to Okahandja. In doing so, the Oorlams took the Herero's
capital for their own and called it Windhoek. In 1850, the Oorlams attacked the Herero
at Okahandja and began a long conflict between the two groups. The raiding and
fighting finally ended when Oorlam chief Jonker Afrikaner died in 1861. When Herero
chief Tjamuaha also died in 1861, he was succeeded by Kamaherero, the father of
Samuel Maherero.

Herero chief Samuel Maharero (third from left)

Determined to be free of the Oorlams and their Nama allies, Kamaherero crushed
them in a battle at Otjimbingwe in 1863 and so became a dominant force in the
territory. Fighting and raiding among the groups continued until 1870 when Rhenish
missionaries, who had settled in Otjimbingwe in 1864, negotiated a peace treaty that
remained in force for ten years.

Fighting resumed in August 1880. In revenge for cattle stolen by the Namas,
Kamaherero ordered the death of all Namas living in his territory. About 200 Namas
are reported to have been killed. With the resumption of fighting, the British—who had
had a minor presence in the area and who had offered the German missionaries some
protection from the warring groups—retreated hastily to the port area of Walvis Bay,
leaving the territory unprotected and open to the Germans.

In 1884, the German foreign office established an official presence in South West
Africa when it raised the German flag over Angra Pequena, an area claimed by Adolf
Ludderitz, and a strip of land along the coast running 20 miles inland that he had
purchased from Nama chief Josef Frederiks for 160 rifles and £600.

The Germans were hoping to obtain land further inland but Herero supreme chief
Kamaherero steadfastly refused to sell his people's lands. Since Herero land belonged
to the community at large, the kapteins or traditional leaders did not have the
authority to sell it. Europeans were given permission to use land, and when they died
or moved the land reverted back to the tribe.

Wanting to keep costs and involvement in the territory at a minimum, the German
foreign office sent out a few civil servants and a high commissioner to represent its
interests. Heinrich Göring, the father of Nazi leader Hermann Göring, was appointed
imperial commissioner to South West Africa.

Early German policy was to offer "Protection Treaties" to the local peoples. In theory,
the Germans offered protection to the chief and his clan while supporting the chief's
jurisdiction over his people. In exchange, the chief promised not to cede any land or
make treaties with anyone else without German approval. The Herero signed a treaty
with the Germans, hoping to buy some protection from the Nama. But the Germans
never intended to get involved with tribal disputes. They were more interested in
playing one group against the other.

In 1888, reports of a gold strike brought in German prospectors and renewed British
interest in the territory. Though reports of the find turned out to be a hoax, German
foreign policy became more aggressive because of British inroads in South West Africa.
Britain had recently granted Bechuanaland (Botswana) protectorate status, and the
Germans wanted to block British expansion. The German foreign office sent Curt von
Francois in charge of a small force of men in June 1889 under strict orders not to
antagonize the Herero. From German accounts, it is evident that Francois was not able
to conceal his personal animosity toward the Herero. He requested reinforcements
and six months later the German military presence increased to 50 soldiers and two
weeks later to 150.

In October 1890, when the Herero had temporarily withdrawn from Windhoek to
move south to put pressure on the Nama, Francois took advantage of their absence
and occupied the Herero capital. Later that month, on the 27th, Herero Supreme Chief
Kamaherero died. Although his son Nikodemus was first in line to succeed him, the
choice fell to another son, Samuel.
The fighting between the Nama and the Herero continued unabated. From the German
perspective, the intertribal fighting minimized any genuine threat to the Germans, but
the unstable nature of the territory frightened away prospective German settlers. In
1890, Imperial Chancellor Göring wrote to Hendrik Witbooi, an educated leader of a
Nama subgroup, and asked him to stop attacking the Herero who were under German
protection. Witbooi wrote to Samuel Maherero suggesting they cease fighting. He said
in his letter that peace between the Nama and the Herero was always a possibility. He
also said that Maherero's alliance with the Germans was unnatural and that the only
reason for it was that Maherero hated the Nama so much. Two years later, in
November 1892, when the Herero learned that Boer farmers from the Orange Free
State in South Africa were coming north to settle, Samuel Maherero agreed to a treaty
with Hendrik Witbooi. Mediated by Hermanus van Wyk, kaptein of the Rehobothers,
the treaty brought to an end nearly 100 years of fighting.

But the peace treaty between the two rival chiefs alarmed the Germans, and they made
a preemptive strike against the Witboois. In preparation, the German foreign office
sent out an additional 214 men and 2 officers. The reinforcements arrived in March
1893, and in April, under Curt von Francois, German troops made a surprise attack on
Hornkranz, the Witboois' capital. The Witboois were soon joined by other Nama
tribesmen, and their numbers swelled from 250 to 600 men. Starting out with 100
rifles and 120 horses, they had 400 rifles and 300 horses in six months of raiding
German supplies. The German foreign office recalled Von Francois for his failure and
replaced him with Major Theodor Leutwein.

At first, Leutwein left the Witboois alone as he attacked and subdued smaller tribes.
Maintaining divisions among the Africans was essential to continued German
domination. In the latter part of 1894, Leutwein set about to alienate the Herero from
their land without fighting. First, he paid Samuel Maherero a salary of 20,000 marks
in exchange for his agreeing to redefine the southern boundary of Hereroland. Then
he obtained Maherero's agreement to establish a so-called Crown territory (land
placed at the disposal of the German governor) in the north at the White Nosob. Most
affected by this treaty were Herero headmen Tjetjo, Nikodemus, and Kahimemua, who
were already distressed by Samuel Maherero's dealings with the Germans.

Alarmed at the growing opposition among the Herero to his succession and his
dealings with the Germans, Maherero decided to withdraw from Okahandja and move
to Osona. He sought out Leutwein, and at a meeting in June 1894 Maherero said he
would be "pleased to ask for a German garrison to be stationed Okahandja to protect
him." Thus, without a shot being fired, German troops occupied the Herero capital.

Leutwein boasted of his successful co-option of Samuel Maherero in a letter to the

foreign office: "His friendship has enabled us to remain masters of Hereroland despite
our modest protective force. In order to please us, he did more harm to his people than
we could ever have done by relying on our strength alone."

With the Herero neutralized, Leutwein turned back to the task of bringing the
Witboois under control. When reinforcements arrived, he went after the Witboois,
who had hidden out in the Noukloof Mountains. In their pursuit, the Germans suffered
heavy casualties, but they finally forced the Witboois to surrender after 18 months of
warfare. In September 1894, the Witboois signed a Treaty of Protection and Friendship
with the Germans. Deprived of all their cattle and dependent on handouts from the
Germans, the Witboois agreed to fight against any German enemy.

Leutwein's divide-and-rule policy was effective. When two subgroups, the Herero
Mbandjeru and the Nama Khauas rose up against German settlers and forces, Samuel
Maherero was bound to fight against his fellow Herero in support of the Germans. And
Hendrik Witbooi, in honor of his treaty with the Germans, did not support the Nama
forces. Leutwein confiscated the cattle belonging to the Mbandjeru for the settlers and
his troops. Several years later, he confirmed that he had seized 12,000 head of cattle
from Mbandjeru between 1896-97.

The Herero came under further pressure in 1897 when rinderpest killed between 90
and 95% of their remaining cattle. Germans vaccinated their own herds and cut their
losses substantially. With the diminished herds, the price of cattle soared, but the
Herero could not compete in the market. In a few years' time, the settlers had acquired
nearly 50,000 head of cattle. From then on, the white settlers entered the cattle market
and began to raise cattle for a profit. The Herero were impoverished and many were
forced to work for the Germans on the railway or in the mines in South Africa.

Increasingly, the settler population rubbed against the African people. Cheating the
Africans out of their cattle, they took their land and gouged them in commercial
transactions. In the two years between 1901 and 1903, the settler population had
swelled from 310 to 3,000. The railway from Swakopmund on the coast to Windhoek
was nearing completion. Having confiscated Herero land to build the railway, the
Germans wanted an additional 12-mile-wide strip on either side, plus water rights.
Maherero agreed to give up the land but nothing more.

In 1903, a subclan of the Nama, the Bondelswarts, rose up against the Germans in the
southern part of the country. In response, Leutwein removed almost all his troops
from Hereroland and sent them south to quell the uprising. In the absence of the
troops, Maherero urged his people to rise up against the Germans. The Herero
uprising began on January 12, 1904. In one stroke, Supreme Chief Samuel Maherero
reversed his devastating policy of collaboration with the Germans and united the
Herero people. Leutwein was forced to conclude a hasty peace treaty with the
Bondelswarts so he could move his troops back north.

Several days before January 12, Maherero had sent a note to Witbooi, through the
trusted emissary van Wyk, to ask the Nama to join the Herero against the Germans.
Van Wyk betrayed Maherero's trust and delivered the note to the German military
leader. In his note, Samuel Maherero said:

I appeal to you my brother, not to hold aloof from the uprising, but to make your
voice heard so that all Africa may take up arms against the Germans. Let us die
fighting rather than die as a result of maltreatment, imprisonment or some other
calamity. Tell all the kapteins down there to rise and do battle.

Unaware of Maherero's appeal, the Nama contingents honored their treaty with the
Germans and allowed them to concentrate solely on fighting the Herero.
For the first six months, the Herero were on the offensive. They had caught the
Germans ill prepared and undermanned. In an encounter in April, when the Herero
encircled the main German detachment at Oviumbo, Leutwein ordered his troops to
retreat and remained on the defensive until reinforcements arrived. Toward the end
of May, the Herero moved northeast to the Waterberg Plateau, away from the railway
line and the German's supply lines.

Criticized by the foreign office for the retreat at Oviumbo, Leutwein submitted his
resignation and awaited his replacement, Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha.
Historian Horst Drechsler describes Von Trotha as a "veritable butcher in uniform,
who embarked on a campaign of annihilation against the Herero." Arriving in June,
Von Trotha issued what is referred to as his "Extermination Orders":

The Herero people must depart from the country. If they do not, I shall force them to,
with large cannons. Within the German boundary every Herero, whether found
armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot.

Von Trotha decided to engage the Herero at Waterberg. The Waterberg Plateau looms
up out of the flat Namibian landscape, protected on three sides by the walls of the
escarpment. On the east, it slopes into the Omaheke desert in Botswana. Von Trotha
ordered six German detachments to spread out on the three sides of the plateau, with
the smallest contingent in the southeast. The attack began on August 11 from the west
where he had positioned the strongest detachment. With their superior weaponry, the
Germans overwhelmed the Herero. The Germans had 30 artillery pieces and 12
machine-guns to the Herero's 6,000 rifles and dwindling ammunition supplies.
Attacked from the west, the Herero had no alternative but to flee into the Omaheke
desert to the southeast. A study of a report by the German general staff confirms that
this was an intentional plan:

If, however, the Herero were to break through [in the east], such an outcome of the
battle could only be even more desirable in the eyes of the German Command because
the enemy would then seal his own fate, being doomed to die of thirst in the arid
sandveld.

Once the Herero were beyond the waterholes, the Germans formed a line of defense
along the 150-mile border, denying the Herero access to water. Those Herero who tried
to go northward were repulsed by German troops. The cordon was maintained until
mid-1905. Out of a population of 80,000, 64,000 Herero died, most of them from
thirst and starvation in the desert.

As reports reached Witbooi of how wretchedly the Germans were treating the Herero,
Witbooi and the entire Nama nation took up arms against the Germans in October
1904. A year later, in October 1905, Hendrik Witbooi was killed. Although the Namas
continued the fight, engaging 14,000 German soldiers in guerrilla warfare for two
more years, the Nama uprising had come too late. As Drechsler says, "It was nothing
short of a tragedy that the Herero and Nama took up arms successively rather than
simultaneously against the hated German yoke."

Following Witbooi's death, Von Trotha left South West Africa. With Von Trotha gone
and the Germans realizing they could not win the war against the Nama, they finally
negotiated an end to the war in 1907. By then half the Nama population of 20,000 had
died.

Samuel Maherero and his three sons survived the desert. They made their way to
British territory and eventually settled at Lake Ngami in Botswana. Samuel Maherero
died in exile in 1923. His remains were returned to South West Africa, and he was
buried with his grandfather and father in Okahandja. Every year, the Herero gather at
the grave site to commemorate their leaders.

References:
Drechsler, Horst. Let Us Die Fighting. Akademie-Verlag, 1966.
Jenny, Hans. South West Africa: Land of Extremes. Southwest Africa Scientific Society. 1976.
Lau, Brigitte. Namibia in Jonker Afrikaner's Time. Namibia Archives, 1987.
Soggot, David. Namibia: The Violent Heritage. Rex Collings, 1986.

EL-MAHDI, MUHAMMAD AHMAD IBN EL-SAYYID ABDULLAH (1848-

1885).

al-Mahdī, (Arabic: “Right-Guided One”) original name Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn

al-Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh, (born August 12, 1844—died June 22, 1885, Omdurman,
Sudan), creator of a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa
and founder of a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later. As a
youth he moved from orthodox religious study to a mystical interpretation of Islam. In
1881 he proclaimed his divine mission to purify Islam and the governments that
defiled it. His extensive campaign culminated in the capture of Khartoum (January 26,
1885). He then established a theocratic state in the Sudan, with its capital at
Omdurman.

Early life

Muḥammad Aḥmad was the son of a shipbuilder from the Dongola District of Nubia.
Shortly after his birth, the family moved south to Karari, a river village near Khartoum.
As a boy, Muḥammad developed a love of religious study. Instead of seeking an
orthodox education, such as that offered at al-Azhar University in Cairo, and passing
into the official hierarchy as a salaried judge or interpreter of Islamic law, he remained
in the Sudan. Increasingly, he tended to a more mystic interpretation of Islam, in the
Ṣūfī tradition, through study of the Qurʾān—the sacred Muslim scripture—and the
practice of self-denial under the discipline of a religious brotherhood.

He joined the Sammāniyyah order and grew to manhood in a wholly Sudanese

religious setting, purposely separating himself from the official ruling class. By now
the young man had begun to attract his own disciples and, in 1870, moved with them
to a hermitage on Abā Island in the White Nile, 175 miles south of Khartoum. His
highly emotional and intransigent religious observance brought him into conflict with
his shaykh (teacher), whom he reproved for worldliness. The exasperated shaykh
expelled him from the circle of his disciples, whereupon Muḥammad Aḥmad, having
vainly asked his teacher’s pardon, joined the brotherhood of a rival shaykh within the
same order.
The Sudan at this time was a dependency of Egypt, which was itself a province of the
Ottoman Empire, and governed by the same multiracial, Turkish-speaking ruling class
that governed Egypt. In appearance, education, and way of life, the rulers contrasted
starkly with their Sudanese subjects, and, although the more assimilated higher
officials and some of the chiefs of territories along the Nile who profited from their
government connections were reconciled to the regime, the less privileged Sudanese
were not. The situation was politically dangerous, for the discontented came from
many different walks of life: taxpayers oppressed by fiscal injustices and enraged by
the frequent floggings to which they were subject when tardy in their payments; slave
traders aroused by the clumsy efforts of the government, which was hectored by the
European powers, particularly Britain, to abolish the trade without delay; devout
worshippers scandalized by the presence of non-Muslim Europeans as provincial
governors and by their addiction to alcohol; peasants living by the Nile forced to tow
government ships; warlike tribesmen, weary of the long years of enforced peace,
spoiling for a fight—all these were potential enemies of the established order.
It was Muḥammad Aḥmad who converted this diversified discontent into a unified
movement that for a time would transcend tribalism and weld the faithful into an
unconquerable military machine. Gradually, during 1880 and the first weeks of 1881,
he became convinced that the entire ruling class had deserted the Islamic faith and
that the khedive, the viceroy of Egypt, was a puppet in the hands of unbelievers and
thus unfit to rule over Muslims. In March 1881 he revealed to his closest followers what
he considered his divine mission—that God had appointed him to purify Islam and to
destroy all governments that defiled it. On June 29 he publicly assumed the title of al-
Mahdī, who, according to a tradition cherished by the oppressed throughout Islamic
history, would appear to restore Islam.

The events that followed this announcement were among the most dramatic in the
history of the Nile Valley. Within less than four years al-Mahdī, who set out from Abā
Island with a few followers armed with sticks and spears, ended by making himself
master of almost all the territory formerly occupied by the Egyptian government,
capturing an enormous booty of money, bullion, jewels, and military supplies—
including Krupp artillery and Remington rifles.

By the end of 1883 al-Mahdī’s ansar (“helpers,” a name first given to those people in
the city of Medina who helped the Prophet Muḥammad) had annihilated three
Egyptian armies sent against them; the last, a force of 8,000 men with a huge camel
train, commanded by General William Hicks, was butchered almost to a man. El
Obeid, the present-day Al-Ubayyiḍ, provincial capital of Kordofan, and Bāra, a chief
town of that province, fell after being besieged by al-Mahdī. He now committed his
first acts as the head of an armed theocracy on the march: taxes were collected, not as
demanded by the Egyptians but as laid down by the Qurʾān. Already his fame had
reached responsive ears in Arabia to the north and as far west as Bornu, now a province
of northern Nigeria. A master of the art of putting his enemies always in the wrong, he
supported his military operations by an intelligent and subtle propaganda.
Counterpropaganda by the governor-general, ʿAbd al-Qādir Pasha Ḥilmī, a man of
great resource, and by the ulama, the learned men, of Khartoum who mocked al-
Mahdī’s divine claims, failed miserably.
Al-Mahdī’s crowning victory was the capture of Khartoum, on January 26, 1885, after
a resolute defense by its commander, Major General Charles George Gordon, who,
against al-Mahdī’s express order, was killed in the final assault. After many of the
citizens of Khartoum had been massacred, al-Mahdī made a triumphal entry into the
stricken city and led the prayers in the principal mosque. Even making allowance for
the military weakness of Egypt, which during the crucial years 1881 and 1882 was torn
by the nationalist revolt of Aḥmad ʿUrābī Pasha, it was an astonishing feat.

The withdrawal of the British expedition, which had failed to relieve Khartoum, left al-
Mahdī free to consolidate his religious empire. He abandoned Khartoum, still heavy
with the stench of the dead, and set up his administrative centre at Omdurman, an
expanded village of mud houses and grass-roofed huts on the left bank of the Nile,
opposite Khartoum. The site of the new capital had two advantages: it was higher and
better-drained, hence healthier, than Khartoum, and, by governing from the
exclusively Sudanese town of Omdurman, al-Mahdī avoided the evil associations of
the old capital. He directed every aspect of community and personal life by
proclamations, sermons, warnings, and letters. In this endeavour he was helped by the
capture, intact, of the government press and an abundance of stationery. But he
confined himself to the enunciation of principles; most of the routine he left to his chief
officers. The political institutions, as well as the nomenclature of his government, were
based insofar as practicable on those of primitive Islam. In the manner of the Prophet
Muḥammad he appointed four caliphs, or deputies, to be the living successors of the
four earliest caliphs in Islamic history. Three of those appointed by al-Mahdī were
Sudanese, including the caliph ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad, al-Mahdī’s most trusted
counselor and chief of staff; the fourth, Muḥammad al-Mahdī ibn al-Sanūsī, head of
the Sanūsiyyah order in the western desert, ignored al-Mahdī’s invitation. Al-Mahdī
referred to himself as “the successor to the apostle of God”—that is, successor to the
Prophet Muḥammad, but only in the sense of continuing his work.

Al-Mahdī’s rule was brief. He was taken ill, possibly of typhus, and died in June 1885,
only 41 years old. At his wish his temporal functions were assumed by the caliph ʿAbd
Allāh. Over his grave the caliph built a domed tomb similar in architecture to those
customarily built over the remains of the more venerated holy men. Partially destroyed
by gunfire during the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, it was later rebuilt by al-Mahdī’s
son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and the Mahdist community.
Al-Mahdī made a powerful impression on his Sudanese contemporaries, and the
doubters were few. Recorded recollections are capricious, but most witnesses agreed
on his medium-to-tall height; his austere frame, which, according to some, fattened
toward the end of his life; the soft voice that a sudden access of indignation could make
terrible; the sympathetic, sensitive face; the large, piercing eyes. The pious were sure
that in his person he conformed to all that was traditionally expected of a mahdi.
Understandably, European captives drew a less-favourable picture.

To the British at the time of the Mahdist wars, al-Mahdī was the enemy whom they
associated, though wrongly, with the killing of Gordon. The war correspondents
generally reported him as an ogre, cruel when he was not lascivious, and they dubbed
him the False Prophet. This caricature of al-Mahdī was reflected in a bulky literature
by European authors that distorted al-Mahdī’s image for an entire generation.
Ironically, it was General Horatio Herbert Kitchener’s conquest of the Sudan in 1896–
98 that first brought Mahdists and British officials together and fostered what was to
become a growing interest among European and Sudanese scholars in the study of
Mahdist documents in the original Arabic. Such studies made possible a clearer view
of this modern ascetic who changed the course of African history.

???MAHJUB, ABD-EL-KHALIK (1927-1971).

Abdel Khaliq Mahjub (23 September 1927 – 28 July 1971) was a Sudanese
politician.
Mahjub was born in Omdurman. He was the Secretary General of the Sudanese
Communist Party till his death by execution in Khartum during the Gaafar Nimeiry
regime. Following his execution Muhammad Ibrahim Nugud became the leader of the
party.
Mahjub was introduced to communist ideas while studying at Fuad I University in
Egypt, from which he was expelled in 1948 for political activities. He became Secretary
General of the Sudanese Communist Party in February 1949. He was influential in
international communist forums. A number of his writings focused on the idea of
finding a more Nationalist formula for Marxism in Sudan, rather than the literal
application of the experience of the Soviets or the Chinese. These writings helped
exacerbate the Soviet-Sino split. He also rejected subordination to the Soviet
Communist Party, and in contrast to a large number of other communist parties,
supported freedom of religion instead of State atheism. He was arrested by the
dictatorship of Ibrahim Abboud in 1959 and his trial speech in his own defence, "By
Virtue of Marxism Your Honour", was an assertive and clearly-stated political
testament. and under Mahjoub’s leadership, the Communist Party played an
important role in overthrowing Abboud in 1964.
Mahjub opposed the 1969 coup by Jaafar Nimeiri as he saw it as incompatible with the
principle of democracy, which was advocated by the party, but he could not secure the
approval of a majority of secretaries of the CPC Central which was required to
condemn the coup. The SCP later went on to participate in the new government.
Mahjub opposed the coup 1971 coup attempt led by Hashem al Atta on 19 July 1971.
Atta was able to seize power for a period of just three days before Nimeiry regained
power. Nimeiry accused the SCP of masterminding the coup due to the involvement of
a number of the military officers in the communist party. Nimeiry subsequently
ordered the execution of a large number of SCP party leaders.
Mahjub initially refused to flee the country, despite an offer of sanctuary from the East
German Embassy, stating that his basic duty was to spread awareness among the
masses and the establishment of democracy in Sudan, neither of which he would be
able to achieve from exile. After hiding for four days Mahjub turned himself in as an
effort to stop the executions of communists. Following a trial Mahjub was sentenced
to execution.
Mahjub was executed on the early hours of the morning of Wednesday 28 July 1971 by
hanging at Kober Prison. After his death the Sudanese Communist Party never enjoyed
the influence it had previously held.

References:

"Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), Communist Party of Sudan (CPS)".

SudanTribune.com. Sudan Tribune. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
 John Ryle (2011). The Sudan Handbook. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. p. 200.
ISBN 978-1-84701-030-8.

Tareq Y. Ismael (22 December 2015). The Sudanese Communist Party: Ideology
and Party Politics. Routledge. pp. 370–. ISBN 978-1-136-33101-5.

Hasan, Salah (2012). "How to Liberate Marx from His Eurocentrism: Notes on
African/Black Marxism /" (PDF). Washington University in St. Louis.
Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved 3 September 2017.

MAHLANGU, SOLOMON KALUSHI (1956-1979).

Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, born on 10 July 1956 in Doornkop, Middelburg in what

was then known as Eastern Transvaal, was barely 20 years old when Soweto school
pupils protested against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

By the end of 1976 many hundreds of youths had been killed, including a 12-year-old
schoolboy named Hector Petersen, and more than 2 000 wounded. Thousands more
had been prosecuted or detained, and banning orders had been imposed. A large
number of South Africans went abroad, often clandestinely, many of them vowing to
pursue the struggle. One was Solomon Mahlangu, who left his home one night in great
secrecy.

Mahlangu underwent military training as a soldier of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and

was then immediately tasked to return to South Africa to assist with student protests
being planned to commemorate the 1976 uprising. In early 1977, he and two other MK
soldiers, Monty Motloung and George Mahlangu, travelled from Angola to
Mozambique, from where they infiltrated South Africa.

Successfully evading the government's comprehensive security network, they

managed to reach Johannesburg unscathed. There, however, they were intercepted by
police. An exchange of fire followed in which two civilians were killed. In the confusion
George Mahlangu managed to escape, but Solomon Mahlangu and Monty Motloung
were taken prisoner.

Motloung was so severely assaulted in the process that he was unfit to stand trial, but
Mahlangu, although he had not fired a shot during the clash with the police, was
charged with murder as an accessory. He was duly found guilty, and on 22 March 1977
was sentenced to death. His response was a defiant shout of “Amandla!’
Mahlangu's sentence was not carried out immediately, however. His case had aroused
widespread international concern, and he spent two years awaiting execution while
heavy pressure was exerted on the South African government to commute his sentence
and recognise freedom fighters as political prisoners.

The government would not give way, however, and on 6 April 1979, aged 23, Solomon
Kalushi Mahlangu was executed, his spirit unbroken by the long time he had spent in
the shadow of the gallows. His last words were: “My blood will nourish the tree that
will bear the fruits of freedom. Tell my people that I love them. They must continue
the fight.’

The award was collected by Martha Mahlangu (Mother).

MANDUME, CHIEF (1890-1917).

Mandume ya Ndemufayo (1894 – 6 February 1917) was the last king of the
Oukwanyama, a subset of the Ovambo people of southern Angola and northern
Namibia. Ya Ndemufayo took over the kingdom in 1911 and his reign lasted until 1917
when he died of either suicide or machine gun fire while he was under attack from
South African forces. Ya Ndemufayo is honoured as a national hero in both Angola
and Namibia.
The Oukwanyama kingdom was split by the 1884 Berlin Conference into the areas of
Portuguese West Africa and German South West Africa.
Ya Ndemufayo grew up during a time of significant upheaval in the Oukwanyama
kingdom due to the presence of European merchants and missionaries. Third in line
for succession to the Kwanyama throne, the prince lived in fear of assassination from
an early age.
Ya Ndemufayo took the throne peacefully by Kwanyama standards and immediately
moved the royal residence to Ondjiva (now in Angola). Ya Ndemufayo expelled
Portuguese traders from Kwanyama territory to denounce price inflation. Internally,
he issued decrees prohibiting the picking of unripened fruit to protect against droughts
and the unneeded use of firearms, an important commodity obtained from European
traders. Significantly, he also issued harsh penalties for the crime of rape and allowed
women to own cattle, which was previously illegal. Overall, King Mandume sought to
restore previous Kwanyama wealth and prosperity against a decaying system of local
leadership.
Mandume ya Ndemufayo (≈ 1915)
Ya Ndemufayo had a reputation for expelling Christians within the Oukwanyama
kingdom. Numerous Christian families fled to the Ondonga kingdom of the Ovambos.
Ya Ndemufayo did not favor Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries as well as
German Rhenish Missionary Society Protestants within his kingdom.[1]
No European colonizer challenged the well-organized and well-armed Ovambo
kingdoms until 1915 and the beginning of World War I which coincided with a massive
local drought. During the Battle of Omongwa, ya Ndemufayo and the Kwanyama's
resisted a Portuguese attack for three days. Simultaneously, the South African forces
peacefully conquered the portion of the Oukwanyama kingdom formerly located in
German South West Africa. Due to heavy losses, ya Ndemufayo was forced to relocate
the Kwanyama capital to the area of South West Africa. In February 1917, after ya
Ndemufayo refused to submit to South African control, he died in battle against the
South Africans. The cause of his death is disputed; South African records show his
death from machine-gun fire, while oral and popular history described his death as
suicide.
The Oukwanyama kingship was abolished following his death in 1917 until February
1998 when Cornelius Mwetupunga Shelungu was named chief.

 Mandume ya Ndemufayo is one of nine national heroes of Namibia that were

identified at the inauguration of the country's Heroes' Acre near Windhoek.
Founding president Sam Nujoma remarked in his inauguration speech on 26
August 2002 that:
"It is better to die fighting than to become a slave of the colonial forces." -- These were
the defiant words of one of Namibia's foremost anti-colonialist fighters. He said these
words in defiance when the combined [European] colonial forces insisted he should
surrender. [...] To his revolutionary spirit and his visionary memory we humbly offer
our honor and respect.

 Ya Ndemufayo is honoured in form of a granite tombstone with his name engraved

and his portrait plastered onto the slab.
 King Mandume is also celebrated in Angola, having streets named after him in
various cities of the country.
 A university in Angola established in 1963, Universidade Mandume ya Ndemufayo
is named after King Mandume.
 In February 2017, a 100th anniversary of the death of Oukwanyama King Mandume
ya Ndemufayo was attended by thousands of Namibians at Omhedi in the
Ohangwena region including former Namibian presidents, also the current
President Hage Geingob who unveiled a bust of King Mandume.
 Ya Ndemufayo has a street named after him stretching from the Windhoek city
centre to Namibia's national university, the University of Namibia.
References:
Order out of Chaos: Mandume ya Ndemufayo and Oral History by Patrica
Hayes in the Journal of Southern African Studies, 19.1, March 1993]
Mandume ya Ndemufayo's memorials in Namibia and Angola Archived 2012-
02-15 at the Wayback Machine
Nujoma, Sam (26 August 2002). "Heroes' Acre Namibia Opening Ceremony -
inaugural speech". via namibia-1on1.com.

MANE, ACACIO (died 1958).

MAPONDERA, PAITANDO KADUNGURE (died 1904).

Chief Kadungure Mapondera helped to lead the Shona people of Southern Africa
against British colonial forces in the 1890s. He eventually surrendered to his enemies
and was tried and sentenced to imprisonment.
Son of Nyahunzvi and his wife Mwera, Nyahunzvi son of Zhengeni, Zhenjeni son of
Chiwodza (Chiwodzamamera) who became first Chief Negomo. Chiwodza was son of
Mugumu (Kanogumura), a descendant of the Rozvi Dynasty of Zimbabwe from early
1690s, and his wife Chimoyo, sister of Gwangwadza and children of Chiumbe of
Nehoreka dynasty. Mugumu's brother was Kuredzamuswe. The two came from Bikita
and were of Moyondizvo totem.
As an outstanding commander and politician, in 1901 Chief Kadungure Mapondera,
who had in 1894 proclaimed his independence of the British South Africa Company's
rule, led a rebellion in the Guruve, Mazowe and Mount Darwin areas of Mashonaland
Central. He led a force of initially under 100 men, but had over 600 under his
command by mid-1901. He was captured in 1903 and died in jail in 1904 after a hunger
strike.

When the Rozvi Empire was folding the children of Dhewa Basvi moved northwards
from Bikita into some parts of Manicaland, Midlands, Masvingo and all Mashonaland
Provinces. Some of them include Chiduku, Tandi, Ruzane, Samuriwo, Negomo,
Nyamweda, Sai (Gokwe), Gumunyu, Musarurwa, Mumbengegwi, Gono ( descendents
of Kuredzamuswe in Shamva).
Negomo Chieftainship: Chiwodza had 3 sons viz: Mutasa (Mutopore)and Zhenjeni
(from senior wife), and Muroro from junior wife. Mutasa did not leave a son. The
chieftainship continues to rotate between the descendents of Zhenjeni and Muroro.
Kindly note that the chieftainship does not necessarily follow seniority positions in the
family.

Negomo Chieftainship: Chief 1: Chiwodzamamera. Chief 2: Zhenjeni. Chief 3:

Chimukwende/Hwende/Dandera (Muroro). Chief 4: Muguse (Zhenjeni). Chief 5:
Gorejena (Muroro). N.B. Muguse did not have sons. When he fell ill his brother
Nyahunzvi became the longest acting chief for over 30 years. Nyahunzvi died before
Muguse who had been ill for a long time. Soon after Nyahunzvi's death it did not take
long before Muguse's death. Mwera the wife of Nyahunzvi, who was pregnant was
inherited by the incoming chief Gorejena, son of Hwende of Muroro lineage. Mwera
bore Kadungure/Chivaura who was then nicknamed Mapondera. In fact Gorejena who
took Mwera as his wife soon after the death of Nyahunzvi was Mapondera's cousin.
With Mwera Gorejena's children are Chikuva (daughter) and Zoraunye (son). Chief 6:
Chipiro /Mukungurutse (Zhenjeni). Chief 7: Munyepere /Mutengwa (Muroro). Chief
8: Chipiro /Mhako Dingo) (Zhenjeni). Chief 9: Mupfunya (Muroro). Chief 10: Chipiro
/Gomwe Naison (Zhenjeni). Chief 11: Chitsinde/ Inge/ Zhakata (Muroro). Chief 12:
incoming Nyahunzvi/Mapondera's family (Zhenjeni).

Paramount Chief Mapondera's chieftainship has nothing to do with Negomo

chieftainship. These are different chieftainships. However Mapondera's children are
also legible to Negomo chieftainship.

Mapondera's sons who left descendents were as follows (starting with most senior): 1.
Chivarange/Kanotumika 2. Chaichimwe 3. Gatsi 4. Jaji/Gorejena 5.
Muchenje/Chikuku 6. Kaseke/Chatamabara 7. Mukambi/Masocha 8. Chigon'a 9.
Mutata 10. Jani/Mbocho 11. Macharika (no children) 12. Machiridza/Jeke 13.
Murungweni/Marufu 14. Makuvise 15. Muteveri (Ben) 16. Usaihwevhu/Bainosi 17.
Chibaya 18. Magwasha/Enock 19. Nhova 20. Tavengwa 21. Takawira 22.
Chandidzora/Mereki.

References: Wikipedia

MATSWA, ANDRE Grenard (1889-1942). (17 January 1899 – 13 January 1942)

was a Congolese Lari religious figure and politician born near Manzakala-Kinkala in
then Middle Congo, a rare influential figure in Congolese politics before independence
in 1960. He inspired a messianic cult, Matswanism or Matsuanism, that emerged in
the French Equatorial African capital, Brazzaville.

Matswa or Matsua (in Kikongo) was born in 1899 in a small village of Loukoua-Nzoko
in French Congo. In 1925, he joined the Senegalese Tirailleurs and participated in the
Rif War. In 1926, Matsoua founded Amicale des Originaires de l'A.E.F., a self-
improvement group, while living in Paris. He attended events sponsored by the French
Communist Party and helped develop black-based trade unions. Many came to
consider Matsoua as a divine prophet, sent by God to liberate the Congolese from the
French. According to author Victor T. Le Vine, Matsoua was comparable to Kimbangu,
becoming a "martyr in the eyes of his followers" and developing a "quasi-religious
aura".
In December 1929, he was arrested in Paris and set to be tried in Brazzaville, under
the fallacious motive of swindling money of the African Indigenous people in French
Congo. The money from free and voluntary contributions to the Indigenous people was
also seized by the colonial administration.
When Matsoua returned to Africa in 1930, he was tried by the colonial government in
Brazzaville for anti-colonialism. On 19 March 1930, Matsoua asked the Court of
Brazzaville for him to be tried as a French citizen with reasons of his naturalization
and arrest in French territory. He was sentenced by the Court of Brazzaville to 3 years
of imprisonment and was banned for 10 years from stepping into French Congo on 2
April 1930. A week later, he was sentenced to exile for ten years in Chad, where he
escaped from Fort Lamy, Chad in 1935 and fled to France.
In 1940, during World War II, he was wounded on the front in Lorraine during fighting
against the Germans and was sent to Beaujon Hospital in Paris for treatment. On 3
April 1940, he was arrested in his hospital bed in Paris under the accusation of
attacking French state security members. He was then transferred back to French
Congo and sentenced to forced labor in Brazzaville in February 1941. He was alleged
to have spread pro-German propaganda around the capital. On 20 February 1941, he
arrived in Mayama prison and spent another 11 months behind bars, having been
tortured and beaten. He died in the prison on 13 January 1942.
After independence, Congolese politicians of many ideological shades attempted to
capitalize on Matsoua's popularity, including Presidents Abbé Fulbert Youlou,
Alphonse Massamba-Débat and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, as well as the insurgent leader
Bernard Kolélas. There is a statue honoring him in Kinkala.

References:
Derrick, Jonathan (2008). Africa's "agitators": militant anti-colonialism in Africa and
the west, 1918-1939. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 241.
ISBN 9780231700566.

Clark, John F.; Decalo, Samuel (9 August 2012). Historical Dictionary of

Republic of the Congo. Scarecrow Press. p. 29, 274. ISBN 978-0-8108-7989-8.

"MATSOUA, le Grand Résistant" (in French). Blog Spot. 24 March 2013.

Franz Ansprenger (1989). The dissolution of the colonial empires. Taylor &
Francis. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-415-03143-1.
 Vine, Victor T. Le (2004). Politics in Francophone Africa. Lynne Rienner
Publishers. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-58826-249-3.

MENELIK II, EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA (1844-1913)

Photo: Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

MENELIK II (1844–1913)
As emperor of Ethiopia at the turn of the 20th century, Menelik II maintained his
country's independence in the face of foreign threats and expanded Ethiopia's
territory.
Menelik II (also written as Menilek; 1844-1913) became emperor of Ethiopia in 1889.
After his army defeated Italian forces at the Battle of Adwa (also written as Adowa) in
1896, Ethiopia's independence was recognized by Italy and other European countries
that were colonizing Africa. During Menelik's reign, Ethiopia remained independent,
thanks in part to his strategic alliances. Success in battle and Ethiopia's independence
also made Menelik a powerful symbol for Black people worldwide. Menelik's rule
brought advances such as compulsory education, telephones and the telegraph to
Ethiopia, but some of his subjects were harshly mistreated.

Menelik was born on August 17, 1844, in Ankober, Shewa, Ethiopia. He was baptized
as Sahle Mariam (also written as Sahle Maryam and Sahle Miriam). His father was
Haile Malakot (also written as Malekot), who would become king of Shewa (also
written as Shoa, Showa and Shawa) in 1847, and his mother was Woizero Ejigayehu
(also written as Ejjigayehu).

Melenik's father died in 1855, shortly before Menelik was taken prisoner by Emperor
Tewodros II. While with Tewodros, Menelik continued to receive an education and
married one of the emperor's daughters. Menelik escaped Tewodros's custody in 1865.
Menelik took his name from Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and Makeda, Queen
of Sheba. Menelik I was a king in 10th century BC. Through his father, Menelik II
claimed descent from this Solomonic line.

After his escape, Menelik returned to Shewa and claimed its throne. As king of Shewa,
Menelik was a powerful leader who wanted to become emperor, but he had to pledge
loyalty to Emperor Yohannes IV, who ruled from 1872 to 1889. Following Yohannes's
battlefield death in March 1889, Menelik was the strongest claimant and took the title
of emperor.

Menelik was crowned king of kings (negus negast) and emperor of Ethiopia on
November 3, 1889, at the Church of Mary (also known as Mariam Church) on Mount
Entoto.

His wife, Taitu (also written as Taytu and Taitou) Betul, whom he had married at
Easter mass in 1883, was crowned empress two days after Menelik.

On May 2, 1889, Menelik signed the Treaty of Wichale (also written as Wuchale) with
Italy. This treaty of friendship soon had a point of conflict: Article XVII in the Italian
version of the treaty stated that Menelik had agreed to Ethiopia becoming a
protectorate of Italy, while in the Amharic version the country's independence was
maintained. Italy tried to get Menelik to accept their interpretation but he refused. In
1893, he announced his intention to nullify the treaty, informing Italy, "My kingdom
is an independent kingdom and I seek no one's protection."

Italy, certain it could get its way by force, went to war with Ethiopia in 1895. Ethiopia
had been hit hard by famine and disease outbreaks in previous years, but Menelik was
able to mobilize a large army thanks to a rousing proclamation he issued on September
17, 1895, which said in part:

"Our enemies have begun the affair by advancing and digging into the country like
moles. With the help of God I will not deliver up my country to them. . . . Today, you
who are strong, give me your strength, and you who are weak, help me with your
prayer."

With their freedom at stake, his countrymen came to fight with Menelik. This army
wielded modern weaponry (much of which Menelik had acquired from Italy).
Meanwhile, Italian leaders' racist beliefs left them doubtful that the Ethiopians could
capably defend their land. The dispute came to a head at the Battle of Adwa on March
1, 1896, where 100,000 Ethiopian soldiers defeated 20,000 Italian forces. This made
Menelik the first African ruler to successfully counter a colonial invasion.

Italy subsequently signed the Peace Treaty of Addis Ababa, which recognized
Ethiopia's independence, on October 26, 1896. Other European nations soon
recognized Ethiopia as an independent state as well.

As king of Shewa and as emperor, Menelik expanded Ethiopia's territory. The

country's borders today are a close match to those established by Menelik.

As emperor, Menelik created a new capital at Addis Ababa and had telegraph and
telephone lines constructed. It was during his reign that the first newspaper in
Amharic was issued and compulsory schooling was introduced. He saw Ethiopia's
Bank of Abyssinia chartered in 1905 and had the country join the International Postal
Union in 1908. Menelik coordinated with the French on a railway line from Djibouti
to Addis Ababa (which was completed in 1917), set up a cabinet to oversee government
functions, and encouraged the use of vaccines.

After Italy and other powers recognized Ethiopia's independence, Menelik was able to
maintain this status, making Ethiopia an outlier among African nations. He signed
friendship treaties with the French, the British, and the Germans. In 1903 he agreed
to a commercial relations treaty with the United States. Menelik also established
diplomatic ties with the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Sudan.

Menelik's accomplishments were aided by his wife, Taitu. Queen Taitu was a well-
educated woman who offered Menelik her full support at the Battle of Adwa and in
political conflicts. It was Taitu who chose Addis Ababa's location, and who pushed
Menelik to have both boys and girls be required to attend school.

Menelik eventually took steps to end slavery in Ethiopia, but in earlier years he
profited from the slave trade. As his territory expanded, the Christian Menelik
destroyed mosques and had churches built. He installed Christian rulers in conquered
areas, even places with non-Christian populations.

Those who opposed Menelik were sometimes maimed. The right hands and left feet of
captured Askari prisoners, who'd fought with Italy at the Battle of Adwa, were
amputated (a traditional step taken to prevent future attacks).

After his success at the Battle of Adwa, Menelik did not try to eject the Italians from
Eritrea. However, this may have been a strategic move that allowed him to move
forward with his plans for Ethiopia.

Menelik died at the age of 69 on December 12, 1913, in Addis Ababa. His death was
incorrectly announced several times before his passing. By 1907, Menelik's health was
failing. He became nearly incapable of ruling following a stroke in 1909.

Menelik had daughters but no sons. The grandson who succeeded him was deposed by
one of Menelik's daughters in 1916.

Publisher
A&E Television Networks

MESSALI, HADJ BEN AHMED (1898-1974).

Messali Hadj was born on March 16, 1898, in the western Algerian city of Tlemcen. He
was the youngest of seven children in a traditional family whose economic
circumstances were extremely marginal. He attended a Qur'anic (Koranic) school and
also a local French primary school. But because his parents sent him out to work
during his tenth and eleventh years, Messali was 18 years old before he completed the
primary curriculum. That ended his formal education.

Just before his 20th birthday, Messali Hadj was drafted into the French army, where
he served three years, mostly in the Bordeaux region. In France the young man was
astonished at the vastly higher living standards of French peasants and working
people. Army life exposed him to the order, discipline, and relatively higher status that
went with military service, while at the same time embittering him at the
institutionalized prejudice to which colonial troops were subjected. It was in Bordeaux,
also, that he first became acquainted with Marxist writings and with the activities of
the Communist-dominated French labor movement.
Upon his discharge in February 1921, Messali returned to Tlemcen at a time when
Algeria was experiencing severe economic depression. Trying his hand at five different
jobs in the commercial and manufacturing sectors, Messali was appalled at the
conditions imposed upon him by each of these Muslim employers. After two and a half
years in which his political sensibilities grew enormously, Messali moved to Paris,
joining there the largest of the North African immigrant communities in France, which
then totaled some 120,000.
The new immigrant tried several industrial and service jobs but finally went into
business for himself, selling stockings at weekly markets in the environs of the capital.
He married Emilie Busquant, a department store clerk and member of the French
Communist Party, by whom he had two children, Ali and Djanina. His wife remained
loyal to him until her death in 1953.
Culturally isolated and confronted with many material problems, the Algerian workers
in France discovered that only the French far left demonstrated much interest in their
issues and welfare. In June 1926, with Communist logistical and moral support, North
Africans created the Etoile nordafricaine (ENA) as a political organization to battle for
their rights and for amelioration of conditions in their homelands. Messali Hadj was
secretary-general of the ENA from its inception and soon came to dominate it. In
February 1927 he delivered the ENA's first list of "Algerian demands" to an anticolonial
congress organized by the Communist International in Brussels. Most singular among
those demands was a call for the independence of Algeria. At a time when French-
educated middle-class Algerians were working for assimilation of their country into
the French Republic, and when Muslim reformers were calling for educational and
cultural renewal, Messali's call was truly revolutionary.

Membership in the ENA grew rapidly among the émigrécommunity. By 1928 the
Communist Party terminated its financial support, partially because Messali and his
colleagues demonstrated more independence than it was comfortable with and
partially because the ENA's nationalistic agenda was not consistent with party
priorities of the moment. When the courts outlawed the movement the next year, the
ENA went underground. In 1930 Messali began publishing a newspaper, El Ouma,
which achieved phenomenal readership and for the first time drew attention to his
movement within Algeria itself. At the same time Messali was fine-tuning the rhetoric
of his movement to include a blend of Marxist themes and popular Islamic themes that
could resonate with the lower middle classes with whom he was most at home.
For illegally resurrecting the ENA in 1933, French courts sentenced Messali to six
months in prison. When, in 1936, Islamic reformers and liberal assimilationists
seemed on the point of reaching an accord with France's Popular Front government,
Messali traveled back to Algeria for the first time in 13 years to register his objections.
In a stirring speech delivered August 2 in the Algiers municipal stadium, Messali
stunned and thrilled his audience by resoundingly rejecting assimilation. Thus he
began the process of implanting the independence movement on Algerian soil. When
the ENA was outlawed again in 1937, Messali founded the Party of the Algerian People
(PPA). For this the authorities jailed him in August 1937, and he spent most of the next
nine years in prison or under house arrest. As the 1930s advanced into the 1940s and
France rejected one moderate reform initiative after another, Messali Hadj, even in
prison, became the only alternative for the growing body of Algerians for whom the
colonial status quo had become insupportable.
Freed in 1946, Messali founded the Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés
démocratiques (MTLD) as a successor to the outlawed PPA. Unusually tall, bearded,
and always wearing the traditional jalaba with a tarbush or a red fez, Messali Hadj
became the most potent symbol of Algerian nationalist aspirations. His organization,
however, was soon riven by internal dissensions. These included divisions as to the
relative merits of political as opposed to revolutionary strategies and arguments over
the decision-making process and leadership, which in turn related to both ideological
and generational differences. When, in 1952, Messali was ordered to house arrest in
western France, intra-party communications worsened and differences between him
and other party leaders grew. By 1954 disillusioned younger activists began deserting
the squabbling MTLD, and by October they created the National Liberation Front
(FLN), which launched the Algerian War of Independence on November 1, 1954.
The FLN called upon patriotic Algerians of all political groupings to rally to its banner.
Most eventually did so, but Messali refused, going on to found his own Algerian
National Movement (MNA). First in Algeria and then in France, MNA loyalists and the
FLN entered into bloody, fratricidal battles, with the MNA gradually losing ground in
both places. When Charles de Gaulle came to power in 1958, Messali Hadj for the first
and only time in his life urged compromise between Algerians and the French. With
his effectiveness waning, he was released from house arrest in January 1959 and
settled in Gouvieux, north of Paris. There he lived until he died of cancer on June 3,
1974. Messali Hadj was buried in his hometown of Tlemcen four days later.
The most detailed study of Messali Hadj's life and career is Benjamin Stora's Messali
Hadj, pionnier du nationalisme algérien, (1898-1974) (1982). His career is also
discussed in John Ruedy, Modern Algeria. The Origins and Development of a Nation
(1992); Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, Vol. II (1979);
and Mahfoud Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien and Question nationale et
politique algérienne, 1919-1951, 2 vols. (1981).

Driss M'Hammedi (March 30, 1912 – March 9, 1969) was a Moroccan politician and
diplomat. He served as minister of foreign affairs in 1960–61.
Driss M'hammedi was born March 30, 1912 in Fez during the year of the establishment
of the French protectorate in Morocco, he is an important Moroccan nationalist, he
was notably one of the signatories of the Manifesto of independence in 1944.
On December 7, 1955, when the first Moroccan government was created, he was
appointed Minister of State and, with Abderrahim Bouabid, Mohamed Cherkaoui
and Ahmed Réda Guédira, was in charge of negotiations with the French government
for the independence of the country. He will hold this post until October 26, 1956,
when a new government called Bekkai II government is created, and in which he
becomes Minister of the Interior this time until April 16, 1958 when Ahmed Balafrej
succeeds him at the post in the Balafrej government.
In this government, Ahmed Balafrej who will be both president of the government
and interior minister will not appeal to Driss M'hammedi to join the cabinet. But on
the creation of the Ibrahim government, he was reappointed on 24 December 1958 to
the post of Minister of the Interior. On May 21, 1960, the dissolution of the
government is announced and on May 27, 1960 a new government led by King
Mohammed V of Morocco is formed, with as vice-president his son Hassan II, and in
which Driss M'hammedi becomes minister of Foreign Affairs. After the death of King
Mohammed V, he was reappointed to the same post in a cabinet headed by Hassan II
from May 26, 1961 to June 2, 1961.
SOURCE: WIKIWAND.COM
MKWAWA, CHIEF NTASATSI (1855-1898

Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga (1855–19 July 18981), more

commonly known as Chief Mkwawa, was a Hehe tribal leader in German East
Africa (now mostly the mainland part of Tanzania) who opposed the
German colonization. The name "Mkwawa" is derived fromMukwava, itself a
shortened form of Mukwavinyika, meaning "conqueror of many lands".
Mkwawa was born in Luhota and was the son of Chief Munyigumba, who died in 1879.
In July 1891, the German commissioner, Emil von Zelewski, led a battalion of soldiers
(320 askaris with officers and porters) to suppress the Hehe. On 17 August, they were
attacked by Mkwawa's 3,000-strong army at Lugalo, who, despite only being equipped
with spears and a few guns, quickly overpowered the German force and killed
Zelewski.
On 28 October 1894, the Germans, under the new commissioner Colonel
Freiherr Friedrich von Schele, attacked Mkwawa's fortress at Kalenga. Although they
took the fort, Mkwawa managed to escape. Subsequently, Mkwawa conducted a
campaign of guerrilla warfare, harassing the Germans until 1898 when, on 19 July, he
was surrounded and shot himself to avoid capture.
After his death, German soldiers removed Mkwawa's head. The skull was sent to Berlin
and probably ended up in the Übersee-Museum Bremen. In 1918 the then British
Administrator of German East Africa H.A. Byatt proposed to his government that it
should demand a return of the skull to Tanganyika in order to reward the Wahehe for
their cooperation with the British during the war and in order to have a symbol
assuring the locals of the definitive end of German power. The skull's return was
stipulated in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles:
"ARTICLE 246. Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty,
... Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty's Government the skull of the
Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa
and taken to Germany."
The Germans disputed the removal of the said skull from East Africa and the British
government took the position that the whereabouts could not be traced.
However, after World War II the Governor of Tanganyika, Sir Edward Twining, took
up the issue again. After enquiries he was directed to the Bremen Museum which he
visited himself in 1953. The Museum had a collection of 2000 skulls, 84 of which
originated from the former German East Africa. He short-listed the ones which
showed measurements similar to surviving relatives of Chief Mkwawa; from this
selection he picked the only skull with a bullet-hole as the skull of chief Mkwawa.

Skull on display at the Mkwawa Memorial Museum

The skull was finally returned on 9 July 1954, and now resides at the Mkwawa
Memorial Museum in Kalenga, near the town of Iringa.

Notes
1. According to the Report of the German soldier, who found the corpse of Mkwawa,
the date of Mkwawa's death was definitely 19 July 1898 (Bericht des Feldwebels Merkl,
BArch R1001, 289)

REFERENCES
Martin Baer, Olaf Schröter: Eine Kopfjagd. Deutsche in Ostafrika. Berlin 2001.
Doebold, Holger: Schutztruppe Deutsch-Ostafrika.
Iliffe, John: A modern history of Tanganyika. Cambridge 1979.
Nigmann, Ernst: Die Wahehe: Ihre Geschichte, Kult-, Rechts-, Kriegs- u. Jagd-
Gebräuche. Berlin: Mittler 1908.
Nigmann, Ernst: Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika.
Berlin: Mittler 1911.
Patera, Herbert: Der weiße Herr Ohnefurcht: das Leben des
Schutztruppenhaupmanns Tom von Prince. Berlin 1939.

MOHAMMED V, KING (1910-1961).

Nothing at the birth of Mohammed, in Fez, predestined that he would rule over
Morocco. He was only the third son of Moulay Youssef, the brother of the ruling sultan,
Moulay Hafid. But in 1912, when the French occupied Morocco, Moulay Youssef
replaced his brother as sultan. Mohammed Ben Youssef grew up in the royal palaces
of Fez and Meknes, where an Algerian teacher tutored him. He received a traditional
education based on the Koran plus some elements of modern culture, but he never
formally studied French.
On Nov. 18, 1927, at the age of 16 Mohammed was chosen by the college of Ulamas
(religious scholars) to succeed his father. This choice was influenced by the French
protectorate authorities, who hoped that this timid and docile youth would remain
removed from the affairs of state. Isolated in his palace, Mohammed V, during the
initial years of his reign, seemed to accept his unimportant role. During this same
period the first nationalists organized a movement which led to the formation of the
Istiqlal, or Independence party, in 1944. Already by the late 1930s the Sultan (who
assumed the title of king in 1956) had secretly collaborated with some of these
nationalists.

During World War II, however, Mohammed remained loyal to France, but in January
1943 at the Conference of Anfa, a suburb of Casablanca, the Sultan dined with U.S.
president Franklin Roosevelt, who opened up the perspective of an independent
Morocco if the Sultan would aid the Allies in recruiting Moroccan troops for action on
the European front. In 1947, during a speech at Tangiers, Mohammed Ben Youssef
departed from the written text which the French authorities had approved and openly
sided with the nationalist cause.
The crisis in Franco-Moroccan relations intensified after the war. It was aggravated by
the attitude of conservative resident generals who repressed the nationalist party.
Stripped of real power, Mohammed V was often forced to condemn the Istiqlal
officially while secretly he encouraged its leaders. Beginning in 1947 the situation
deteriorated. Encouraged, even pushed, by the preponderant colonialist groups, the
French authorities in Rabat tightened their direct control over the administration, an
act which further diminished the Sultan's authority. The latter resisted by the only
legal means at his disposal and refused as often as he could to countersign laws and
decrees. He also attempted to bring the growing abuse of his powers to the attention
of the French government, but all of his attempts to change the protectorate status
failed.
Tension mounted in Morocco during the 1950s. As the French in Morocco attacked the
Sultan, his popularity grew. The French, allied with an important feudal chief of the
south, the Glaoui of Marrakesh, and other traditionalist leaders hostile to the reformist
and nationalistic elites of the Istiqlal, tried to play off one side against the other. Riots
in Casablanca at the end of 1952 ushered in the era of mass politics, and the Sultan was
accused of being one of the main causes for the deteriorating situation. By Aug. 20,
1953, despite the opposition of Paris, the French in Morocco deposed the Sultan, who
refused to abdicate his throne. He and his family were exiled to Madagascar, where
they remained for 3 years.

In Morocco the failure of the royal deposition became quickly clear. The Moroccans
considered the new puppet sultan, Moulay Arafa, a usurper. Acts of terrorism
multiplied, and insecurity spread throughout the country. The French in Morocco
retaliated with repression and violence, while liberal politicians in Paris actively
worked for a solution. When the Glaoui rallied to the cause of Mohammed V, all
opposition to the exile's return melted away, and on Nov. 16, 1955, the Sultan regained
Morocco and was greeted by delirious crowds. On March 2, 1956, Morocco received its
independence. Mohammed V became the chief of state, and his son Moulay Hassan
took command of the army.

When Morocco became independent, Mohammed V was 45 years old. He had two sons
and four daughters, all of whom had received a modern education. His poor health
gave him a fragile appearance, accentuated by a natural pallor. But his gaze was
attentive, and he possessed an ironic sense of humor that he revealed to friends and
relatives. The early rigidity which characterized his personality as sultan gradually
gave way to self-confidence as king. But he never lost the reserve and dignity which
characterized his dynasty's style. Through courteous manners and down-to-earth
simplicity, when he so chose, he charmed his opponents into working for him.
Mohammed's legendary exile, during which time the Moroccan nation took form,
gained enormous prestige for him, and he used this to full advantage. He combined in
his person the religious authority of a Sharif (descendant of the prophet Mohammed)
and the martyrdom of an exile, and in his presence both modernists and
traditionalists, Berbers and Arabs, found unity.

Although a theocratic king who was endowed with absolute authority, Mohammed
exercised his powers more as an arbiter than as a despot, which fact added to his
prestige. His character and his studies of Moroccan dynastic history aided him to
maneuver his opponents rather than confront them. He was a master at balancing
forces, speaking to all sides and giving everyone the impression that he heeded advice;
but in the end he did what was best for the palace and his dynasty. By weakening the
opponents to the throne, he strengthened royal institutions and became the
indispensable symbol of national unity.

Without schooling in political science, Mohammed V nevertheless had a flair for

politics. He was fully aware of the contradictory realities of his country, which had to
undergo the profound transformation from a medieval kingdom to a modern nation-
state. His aim throughout his last years was to help the traditional society adjust to
this new, modern state. He died unexpectedly of heart failure after a minor operation
on Feb. 26, 1961. His son Hassan II succeeded him as king.

Further Reading

Information on Moroccan dynastic history and the role of Mohammed V is in Nevill

Barbour, Morocco (1965).

For detailed descriptions of his political role see Douglas E. Ashford, Political Change
in Morocco (1961), and Stéphane Bernard, The Franco-Moroccan Conflict, 1943-1956
(trans. 1968).

MOLAPO, CHIEF (1814-1880).

Molapo was the second son of morena e moholo Moshoeshoe I , the founder of the
Basotho nation, and his chief wife 'Mamohato. Another son of the main wife was
Masopha . At the request of his father, Molapo and his older brother Letsie attended
the first Christian school in the Basotho area in Morija from 1833, which had been set
up by the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris . There he was baptized in 1840
and was given the name Jeremiah. Later he distanced himself from Christianity.
Remains of Molapos' settlement in Leribe (before 1865)
He and his followers settled near Leribe on both sides of the Caledon. He was the only
Mosotho in the region who could read.
During the Seqiti War, he signed a peace treaty with the Boers of the Orange Free State.
He had to admit the loss of his territory west of the Caledon. In doing so, he also forced
the other heads, including his father, to agree to the cession of the remaining areas
west of the river in the "Peace of Thaba Bosiu ". With the establishment of the British
colony of Basutoland in 1868, Molapo was recognized as the traditional head in the
Leribe area.
Moshoeshoe managed to get Letsie's first-born daughter Senate to marry Molapo's son
Josefa so that their first son could become the inheritance - but the plan failed because
Josefa was mentally ill. Molapo died shortly before the Gun War broke out. Like his
father and several brothers, he was buried on Mount Thaba Bosiu .
Molapo had several wives and, in addition to Josefa, numerous other children,
including Jonathan Molapo and Joel Molapo, who fought for the successor for
decades. One of his descendants was the first Prime Minister of Lesotho, Leabua
Jonathan, son of a concubine of Jonathan Molapo.
The Bana ba Molapo ("Children of Molapos") are an association that refers to Molapo
as ancestors.
Reference:
Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical
Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN
978-0-8108-4871-9 , pp. 271-272.

MONDLANE, DR. EDUARDO CHIVAMBO (1920-1969).

Mozambican politician, President and founder of the Mozambique Liberation Front.
He was born in 1920 in the Gaza Province, southern Mozambique, and died in
February 1969.

Ninth son of a Chief in songa, from a very young age became acquainted with colonial
oppression, since his parents were prominent leaders of the movements of protest
against the presence of the Portuguese. He first studied at the mission school, and then
went to South Africa, to the having been granted in 1947 a scholarship to study at the
University of Witwatersrand. At the Centre is related to student groups opposed to the
system of racial segregation prevailing in the country. His political activity led to the
South African Government to deport him in 1949, until he could finish his studies.
On his return to Mozambique organized NESAM, a student movement that opposed
the oppressive policy of Portugal and tried to revitalize the indigenous culture.
Portuguese police arrested him and put him under house arrest. In addition, away
from the political scene, he was sent to Portugal, where he completed his studies. There
he came into contact with other independentist Mozambican students, among which
highlighted Marcelino dos Santos, who became his most close collaborator. Persecuted
by the political police of the Portuguese dictator Salazar, Mondlane fled to the United
States; There he enrolled at Oberlin College and earned a doctorate by Northwestern
University in 1960. Afterwards it began to work as Professor at Syracuse University,
since it simultaneously with its services in the Secretariat of the United Nations.

He returned to Mozambique in 1961, covered by his diplomatic passport, which

granted him immunity. He immediately began his work to gather in a single political
group the different forces of opposition to the colonial Government. He achieved his
goal in 1962 with the founding of FRELIMO, which he was named President.
Mondlane and his allies believed that only an armed conflict could put an end to the
presence of the Portuguese; Once achieved this objective, we should carry out a
restructuring of society following the Socialist patterns. The attack on the
headquarters of the Portuguese administration in the city of Chai on September 25,
1964 marked the start of the armed uprising. The guerrillas began to receive intense
military training, enabling them to reach the level of their enemies. Despite the
repression exercised by the army against supporters of FRELIMO, in 1968 the rebels
controlled the North of the country. With the help of his wife, the American Janet
Mondlane, created a series of schools that were intended to retrieve and transmit the
Mozambican culture and history.
Mondlane established a system of agricultural cooperatives financed by loans at low
interest and machinery at low price, in which benefits were equitably distributed. He
was re-elected as President of FRELIMO in 1968 during the second Congress of the
Organization, which came reinforced the Socialist character of its policy, in which
farmers and workers played an important role. His re-election raised suspicions
among his rivals in the bosom of the party, whose leader was Lazaro Nkvandame,
Secretary of the FRELIMO in the province of Cabo Delgado. In February 1969, a letter
bomb killed Eduardo Mondlane. Subsequent investigations pointed to Nkvandame as
an inductor of this action, which was helped by the Portuguese secret police.

References:
ISAACMAN, a.-ISAACMAN, B.: Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution,
1900-1982, 1983.
MACHEL, S.: FRELIMO: Key Texts of the shipping of liberation of Mozambique,
Barcelona: Anagrama, 1975.
MONDLANE, E.: The Struggle for Mozambique, 1969.
MUNSLOW, B.: Mozambique: The Revolution and Its Origin, 1983.
MOSHOESHOE I, KING (1786-1870).

Moshoeshoe (c. 1776 – 11 March 1870) was born at Menkhoaneng in the northern
part of present-day Lesotho. He was the first son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the
Bamokoteli lineage- a branch of the Koena (crocodile) clan. In his youth, he helped his
father gain power over some other smaller clans. At the age of 34 Moshoeshoe formed
his own clan and became a chief. He and his followers settled at the Butha-Buthe
Mountain. He subsequently became the first King of Lesotho from 1822 to 1870.

Moshoeshoe I with his ministers

Moshoeshoe was the first son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bamokoteli sub-
clan of the Basotho people. He was born at Menkhoaneng in Botha-bothe, Lesotho as
Lepoqo (meaning 'disasters'), which resembled the fact that he was born during a time
when the Bamokoteli experienced great misfortunes. Moshoeshoe and his agemates
went to initiation school and he got the name Letlama meaning strong bond. During
his youth just after initiation, he was very brave and once organised a cattle raid
against Ramonaheng and captured several herds. As was the tradition, he composed a
poem praising himself where, amongst the words he used to refer to himself, said he
was "like a razor which has shaved all Ramonaheng's beards", referring to his
successful raid. In Sesotho language, a razor is said to make a "shoe...shoe..." sound,
and after that he was affectionately called Moshoeshoe: "the shaver". He also referred
himself as the person of Kali, thus showed that he was a descendant of the Great Kali
or Monaheng who is said to be the ancestor of most Bakoena people in Lesotho with
the exception of the senior Bamolibeli.
Moshoeshoe and his followers, mostly the Bakoena Bamokoteli, some Bafokeng from
his maternal side and other relations as well as some clans including the Amazizi,
established his village at Butha-Buthe, where his settlement and reign coincided with
the growth in power of the well-known Zulu King, Shaka and what is now known as
the 'time of troubles' (previously known as 'Difaqane'). During the early 19th century
Shaka raided many smaller chiefdoms along the eastern coast of Southern Africa
(modern day Kwa-Zulu Natal), incorporating parts of them into his steadily growing
Zulu chiefdom. Various small clans were forced to flee the Zulu chief. An era of great
wars of calamity followed, known as the time of troubles/Difaqane. It was marked by
aggression against the Sotho people by the invading Nguni clans. The attacks also
forced Moshoeshoe to move his settlement to the Qiloane plateau. The name was later
changed to Thaba Bosiu or "mountain at night" because it was believed to grow during
the night and shrink during day. It proved to be an impassable stronghold against
enemies.
The most significant role Moshoeshoe played as a diplomat was his acts of friendship
towards his beaten enemies. He provided land and protection to various people and
this strengthened the growing Basotho nation. His influence and followers grew with
the integration of a number of refugees and victims of the wars of calamity.
By the latter part of the 19th century, Moshoeshoe established the nation of the
Basotho, in Basutoland. He was popularly known as Morena e Moholo/morena oa
Basotho (Great King/King of the Basotho).
Guns were introduced with the arrival of the Dutch from the Cape Colony and
Moshoeshoe determined that he needed these and a white advisor. From other tribes,
he heard of the benefits missionaries brought. By chance, three representatives of the
Society arrived in the heart of southern Africa: Eugène Casalis , Constant Gosselin and
Thomas Arbousset. Moshoeshoe brought them to his kingdom. Later Roman Catholic
Missionaries were to have a great influence on the shape of Basotho History (the first
being, Bishop M.F. Allard O.M.I. and Fr. Joseph Gerard O.M.I.).
From 1837 to 1855 Casalis played the role of Moshoeshoe's Foreign Advisor. With his
knowledge of the non-African world, he was able to inform and advise the king in his
dealings with hostile foreigners. He also served as an interpreter for Moshoeshoe in
his dealings with white people, and documented the Sesotho language.
In the late 1830s, Boer trekkers from the Cape Colony showed up on the western
borders of Basutoland and subsequently claimed land rights. The trekkers' pioneer in
this area was Jan de Winnaar, who settled in the Matlakeng area in May–June 1838.
As more farmers were moving into the area they tried to colonise the land between the
two rivers, even north of the Caledon, claiming that it had been "abandoned" by the
Sotho people. Moshoeshoe, when hearing of the trekker settlement above the junction,
stated that "... the ground on which they were belonged to me, but I had no objections
to their flocks grazing there until such time as they were able to proceed further; on
condition, however, that they remained in peace with my people and recognised my
authority."
Eugène Casalis later remarked that the trekkers had humbly asked for temporary
rights while they were still few in number, but that when they felt "strong enough to
throw off the mask" they went back on their initial intention.
The next 30 years were marked by conflicts.
Moshoeshoe signed a treaty with the British Governor, Sir George Thomas Napier.
Among the provisions of this treaty was the annexation of a tract of land (now called
the Orange River Sovereignty) that many Boers had settled. The outraged Boers were
suppressed in a brief skirmish in 1848, but remained bitter at both the British and the
Sotho.
The situation erupted in 1851. A British force was defeated by the Sotho army at
Kolonyama, touching off an embarrassing war for the British. After repulsing another
British attack in 1852, Moshoeshoe sent an appeal to the British commander that
allowed him to save face. Once again, diplomacy saved the Sotho kingdom. After a final
defeat of the Tloka in 1853, Moshoeshoe reigned supreme.
However, the British pulled out of the region in 1854, causing the de facto formation
of two independent states: the Boer Orange Free State and the Sotho Kingdom.
In 1858 Moshoeshoe defeated the Boers in the Free State–Basotho War and in 1865
Moshoeshoe lost a great portion of the western lowlands. The last war in 1867 ended
only when the British and Moshoeshoe appealed to Queen Victoria, who agreed to
make Basutoland a British protectorate in 1868. The British were eager to check Boer
advances, and Moshoeshoe, with advice from Eugene Casalis, realised that continued
pressure from the Boers would lead to the destruction of his kingdom.
In 1869, the British signed a treaty at Aliwal with the Boers. It defined the boundaries
of Basutoland and later Lesotho; those boundaries have not changed. The arable land
west of the Caledon River remained in Boer hands, and is referred to as the Lost or
Conquered Territory. This effectively reduced Moshoeshoe's kingdom to half its
previous size.
Although he had ceded much territory, Moshoeshoe never suffered a major military
defeat and retained most of his kingdom and all of his culture. His death in 1870
marked the end of the traditional era and the beginning of the modern colonial period.
Moshoeshoe Day is a national holiday in Lesotho celebrated every year on 11 March to
commemorate the day of Moshoeshoe's death.
Moshoeshoe I International Airport is named in his honour.
Grave of Moshoeshoe I atop Thaba Bosiu. Photo By Marduk - Own work
References:
Mshweshwe". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Retrieved 7 April 2008.
Soszynski, Henry. "LESOTHO". members.iinet.net.au. Archived from the original on
30 June 2017. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
Eldredge, Elizabeth A. (22 July 2017). Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern
Africa: Oral Traditions and History, 1400-1830. Boydell & Brewer.
ISBN 9781580465144 – via Google Books.

MPAKATI, DR. ATTATI (1932/33-1983).

MPANDE, KING KA SENZAGAKHONA (1798-1872).
Mpande kaSenzangakhona (1798–18 October 1872) was monarch of the Zulu
Kingdom from 1840 to 1872. He was a half-brother of Sigujana, Shaka and Dingane,
who preceded him as Zulu kings. He came to power after he had overthrown Dingane
in 1840.
His reign was relatively lengthy at 32 years, but for the latter part of his reign, he was
king in name only. His son Cetshwayo became de facto ruler in 1856. Mpande himself
claimed that he preferred a quiet life and that he had been forced to become king.
King of Zulu Kingdom

An 1849 portrait of King Mpande by

George French Angas

Mpande was born in Babanango, Zululand, the son of Senzangakhona kaJama (1762–
1816) and his ninth wife Songiya kaNgotsha Hlabisa. He was considered a weak man
in comparison to his contemporaries. While other half-brothers were eliminated when
his brother Dingane assassinated Shaka to become king in 1828, he was allowed to
live. Mpande apparently showed no interest in Zulu power politics.
Mpande came to prominence when Dingane suffered a catastrophic disaster at the
Battle of Blood River in December 1838. His defeat at the hands of the Boers led to
unrest, which Dingane attempted to control by eliminating potential successors such
as Mpande. In September 1839 Mpande defied his brother, who demanded his support
in a war against the Swazi people. Fearing he would be killed if he joined Dingane,
Mpande instead led thousands of Zulus into the Boer republic of Natalia. The Boers
led by Andries Pretorius and Gert Rudolph decided to support Mpande, hoping to gain
concessions if he could oust Dingane. In January 1840 Mpande's army led by
Nongalaza defeated Dingane at the Battle of Maqongqo. Mpande arrived shortly after
with Pretorius' force of Boers, and was proclaimed king.
After executing his own general Ndlela kaSompisi, Dingane escaped, but was soon
murdered in Hlatikhulu Forest. Mpande was now unopposed as king. Mpande later
claimed that he had been forced to become king against his own wishes. The Boers
immediately laid claim to a large stretch of territory in exchange for their help
In October 1843 British commissioner Henry Cloete negotiated a treaty to define the
borders of Natal and Zululand. Mpande also negotiated with the Boers, ceding land
around the Klip River in 1847, which the British considered a violation of the treaty.
Mpande had to reoccupy the land with his own troops. Mpande managed to avoid
further disputes with the British but continued to grant favours to the Boers.
In 1843 Mpande ordered the death of his brother Gqugqu, who was said to be plotting
to kill the king. Gqugqu's wives and children were also killed. The massacre produced
a large influx of refugees into Natal.

Mpande adopted an expansionist policy in the early 1850s, initially raiding the areas
surrounding the Zulu kingdom. These moves culminated in the invasion of Swaziland
in 1852. The Swazi were under Zulu suzerainty, but maintained effective independence
under Mswati II. According to historian Philip Bonner, Mpande wanted Swaziland to
be under his control because of fears of Boer expansion from Natal. He "was intent on
turning Swaziland into a physical sanctuary should he become embroiled with Natal,
and was not prepared to settle for anything less than effective control". The Zulu
invasion was a success to the extent that the Swazi were faced with the prospect of
"disintegration and collapse". During the invasion, Mpande's eldest son Cetshwayo
proved his capacities as a leader. However, the British pressured him into
withdrawing, which he did quickly.
Cetshwayo's success as a leader led to a conflict with Mpande's second, and favourite,
son Mbuyazi. Though Cetshwayo was the oldest, he was not officially successor, as his
mother had not been declared the king's Great Wife. Either brother could inherit if
Mpande chose their mother as his Great Wife, which he did not. Cetshwayo felt that
his father was favouring Mbuyazi, and both sides developed factions of followers.
Mpande ceded territory to Mbuyazi on the Tugela River, where he and his followers
settled. Mbuyazi also cultivated support from European settlers led by John Dunn.
Cetshwayo, who was supported by most of the territorial sub-chiefs, decided to settle
the matter militarily. He invaded Mbuyazi's lands and crushed his followers at the
Battle of Ndondakusuka, massacring survivors, including five of his brothers.[2] Dunn
escaped and later became an adviser to Cetshwayo.
After this Cetshwayo became de facto ruler, though his father continued to carry out
ceremonial functions. Cetshwayo continued his father's policy of maintaining links
with both the British and the Boers and balancing out concessions. Cetshwayo also
kept an eye on his father's new wives and children for potential rivals, ordering the
death of his favourite wife Nomantshali and her children in 1861. Nomantshali and her
daughters were hacked to death. Though two sons escaped, the youngest was
murdered in front of the king.
According to Gibson, "in his later days he became so fat he was unable to walk". The
exact date of his death in late 1872 is unclear, as it was kept secret to secure a smooth
transition of power to Cetshwayo.
Mpande's apparent passivity has been interpreted in different ways. He has often been
identified as a "simpleton" or "the fool of the family", in the words of J Y Gibson. James
O. Gump, however, describes him as a "savvy survivor in the Machiavellian world of
Zulu politics". Gibson himself says that in his youth he was an imposing figure, quoting
a French witness who said he had a regal bearing such that "a Parisian might believe
that Umpande, in his youth, had frequented the palaces of kings". However, there is
considerable evidence of his "lethargy and indifference" to ruling, even in his early
years, when many of the decisions were made by his sons.
Mpande had a positive reputation among Christian missionaries. He allowed John
Colenso to codify Zulu grammar and produce Zulu translations of the Bible. Colenso's
associate, Zulu convert Magema Fuze, gave a Biblically inspired account of the history
of the Zulus in his book The Black People and Whence they Came. In this account God
punishes wicked rulers like Shaka and Dingane, but the Zulus flourish under
"Mpande's peaceful, enlightened rule." Cetshwayo was cursed because of his impious
murder of Nomantshali.
H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain novel Child of Storm is set during the power
struggle between Cetshwayo and Mbuyazi. Mpande (called "Panda") is depicted as an
indulgent, passive figure.
References:
Kennedy, Philip (1981). "Mpande and the Zulu Kingship". Journal of Natal and
Zulu History. 4: 21–38. doi:10.1080/02590123.1981.11964211. Archived from
the original on 2014-03-07.
Gump, James O. (1994). The Dust Rose like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu
and the Sioux. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 64–68. ISBN 0-
8032-2152-5.
Philip (2002). Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires: The Evolution and
Dissolution of the Nineteenth-Century Swazi State. Cambridge University Press.
pp. 62–8. ISBN 0-521-52300-1.

MSWATI II (c.1820-1868).

Mswati II (c. 1820–1865), also known as Mswati and Mavuso II, was the king of
Eswatini between 1840 and 1865. He was also the eponym of Eswatini. Mswati is
considered to be one of the greatest fighting kings of Eswatini.[1] Under his kingship,
the territorial boundaries of Eswatini were greatly increased. Mswati was the son of
Sobhuza I and Tsandzile Ndwandwe (known as 'LaZidze) who after ruling as Queen
Mother became Queen Regent after the death of her son. After the death of Sobhuza,
Mswati inherited an area which extended as far as present day Barberton in the north
and included the Nomahasha district in the Portuguese territory of Mozambique.[2]
Mswati's military power, initially suppressed by infighting with his brothers Fokoti,
Somcuba and Malambule, was increased in the late 1850s and thereafter. When
Mswati's armies attacked organized forces of other Bantu tribes or nations, the goal
was initially plunder in the form of cattle and captives, rather than incorporation into
one political unit.[2] During this period the arrival of Trekboers, in what would become
the Transvaal republic, marked the first contact between Swazis and European
settlers. Mswati greatly extended the boundaries of the Swazi territory beyond that of
the present state with military outposts and royal villages outposts such as Mbhuleni,
on the upper Komati River at the foot of the Mkongomo Mountains, south of Badplaas,
Mekemeke which is east of the Mbayiyane Mountains, situated east of Mantibovu
(Low's Creek). The death of Mswati II in August 1865 ended the era of Swazi conquest,
territorial expansion and resulted in unification of various people into one nation.

getty images photo credit

Ingwenyama Mswati II was born as a son of Somhlolo or Sobhuza I and Queen
Tsandzile Ndwandwe, the daughter of Zwide Ndwandwe, the leader of the powerful
Ndwandwe clan south of the Pongola River. The Swazi clans under the leadership of
Sobhuza I were constantly in conflict with the Ndwandwe's. As a result, Sobhuza made
an offer to marry one of the daughters of Zwide and establish peace with his neighbors.
This culminated in a party being sent to the Ndwandwe capital and Tsandzile was
chosen as the wife to bear the successor to Sobhuza. Mswati's early life after the death
of Sobhuza was marked by disputes over the kingship with his brothers. As a result of
this Mswati and his mother were installed in their positions before either of them was
properly prepared. Such circumstances during his early life are sometimes considered
to have predisposed him to be fierce and decisive later in his rule. When Mswati
ascended to the throne, his predecessor left him a country claimed to be reaching
modern day Barberton in the north, Carolina in the west, Pongola River in the south
and Lubombo Mountains in the east.
After succeeding his father in 1840, Mswati II commenced a career of large-scale raids
and adventure. He selected, as his hunting ground, the prosperous tribal lands of the
various groups to the north of Eswatini. He became rich and his crack regiments, such
as the Nyatsi and the Malalane, brought terror to African homes as far afield as
Zimbabwe and Mozambique. His crack regiments were used more importantly against
emakhandzambili chiefs in Swazi territory and others outside Eswatini. The foothills
of the Drakensberg, westwards from Malelane and Low's Creek to the Barberton
mountain land, were occupied by Mbayi, also known as the Maseko people, who were
held in subjection by, but were not incorporated with, the BakaNgomane. They were
driven out of this area in 1850 by the Swazi regiments. They fled north and occupied
the area between the Crocodile and Sabie Rivers. Mswati also used his force to
influence political events in the Gaza kingdom, east of the Lubombo mountains. He
also defended his country against Zulu encroachment with great determination.
Mswati built a line of military outposts from west to east along the 'Little Crocodile
River' (Kaap River). At each outpost he stationed some of his regiments to watch and
stop the Bapedi returning to their old haunts. The posts were Mbhuleni, on the upper
Komati River, at the foot of the Mkingomo Mountains, south of Badplaas, where
Ngcina Matsebula was the indvuna, and LaMgangeni Khumalo the Nkhosikati
(chieftainess), and at Mekemeke, just east of the Mbayiyane mountains (Three
Sisters), situated east of Mantibovu (Low's Creek), where Mekemeke Lanyandza III
was the chieftainess and Mhlahlo Vilakati the indvuna. Mekemeke is situated high up
on the eastern side of the Mbayiyane mountains, from where the drift in the Crocodile
River near Malelane could be observed should the Mbayi return to the area. Mswati
moved his administrative capital and military posts to Hhohho, on the northern bank
of the Mlumati River and continued his attacks on the various tribes, which include
the Bapedi, the Baphalaborwa, the Lobedu near Duiwelskloof, the Venda of
Zoutpansberg and as far afield as the Great Zimbabwe and the plains of Mozambique.
A. T. Bryant writes that in this way Mswati gradually extended borders, increased his
subjects and added to the wealth and strength of his kingdom. It is clear that he had a
formidable army and Bryant calls him 'a veritable Shaka of the north'. The indvuna of
Hhohho was Matsafeni Mdluli fourth, brother of Labotsibeni, who later became the
mother of Ngwane V. Matsafeni moved to the Nelspruit area in 1888 and H. L. Hall
named the station Mataffin, 5 km west of Nelspruit, after him. Malambule who was
Mswati's half-brother, held the reins of government until the young Mswati became
king of Eswatini in 1840. Malambule appropriated and hid some of the royal cattle for
himself, colluding with his brother Fokoti to commit an act that was tantamount to
treason. When Mswati found out about the cattle, he sent his men to punish
Malambule. Malambule fled with his brothers Fokoti, Sidubela and Ndlela to the south
of the country to seek refuge among the Kunene clan. They later fled to Zululand when
Mswati sent his regiments to attack this clan for giving protection to the refugees.
The disruption of rival kingdoms magnified Mswati's power and distant tribesmen
sought his protection. Mswati established loyal groups in sparsely populated
chiefdoms under their own leadership, and in others, he placed royal princes and
trusted commoners. These new groups and the immigrants became known as
Emafikamuva ("those who arrived after").
Mswati died at his royal residence at Hhohho in August, 1865, aged about forty. He
was buried at the royal burial hill at Mbilaneni, next to his father and great-
grandfather. The death of Mswati II ended the era of conquest, territorial expansion
and unification of various peoples into one nation. Mswati's successor was the eleven-
year-old Ludvonga. He died in 1874 without any children and Mbandzeni became the
new King in June 1875. He was known as Dlamini IV (1875-1889). Ludvonga's older
half-brother Mabhedla was regarded as a threat to the crown prince and had to flee
from Eswatini. He fled Eswatini in approximately 1872 or 1873 and lived for a while
on the farm Stonehaven, some 8 km northwest of Low's Creek, before moving on until
he settled at the Leolo mountains, near Steelpoort, west of Burgersfort. He died in 1895
and is buried on the Leolo mountains. Ludvonga's other half-brother prince Yedvwa
also known as Shishila had to leave Eswatini after his life was threatened. His mother
was LamaKhubo (meaning to upset) and the Swati royal family believed he could not
lead a nation as he might upset it. Prince Shishila established himself in Barberton and
created many principalities there. His sons included Msogwaba, Gedlembane and
Somcuba.
References
Kuper, Hilda (1986). The Swazi: A South African Kingdom. Holt, Rinehart and
Winston. pp. 9–10.
Hilda Beemer, The Development of the Military Organization in Swaziland,
Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 10, No. 2, Apr., 1937
Phillip Bonner, Transvaal/Swazi Politics in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, The
Journal of African History, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1978), pp. 219–238
Gillis, Hugh (1999). The Kingdom of Swaziland: Studies in Political History.
Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0313306702.

MUENEMUTAPA CHIOCO (died 1902).

The Kingdom of Mutapa – sometimes referred to as the Mutapa Empire,
Mwenemutapa, (Shona: Mwene we Mutapa, Portuguese: Monomotapa) – was an
African empire covering vast territories in what are now modern day Zimbabwe,
Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
The Portuguese term Monomotapa is a transliteration of the Shona royal title
Mwenemutapa derived from a combination of two words Mwene meaning King or
Lord, and Mutapa meaning land. Over time the monarch's royal title was applied to
the kingdom as a whole, and used to denote the kingdom's territory on maps from the
period.
Map by Rigobert Bonne showing Monomotopa (Mutapa), dated 1770

History

There are several Mutapa origin stories, the most widely accepted told by oral tradition
is of the princes of Great Zimbabwe. The first "Mwene" was a warrior prince named
Nyatsimba Mutota from the Kingdom of Zimbabwe who expanded the reach of the
kingdom initially to discover new sources of salt in the north. It is believed Prince
Mutota found salt in his conquest of the Tavara, a Shona subdivision. Another
historical narrative of the empire's origins is that Prince Mutota had broken away from
Great Zimbabwe after going to war with Prince Mukwati, (believed to have been either
his brother or cousin) over control of the Kingdom.

Mutota's son and successor, Nyanhewe Matope, extended this new kingdom into an
empire encompassing most of the lands between Tavara and the Indian Ocean. This
empire had achieved uniting a number of different peoples in Southern Africa by
building strong, well-trained armies and encouraging states to join voluntarily,
offering membership in the Great council of the Empire to any who joined without
resistance. Matope's armies overran the kingdom of the Manyika as well as the coastal
kingdoms of Kiteve and Madanda. By the time the Portuguese arrived on the coast of
Mozambique, the Mutapa Kingdom was the premier state in the region. He raised a
strong army which conquered the Dande area of the Tonga and Tavara. The empire
had reached its full extent by the year 1480 a mere 50 years following its creation.

The Emperor Mutope had left the empire with a well-organised religion with a
powerful priesthood. The religion of the Mutapa kingdom revolved around ritual
consultation of spirits and of royal ancestors. Shrines were maintained within the
capital by spirit mediums known as mhondoro. The mhondoro also served as oral
historians recording the names and deeds of past kings.

The Mutapa Empire like all Shona Kingdoms had an agrarian economy at its core.
While mining operations may have been what made the Shona kingdoms famous
among explorers and traders, mining was always considered a secondary activity to
agriculture. The mining of gold was heavily controlled by the King and gold was traded
for luxuries like silk, ceramics and other exotic items. They also traded other items for
livestock, including sorghum, millet, ground beans, cow-peas, and bananas from
Indonesia. Local trade was also a major part of the economy, something seen to a great
extent in the Rozvi Empire which succeeded it. The citizens of Mutapa also engaged in
a number of industries including blacksmithing, cloth production among other
activities, in addition to agriculture, especially cattle rearing, and mining, especially of
iron.

The Mwene (King) was the political, administrative and religious head of the kingdom.
He wore or carried as his badge of office a hoe/axe (gano) and spear made of gold and
ivory. The King lived in an enclosed compound with a separate building for the queen
and another group of buildings for royal attendants. The latter group typically
consisted of males under 20 years of age who came from the families of subjugated
tribal chiefs and whose presence guaranteed compliance with Mutapa rule. When
these young males were of the age to become warriors, they were sent home and given
parcels of land or their own regions to govern in order to ensure their future loyalty.

Assisting the king, who ruled as an absolute monarch, were various officials such as
the head of the army, chief musician, chief of medicine, a head spirit medium, and the
royal doorkeeper. In matters of government, the king could call on the advice of nine
ministers, the oddly named ‘king’s wives’ (MaKaranga). They were not all wives or
even women. The queen was a member, and another was perhaps the sister of the king
(Tete), but the others could be male ministers who had married into the royal family.
The ministers ruled over their own estates and had some judicial powers such as
imposing the death sentence on those found guilty of serious crimes. Ministers were
served by female servants, much like the young men who served the king. The
difference was that these maids could also be the concubines of the king. The senior
wife of the king did have real power and was responsible for relations with foreigners.

The Portuguese dominated much of southeast Africa's coast, laying waste to Sofala and
Kilwa, by 1515. Their main goal was to dominate the trade with India; however, they
unwittingly became mere carriers for luxury goods between Mutapa's sub-kingdoms
and India. As the Portuguese settled along the coast, they made their way into the
hinterland as sertanejos (backwoodsmen). These sertanejos lived alongside Swahili
traders and even took up service among Shona kings as interpreters and political
advisors. One such sertanejo, António Fernandes, managed to travel through almost
all the Shona kingdoms, including Mutapa's metropolitan district, between 1512 and
1516.

The Portuguese finally entered into direct relations with the Mwenemutapa in the
1560s. They recorded a wealth of information about the Mutapa kingdom as well as its
predecessor, Great Zimbabwe. According to Swahili traders whose accounts were
recorded by the Portuguese historian João de Barros, Great Zimbabwe was a medieval
capital city built of stones of marvellous size without the use of mortar. And while the
site was not within Mutapa's borders, the Mwenemutapa kept noblemen and some of
his wives there. By the 17th century, other Europeans would extensively describe
Mutapa architecture through paintings. Olfert Dapper revealed four grand gateways
which led to several halls and chambers in the Mutapa palace. The ceilings of the
rooms in the palace were gilt with golden plates alongside ivory chandeliers which
hung on silver chains and filled the halls with light.

In 1569, King Sebastian of Portugal made a grant of arms to the Mwenemutapa. These
were blazoned: Gules between two arrows Argent an African hoe barwise bladed Or
handled Argent – The shield surmounted by a Crown Oriental.] This was probably the
first grant of arms to a native of southern Africa; however, it is unlikely that these arms
were ever actually used by the Mwenemutapa.

In 1561, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary managed to make his way into the
Mwenemutapa's court and convert him to Christianity. This did not go well with the
Muslim merchants in the capital, and they persuaded the king to kill the Jesuit only a
few days after his baptism. This was all the justification the Portuguese needed to
penetrate the interior and take control of the gold mines and ivory routes. After a
lengthy preparation, an expedition of 1,000 men under Francisco Barreto was
launched in 1568. They managed to get as far as the upper Zambezi, but local disease
decimated the force. The Portuguese returned to their base in 1572 and took their
frustrations out on the Swahili traders, whom they massacred. They replaced them
with Portuguese and their half-African progeny who became prazeiros (estate holders)
of the lower Zambezi. Mutapa maintained a position of strength exacting a subsidy
from each captain of Portuguese Mozambique that took the office. The Mwenemutapa
also levied a duty of 50 percent on all trade goods imported.

Mutapa proved invulnerable to attack and even economic manipulation due to the
Mwenemutapa's strong control over gold production. What posed the greatest threat
was infighting among different factions which led to opposing sides calling on the
Portuguese for military aid. However, the Portuguese proved to be happy with the
downfall of the Mutapa state.

In 1629 the Mwenemutapa attempted to throw out the Portuguese. He failed and in
turn he himself was overthrown, leading to the Portuguese installation of Mavura
Mhande Felipe on the throne. Mutapa signed treaties making it a Portuguese vassal
and ceding gold mines, but none of these concessions were ever put into effect. Mutapa
remained nominally independent, though practically a client state. All the while,
Portugal increased control over much of southeast Africa with the beginnings of a
colonial system. The Portuguese were now in control of the trade and the trade routes.
Baptism of king Siti of Mutapa by workshop of Tomasz Muszyński, 1683, Dominican
Monastery in Lublin. The baptism of Siti Kazurukamusapa was celebrated by João de
Mello on 4 August 1652, the feast day of St Dominic.

Another problem for Mutapa was that its tributaries such as Kiteve, Madanda and
Manyika ceased paying tribute. At the same time, a new kingdom under a Rozvi
dynasty near Barwe was on the rise. All of this was hastened by Portugal retaining a
presence on the coast and in the capital. At least one part of the 1629 treaty that was
acted on was the provision allowing Portuguese settlement within Mutapa. It also
allowed the praezeros to establish fortified settlements across the kingdom. In 1663,
the praezeros were able to depose Mwenemutapa Siti Kazurukamusapa and put their
own nominee, Kamharapasu Mukombwe on the throne.

In the 17th century, a low ranking Mutapa prince broke away from the Empire,
invading the neighboring kingdom of Butua. The leader of this Dynasty became known
as Changamire Dombo. A possible reason for the breakaway was Dombo's
dissatisfaction with the levels of Portuguese interference in the Mwenemutapa
Empire's governance.

By the late 17th century, Changamire Dombo was actively challenging Mutapa. In 1684
his forces encountered and decisively defeated those of Mwenemutapa Kamharapasu
Mukombwe just south of Mutapa's metro district at the Battle of Mahungwe. When
Mukombwe died in 1692, a succession crisis erupted. The Portuguese backed one
successor and Dombo another. In support of his candidate, Changamire Dombo razed
the Portuguese fair-town of Dembarare next to the Mutapa capital and slaughtered the
Portuguese traders and their entire following. From 1692 until 1694, Mwenemutapa
Nyakambira ruled Mutapa independently. Nyakambira was later killed in battle with
the Portuguese who then placed Nyamaende Mhande on the throne as their puppet.

In 1695, Changamire Dombo overran the gold-producing kingdom of Manyika and

took his army east and destroyed the Portuguese fair-town of Masikwesi. This allowed
him complete control of all gold-producing territory from Butwa to Manyika,
supplanting Mutapa as the premier Shona kingdom in the region.
It appears neither the Rozwi nor the Portuguese could maintain control of the Mutapa
state for very long, and it moved back and forth between the two throughout the 17th
century. Far from a victim of conquest, the Mutapa rulers actually invited in foreign
powers to bolster their rule. This included vassalage to Portuguese East Africa from
1629 to 1663 and vassalage to the Rozwi Empire from 1663 until the Portuguese return
in 1694. Portuguese control of Mutapa was maintained or at least represented by an
armed garrison at the capital. In 1712, yet another coveter of the throne invited the
Rozwi back to put him on the throne and kick out the Portuguese. This they did, and
Mutapa again came under the control of the Rozwi Empire. The new Mwenemutapa
Samatambira Nyamhandu I become their vassal, while the outgoing king was forced
to retreat to Chidama in what is now Mozambique.

The Rozwi quickly lost interest in Mutapa, as they sought to consolidate their position
in the south. Mutapa regained its independence around 1720. By this time, the
kingdom of Mutapa had lost nearly all of the Zimbabwe plateau to the Rozwi Empire.
In 1723, Nyamhandi moved his capital into the valley near the Portuguese trading
settlement of Tete, under Mwmenemutapa Nyatsusu. Upon his death in 1740, the
young Dehwe Mapunzagutu took power. He sought Portuguese support and invited
them back to Mutapa along with their garrison of armed men, but Mutapa remained
independent.

The Mwenemutapa died in 1759, sparking yet another civil war for the throne. This
one was more destructive than its predecessors and Mutapa never recovered. The
"winners" ended up governing an even more reduced land from Chidima. They used
the title Mambo a Chidima and ruled independently of Portugal until 1917 when
Mambo Chioko, the last king of the dynasty, was killed in battle against the Portuguese.

The empire had another indirect side effect on the history of southern Africa. Gold
from the empire inspired in Europeans a belief that Mwenemutapa held the legendary
mines of King Solomon, referred to in the Bible as Ophir.

The belief that the mines were inside the Mwenemutapa kingdom in southern Africa
was one of the factors that led to the Portuguese exploration of the hinterland of Sofala
in the 16th century, and this contributed to early development of Mozambique, as the
legend was widely used among the less educated populace to recruit colonists. Some
documents suggest that most of the early colonists dreamed of finding the legendary
city of gold in southern Africa, a belief mirroring the early South American colonial
search for El Dorado and quite possibly inspired by it. Early trade in gold came to an
end as the mines ran out, and the deterioration of the Mutapa state eliminated the
financial and political support for further developing sources of gold.

References

1. Bairoch, page 59
2. Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Monomotapa" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York: Robert Appleton Company.
3. Oliver, page 203
4. Oliver, page 204
5. Williams, Chancellor (1987). The Destruction of Black Civilisation. Chicago:
Third World Press. pp. 280. ISBN 9780883780305.
6. Oliver, page 205
 EL-MUKHTAR, SIDI ‘UMAR (c.1862-1931).

Umar al-Mukhṭār Muḥammad bin Farḥāṭ al-Manifī (20 August 1858 – 16

September 1931), called The Lion of the Desert, known among the colonial
Italians as Matari of the Mnifa, was the leader of native resistance in Cyrenaica
(currently Eastern Libya) under the Senussids, against the Italian colonization of
Libya. A teacher-turned-general, Omar was also a prominent figure of the Senussi
movement, and he is considered the national hero of Libya and a symbol of
resistance in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Beginning in 1911, he organised and, for
nearly twenty years, led the Libyan resistance movement against the Italian
colonial empire during the Pacification of Libya. After many attempts, the Italian
Armed Forces managed to capture Al-Mukhtar near Solonta and hanged him in
1931.

Assad El-Sahra or "Lion of the Desert

'Omar Al-Mukhtar was born in 1858 to a family in the town of Zanzur near Tobruk, in
the region of Ottoman Cyrenaica, belonging to the Senussi (who were seen as Libyan
Ashrafs) Arab clan just like Emir or King Idris es Senussi, eventually becoming chief
or leader of the clan. As a child, Omar lost his father early on and spent his youth in
poverty. He was adopted by a sheikh, and was friends with the nephew of Hussein
Ghariani, Sharif al Geriani. His uncle was a political-religious leader in Cyrenaica, and
received his early education at the local mosque, before continuing his studying for
eight years at the Senussi university in Jaghbub, the holy city of the Senussi Tariqa.
He became a popular expert on the Quran and an imam, joining the confraternity of
the Senussi. He also came to be well informed of the social structure of his society, as
he was chosen to settle intertribal disputes.

Mukhtar developed a strong relationship with the Senussid Movement during his
years in Jaghbub and in 1895, Al-Mahdi Senoussi traveled with him south to Kufra,
and on another occasion further south to Karo in Chad, where he was appointed as
sheikh of Zawiyat Ayn Kalk. When the French Empire encroached on Chad in 1899, he
was sent among other Senussites to help defend Chad from the French, as the Senussi
considered their expansion dangerous due to their missionary activities in Central and
West Africa. In 1902, Omar was recalled north after the death of Al-Mahdi, the new
Senussi leader Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi appointed him as Sheikh of the troubled
Zawiyat Laqsur in Northern Cyrenaica.

The Italian invasion.

In October 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy)
under the command of Admiral Luigi Faravelli reached the shores of Libya, then a
territory subject to Ottoman control. The admiral demanded that the Ottoman
administration and garrison surrender their territory to the Italians or incur the
immediate destruction of the city of Tripoli and Benghazi. The Ottomans and their
Libyan allies withdrew to the countryside instead of surrendering, and the Italians
bombarded the cities for three days, and then proclaimed the Tripolitanians to be
'committed and strongly bound to Italy'. This marked the beginning of a series of
battles between the Italian colonial forces and the Libyan armed opposition in
Cyrenaica.

A teacher of the Qur'an by profession, Mukhtar was also skilled in the strategies and
tactics of desert warfare. He knew local geography well and used that knowledge to
advantage in battles against the Italians, who were unaccustomed to desert warfare.
Mukhtar repeatedly led his small, highly alert groups in successful attacks against the
Italians, after which they would fade back into the desert terrain. Mukhtar’s men
skilfully attacked outposts, ambushed troops, and cut lines of supply and
communication. The Regio Esercito (Italian Royal Army) was left astonished and
embarrassed by his guerrilla tactics.

In the mountainous region of Jebel Akhdar ("Green Mountain") in 1924, Italian

governor Ernesto Bombelli created a counter-guerrilla force that inflicted a severe
setback to guerilla forces in April 1925. Mukhtar then quickly modified his own tactics
and was able to count on continued help from Egypt. In March 1927, despite the
occupation of Giarabub from February 1926 and increasingly stringent rule under
Governor Attilio Teruzzi, Mukhtar surprised Italian troops at Raheiba. Between 1927
and 1928, Mukhtar reorganised the Senusite forces, who were being hunted constantly
by the Italians. Even General Teruzzi recognized Omar's qualities of "exceptional
perseverance and strong willpower." Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Governor of Libya from
January 1929, after extensive negotiations, concluded a compromise with Mukhtar
(described by the Italians as his complete submission) similar to previous Italo-
Senusite accords. At the end of October 1929, Mukhtar denounced the compromise
and re-established a unity of action among Libyan forces, preparing himself for the
ultimate confrontation with General Rodolfo Graziani, the Italian military commander
from March 1930. A massive offensive in June against Mukhtar's forces having failed,
Graziani, in full accord with Badoglio, Emilio De Bono (Minister of the Colonies), and
Benito Mussolini, initiated a plan to break the Libyan Mujāhideen:100,000 population
of Jebel Akhdar would be relocated to concentration camps on the coast, and the
Libyan-Egyptian border from the coast at Giarabub would be fence-closed, preventing
any foreign help to the fighters and depriving them of support from the native
population. These measures, which Graziani initiated early in 1931, took their toll on
the Senusite resistance. The rebels were deprived of help and reinforcements, spied
upon, hit by Italian aircraft, and pursued on the ground by the Italian forces aided by
local informers and collaborators. Mukhtar continued to struggle despite increased
hardships and risks, but on 11 September 1931, he was ambushed near Slonta.

Mukhtar's final adversary, Italian General Rodolfo Graziani, has given a description of
the Senusite leader that is not lacking in respect: "Of medium height, stout, with white
hair, beard, and mustache. Omar was endowed with a quick and lively intelligence;
was knowledgeable in religious matters, and revealed an energetic and impetuous
character, unselfish and uncompromising; ultimately, he remained very religious and
poor, even though he had been one of the most important Senusist figures."

Omar Mukhtar entering the court room.

Mukhtar's struggle of nearly twenty years came to an end on 11 September 1931, when
he was wounded in battle near Slonta, and then captured by the Italian Army. On 16
September 1931, on the orders of the Italian court and with Italian hopes that Libyan
resistance would die with him, Mukhtar was Senussiged before his followers in the
Suluq prisoner of war camp at the age of 73 years old.

Bust of Omar Mukhtar in Caracas, Venezuela.

 Omar Al-Mukhtar University was founded in 1961.

 Since 1971, Mukhtar's face has appeared on the Libyan ten-dinar note.

 His final years were depicted in the movie Lion of the Desert (1981), starring
Anthony Quinn, Oliver Reed, and Irene Papas. It was based on the struggles of
Mukhtar against Rodolfo Graziani's forces.
 A statement by the man used in the movie captured the tongues and ears of
millions of Muslims, ‫ ننتصر أو نموت‬، ‫نحن قوم ال نستسلم‬. ..''We are people that will not
surrender, we win or we die.''
 In 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi wore a photograph of Mukhtar in
Italian captivity on his chest while on a state visit to Rome, and brought along
Mukhtar's elderly son during the visit.
 With the Libyan Civil War beginning 17 February 2011, Omar Mukhtar again
became a symbol for a united, free Libya and his picture was depicted on various
flags and posters of the anti-Gaddafist forces. Rebel militias named one of their
brigades the "Omar Mukhtar brigade" after him.[12]
 A masjid is named after Mukhtar in Tampa, Florida, USA, known as Masjid
Omar Al Mokhtar.
 Streets are named after Mukhtar in:
o Kuwait City, Kuwait (Omar Al-Mukhtar street)
o Gaza City (Omar Mukhtar Street)
o Cairo, Egypt (Omar Al Mukhtar Street)
o West Bay area of Doha, Qatar (Omar Al Mukhtar Street)
o Bizerte, Tunisia
o Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Omar Al Mukhtar Road)
o Irbid, Jordan
o Tangier, Morocco (Avenue Omar Mokhtar)

Gallery[edit]


Photo of Omar Mukhtar sitting

 Omar Mukhtar on 10 Dinar note (2004)


Omar Mukhtar while in custody.



Close up of Omar Mukhtar

 
s

Omar Mukhtar in custody

Omar Mukhtar arrested by Italian officials

References:
 1. al-Sanusiya pg.271
2. Federica Saini Fasanotti , p. 296
3. as Salab, Ali Muhammad (2011). Omar Al Mokhtar Lion of the Desert (The
Biography of Shaikh Omar Al Mukhtar). Al-Firdous. p. 1. ISBN Wikipedia,
source

MULELE, PIERRE (1929-1968).

Pierre Mulele (August 11, 1929, Isulu-Matende – October 3 [or October 9,

depending on the source], 1968) was a Congolese rebel who was briefly minister
of education in Patrice Lumumba's cabinet. With the assassination of Lumumba
in January 1961 and the arrest of his recognised deputy Antoine Gizenga one
year later, Mulele became one of the top Lumumbists determined to continue
the struggle. He went to Cairo, Egypt as the representative of the Lumumbists'
Congo National Liberation Committee based in Brazzaville. From Cairo he
proceeded to China in 1963 to receive military training, and also took a group of
Congolese youths with him, who received training in guerrilla tactics. He was
member of the Bapende ethnic group.

In January 1964, a new conflict broke out as Congolese rebels calling themselves
"Simba" (Swahili for "Lion") rebelled against the government. They were led by
Mulele, Gaston Soumialot and Christophe Gbenye, who were former members of
Gizenga's Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA). During the Simba Rebellion, Mulele, who had
previously undergone training in the Eastern bloc as well as the People's Republic of
China, led a Maoist faction in the Kwilu District. This came to be known as the Kwilu
Rebellion. Mulele was an avowed Maoist, and for this reason his insurgency was
supported by communist China. By the end of April 1964, Mulele's rebellion had been
rendered somewhat less dangerous by the government. The USSR, with an embassy in
the national capital of Leopoldville, did not support Mulele's Kwilu revolt and had no
part in its preparation: lack of support from the Soviets was in the first place
responsible for Mulele turning to China as his patron.

Nonetheless, by August the Simba insurgents had captured Stanleyville and set up a
rebel government there. However, the Congolese central government requested
foreign intervention, and the troops fighting under the command of Soumialot and
Gbenye were routed in November 1964, after intense drives by central government
troops officered by foreigned mercenaries. The landing of Belgian paratroopers in
Stanlyville also proved instrumental in the rebels' defeat, as did key military assistance
from the United States. On 24 November 1964, five US Air Force C-130 transports
dropped 350 Belgian paratroopers of the Para-Commando Regiment onto the airfield
at Stanleyville. This latter move made the United States very unpopular in Africa at the
time. After the rebellion's defeat, Mulele fled into exile in Congo-Brazzaville. In 1968,
then-President Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko) lured Mulele out of
exile by promising him amnesty. Mulele returned to Congo-Kinshasa, believing he
would be granted amnesty. Instead, he was publicly tortured and executed: his eyes
were pulled from their sockets, his genitals were ripped off, and his limbs were
amputated one by one, all while he was alive. What was left was dumped in the Congo
river.

1. Respect all men, even bad ones.

2. Buy the goods of villagers in all honesty and without stealing.
3. Return borrowed things in good time and without trouble.
4. Pay for things which you have broken and in good spirit.
5. Do not harm or hurt others.
6. Do not destroy or trample on other people's land.
7. Respect women and do not amuse yourselves with them as you would like to.
8. Do not make your prisoners of war suffer.
The attempt to adapt Maoist Chinese practice to African conditions also extended to
Mulele's use of the peasants as the mainstay of his revolution.

Mulele married Leonie Abo, a fellow fighter who spent five years in the underground
rebel movement alongside guerrillas loyal to Mulele. In 1968, after her husband's
assassination, she fled to Congo-Brazzaville where she has since lived. Abo has made
a great effort to preserve the memory of her slain revolutionary husband, Pierre
Mulele. The Belgian book Une Femme du Congo (A Congolese Woman), by Ludo
Martens, tells Abo's life story.

References
 "Death of a Rebel". Time Magazine. 1968-10-18.
 Martens, Ludo. Pierre Mulele ou la Seconde Vie de Patrice Lumumba. EPO.
(unknown ISBN)
 Martens, Ludo. The people's uprising in the Congo (Kinshasa) 1964-1968: The
way of Patrice Lumumba and Pierre Mulele. Labour Party of Belgium. ASIN
B0007B9CMY
 Martens, Ludo. 10 jaar revolutie in Kongo, 1958-1966: De strijd van Patrice
Lumumba en Pierre Mulele. EPO. ISBN 90-6445-854-5
Source: military-history.fandom.com

MUTESA I, KABAKA (1838-1884).

Mutesa Walugembe Mukabya was the son of the reigning kabaka, Suna II; his mother's
identity is in dispute. Since Buganda had no fixed system of succession, Mutesa was
one of many eligible for the position of kabaka. Backed by powerful members of Ganda
society, he rose from obscurity to that office in 1856. The first years of his reign were
troubled, but by a ruthless exercise of authority he eliminated all opposition, in the
process greatly strengthening the powers of his office. By the end of his reign, Buganda
was regarded as possessing one of the most centralized ruling structures in all of
Africa.
Mutesa ruled Buganda during the period when foreign, non-African forces entered the
kingdom to begin a fundamental alteration of the internal composition of Ganda
society. Arab and African Moslems from Zanzibar had been visiting Buganda since the
1840s to trade firearms, gunpowder, and cloth for ivory and slaves. By the mid-1860s
Mutesa had outwardly adopted the tenets of Islam, favoring its acceptance by his
subjects for a 10-year period.

But before Islam had the opportunity to win wide acceptance among the Ganda,
representatives of Christian Europe reached Buganda, beginning in 1862 with the
arrival of the explorers John Speke and James Grant. They were greatly impressed
with the flourishing state of Buganda, and their reports attracted visitors. In 1875
Henry Stanley reached Mutesa's court. The wily African ruler, then threatened by an
Egyptian thrust southward from the Sudan, expressed his willingness to receive
Christian missionaries, effectively concealing the political motives for his decision
from Stanley.

The British Church Missionary Society, a Protestant group, answered Stanley's call;
their first expedition reached Buganda in 1877. Roman Catholic White Fathers
followed in 1879. The Ganda system kept the newcomers at Mutesa's court; here they
found a receptive audience among the youths sent from all parts of the kingdom to
serve as pages for the newcomers' teaching, and during Mutesa's lifetime a profound
transformation began to take place within the state as new concepts of belief replaced
traditional values among an elite which would later dominate the kingdom's evolution.

Mutesa, however, never fully accepted any of the new beliefs. He attempted to
manipulate them in the interests of his state, largely succeeding in using the Moslem
and Christian outsiders to increase the already substantial dominance of the Ganda
over their African neighbors. He died in 1884, leaving a deserved reputation as the
greatest of all rulers of Buganda.
Reference

A sensible biography by a Ganda scholar is M. S. M. Kiwanuka, Muteesa of Uganda

(1967). The best account of the life and times of Mutesa is in Roland Oliver and Gervase
Mathew, eds., History of East Africa, vol. 1 (1963). □

MWEZI GISABO, KING (1840-1908).

pic source: interlacustrine.wordpress.com

Mwezi IV. Gisabo (1845-1908)

This photograph of the King of Burundi was made by the German Missionary Meyer.
This picture was taken around the time of his death in 1908. In contrast to most
German photographs portraying African rulers as political figures or/and according to
the racialist lines of their world views, Meyer shows the king as a human and nothing
else. In an almost expressionist way the photograph it brings the king at the bottom of
creatureliness, where there is no space for colonial discourses but for empathy.

He ascended to the throne in 1852 after succeeding his father. Ntare IV Rutaganzwa
Rugamba who was the King of Burundi until 1850. Mwezi IV would continue to reign
up until his death in 1908, when he would be succeeded by his son Mutaga IV Mbikije.
In his position as king of Burundi, he was seen as the ‘Father’ of the Nation, a figure
seen as more religious than political, who was revered as a mystical figure. Mwezi was
one of the younger sons of Ntare, he came to power under the regency of his older
brother, and there was some question of his own parentage. This would end up leading
to a struggle with his older brothers in order to retain his claim to kingship. During the
more than fifty-year reign of King Mwezi IV, a four-tiered system of administration
emerged in order to help govern the country of Burundi more effectively. A central
area around the Muramvya Province was under the direct control of the king; an area
under the administration of his sons or brothers, which was most closely allied to him;
a broad area further east and south that was administered by Batare chiefs, who were
descendants of Ntare IV of Burundi: and a final zone that covered the west and
northwestern areas of the country and was under the administration of other, mostly
Hutu authorities. This method of leadership ended up in multiple revolts in attempts
to overthrow Mwezi Gisabo, with the principal actors in these revolts often being the
sons and grandsons of Ndivyariye, an older brother of Mwezi Gisabo. The issue of
governance in Burundi concerned the ways in which the society was governed and how
it was presently governed, the distribution of the contested authority and resources in
the society, and most importantly to what level of degree were the political leaders seen
as a legitimate leader with authority in the eyes of Burundian society. The sources of
power in Burundi had always been authority, human resources, skills and knowledge,
intangible psychological and ideological factors, and material resources and sanctions,
and when legitimacy of a leader did not exist or was thrown into doubt, the result was
political turmoil and social unrest. Mwezi IV was forced to control a number of new
forms of political intrusion that threatened to undermine his power as king and his
control over Burundi. He was forced to deal with attacks by African actors from the
east (such as Mirambo), as well as threats from the commercial power *ociated with
the east coast Swahili networks, and direct European intervention in his country. In
1884 he led the Burundian army in battle against slave traders led by Rumaliza along
the Kivu-Tanganyika road, inflicting a major defeat upon his opponents and stopping
their incursion into Burundi.
There were some Burundian figures that allied themselves with the German colonial
empire in exchange for their help seizing King Mwezi. The powerful individuals that
betrayed their king were to be rewarded with important or prominent administrative
positions that had political power of their own, the most prominent of these being
Inanga Maconco. Maconco was originally the son-in-law of Mwezi, who became an
early ally to him after marrying one of Mwezi’s daughters. After she died, Maconco
allied himself with the German forces as they sought to capture Mwezi, and in
exchange the Germans promised him a prominent administrative position. However,
he was arrested and hanged by the Germans after he was accused of stealing a gun.
The German forces along with some of the Burundi that had allied themselves with the
Europeans, including Maconco, drove Mwezi from his compound and were able to
force him into an agreement. The contents of this 1890 agreement were that King
Mwezi be forced to recognize German authority, respect the presence of foreign
missionaries, and accept the administrative authority of German allies (such as those
who betrayed him like Maconco) in certain areas. However, in exchange for this, the
Germans would support Mwezi as the continued King of Burundi. The year 1890 would
also see the country of Burundi, along with Rwanda and Tanganyika, become part of
the German East Africa. Although this occurred under the reign of Mwezi, the German
Protectorate of East Africa was a short-lived venture for the Germans, as they ended
up losing all of their colonies, Burundi included, as one of the consequences resulting
from World War I.
Weinstein, Warren (1976). Historical Dictionary of Burundi. Metuchen: Scarecrow
Press. ISBN:9780810809628.
Source: www.howold.co

MZILIKAZI, KHUMALO (c.1790-1868).

Mzilikazi Khumalo (c. 1790 – 9 September 1868) was a Southern African king who
founded the Mthwakazi Kingdom now known as Matebeleland, in Zimbabwe. His
name means "the great road". He was born the son of Mashobane kaMangethe near
Mkuze, Zululand (now known as KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa), and died at Ingama,
Matebeleland (near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe). Many consider him to be the greatest
Southern African military leader after the Zulu king Shaka. In his autobiography,
David Livingstone referred to Mzilikazi as the second most impressive leader he
encountered on the African continent.

King Mzilikazi, as portrayed by Captain William Cornwallis Harris, circa 1836

Mzilikazi was originally a lieutenant of Shaka but he and Shaka realised that they had
created two centres of power and, out of mutual respect and admiration, they parted
ways. Shaka was satisfied that Mzilikazi had served the Zulu nation well and he
rewarded Mzilikazi with cattle and soldiers. He first travelled to Mozambique but in
1826 he moved west into the Transvaal due to continued attacks by his enemies. He
absorbed many members of other tribes as he conquered the Transvaal. He attacked
the Ndzundza kraal at Esikhunjini, where the Ndzundza king Magodongo and others
were kidnapped and subsequently killed at the Mkobola river.
For the next ten years, Mzilikazi dominated the Transvaal. Many falsely state that,
during this period, there was mass murder known locally as the Mfecane -- although
this word is not known to the Zulu vocabulary but likely refers to the Mfekane tribe
which was scattered all over because of violent attacks inflicted by Zwide kaLanga,
King of the Ndwandwe, who was under his mother's influence. (She collected skulls of
conquered chiefs because it made her feel powerful.) Mzilikazi eliminated all
opposition and reorganised the captured territory to suit the new Matabele order. In
1831, after winning a battle against the Griqua people, Mzilikazi occupied the Griqua
lands near the Ghaapse mountains. He used scorched earth methods to maintain a
safe distance from all surrounding kingdoms. The death toll has never been
satisfactorily determined, but it is believed that the region was so depopulated that
the Voortrekkers were able to occupy and take ownership of the Highveld area without
opposition in the 1830s.
Voortrekkers began to arrive in the Transvaal in 1836, resulting in several
confrontations over the next two years during which the Matabele suffered heavy
losses. By early 1838, Mzilikazi and his people were forced northwards out of
Transvaal altogether and across the Limpopo River. Further attacks caused him to
move again, at first westwards into present-day Botswana and then later northwards
towards what is now Zambia. He was unable to settle the land there because of the
prevalence of tsetse fly which carried diseases fatal to oxen. Mzilikazi therefore
travelled again, this time southeastwards into what became known as Matabeleland
(situated in the southwest of present-day Zimbabwe) and settled there in 1840.
After his arrival, he organised his followers into a militaristic system with regimental
kraals, similar to those of Shaka; under his leadership, the Matabele became strong
enough to repel the Boer attacks of 1847–1851 and persuade the government of the
South African Republic to sign a peace treaty with Mzilikazi in 1852.
While Mzilikazi was generally friendly to European travellers, he remained mindful of
the danger that they posed to his kingdom. In later years he refused some visitors
access to his realm. The Europeans who met Mzilikazi included Henry Hartley, hunter
and explorer; Robert Moffat, missionary; John Mackenzie, missionary; David Hume,
explorer and trader; Andrew Smith, medical doctor, ethnologist and zoologist; William
Cornwallis Harris, hunter; and the missionary explorer David Livingstone.
During the tribe's wanderings north of the Limpopo, Mzilikazi became separated from
the bulk of the tribe. They gave him up for dead and hailed his young heir Nkulumane
as his successor. However, Mzilikazi reappeared after a traumatic journey through the
Zambezi Valley and reasserted control. According to one account, his son and all the
chiefs who had chosen him were put to death on his orders. A popular belief is that
they were executed by being thrown down a steep cliff on the hill now called
Ntabazinduna [hill of the chiefs].
Another account claims that Nkulumane was not killed with the chiefs, but was sent
back to the Zulu Kingdom with a sizeable delegation which included warriors. During
his journey south, he passed through the Bakwena territory in the northwestern
Transvaal, near Rustenburg. At the time the Bakwena were struggling to repel
repeated attacks from a neighbouring king, who laid claim to the territory that they
occupied. Nkulumane assisted the Bakwena by leading his impi in a battle in which
Nkulumane himself killed the neighbouring chief.
Following this victory, the Bakwena convinced Nkulumane to settle in their territory,
arguing that it would be futile to return to the Zulu Kingdom as his father's enemies
would probably kill him. Nkulumane settled and lived with his family in that area until
his death in 1883. His grave, covered in a concrete slab, is on the outskirts of
Rustenburg in Phokeng. The site of Nkulumane's grave is incongruously referred to as
Mzilikazi's Kop, even though it is his son who is buried there.
After resuming his role as king, Mzilikazi founded his nation at Ntabazinduna
mountain and his first capital was at Inyathi where he ended up meeting his old friend
Robert Moffat whom he had met in the Transvaal Republic when he was coming from
Kuruman which was the year when his son (Nkulumane) was born, Inyathi was
abandoned in 1859 when one of his senior wives, Queen Loziba, died. His next capital
was established at Mhlahlandlela in Matopo District where he is buried. This became
his second and last capital until he died at eNqameni near Gwanda on September 5,
1868.
In 1970, the City of Bulawayo established Mzilikazi Memorial Library which is the
central library of all the city libraries. The King's bust was placed at the entrance of the
library in celebration of his centenary.
 Mzilikazi's Memorial

Mzilikazi's Grave

References
Lipschitz, Mark R. (1978). Dictionary of African Historical Biography. London:
Heinemann. pp. 167–168. ISBN 0 435 94711 7.
"King Mzilikazi". South African History Online. 13 September 2011. Retrieved 2018-
01-22.
Mabhena, CZ. (2016) Mzilikazi Khumalo: The king and the myths

Ritter, EA. (1955) Shaka Zulu

NANA OF THE ITSEKIRI (1852-1916).

Nana Olomu (also spelled Olumu) (1852–1916) was an Itsekiri chief and merchant
from the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria. He was the fourth Itsekiri chief to
hold the position of Governor of Benin River.

In 1851 the British Consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra, John Beecroft,
established the post of Governor of Benin River and gave it to an Itsekiri chief, Idiare.
The governorship was intended to pass back and forth between two prominent Itsekiri
families, the Emaye and the Ologbotsere. However, upon the death of his father, an
Ologbotsere, the governorship was passed directly to Nana Olomu, instead of one of
the Emaye.
In 1884 Nana Olomu, the fourth Governor of Benin River, signed a treaty on behalf of
the Itsekiri, granting the British further rights in Itsekiriland. The relations between
the two were peaceful until the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 and the ensuing
Scramble for Africa, which led the British to try to bypass the Itsekiri middlemen so as
to trade directly with the Urhobo people. A further complication was that because of
technical improvements in shipping, European traders could travel further into the
interior than previously, ending their former reliance on the coastal chieftains as
middlemen.
In 1851 the British Consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra, John Beecroft,
established the post of Governor of Benin River and gave it to an Itsekiri chief, Idiare.
The governorship was intended to pass back and forth between two prominent Itsekiri
families, the Emaye and the Ologbotsere. However, upon the death of his father, an
Ologbotsere, the governorship was passed directly to Nana Olomu, instead of one of
the Emaye.
In 1884 Nana Olomu, the fourth Governor of Benin River, signed a treaty on behalf of
the Itsekiri, granting the British further rights in Itsekiriland. The relations between
the two were peaceful until the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 and the ensuing
Scramble for Africa, which led the British to try to bypass the Itsekiri middlemen so as
to trade directly with the Urhobo people. A further complication was that because of
technical improvements in shipping, European traders could travel further into the
interior than previously, ending their former reliance on the coastal chieftains as
middlemen.
Following this development the relations between the Itsekiri, led by Olomu, and the
British began to decline. In 1892 and 1893 direct treaties between the British and the
Urhobo further angered Olomu. In retaliation for the perceived bypassing of the
Itsekiri, Olomu's men attacked some of the nearby Urhobo villages which had been
exchanging goods with the British. This led to the Urhobo halting their trading, and
the British responded by cracking down on the Itsekiri. In 1894 several other Itsekiri
chiefs signed a new treaty with the British, and soon after Olomu surrendered in Lagos.
Following his arrest he was deported to the Gold Coast (Ghana.)
In Britain in 1899 the Aborigines' Protection Society complained to the Foreign Office
about "the arbitrary treatment" to which the chief had been subjected, the
government's failure to carry out "the searching investigation of his case which he had
always sought", and appealed for him to be given liberty to conduct his commercial
affairs freely even if, for political reasons, he could not be restored to his old position.
A letter from Olomu was also enclosed complaining his maintenance was inadequate
for him to support himself and five other persons. In his reply the then Prime Minister
the Marquis of Salisbury promised to look into the conditions of the chief's
maintenance, but ruled out the possibility of a return to his homeland.[6] A month later
the question of his treatment was raised in parliament and the government again
stated it would be unsafe to allow his return.
The National Maritime Museum, part of the Royal Museums of Greenwich, UK, owns
four distinct West African flags, three of which displaying the name of Nana in them,
indicating they belonged either to Nana Olomu himself, his son or to forces loyal to
Nana Olomu.
The fourth West African flag held by the Greenwich Royal Museums is described by
the museum as being, it too, of probably Itsikiri origins; the flag in question is often
referred to as the putative Flag of the Benin Empire, and in the early digital era has
attracted curiosity because of its unusual imagery, depicting a decapitation. There is,
however, some uncertainty as to whether the flag is indeed at all related to the Benin
Empire, or if it, like the other three, belonged to an Itsekiri ship loyal to Nana Olomu.
Olomu's palace has been converted into a museum, the Nana Living History Museum,
which chronicles his interactions with the British. It is located in Koko, Delta State.[10]
References

1. Ekeh, Peter Palmer. "Editor's Introduction to British Colonial Treaties of 1884

and 1894 With the Itsekiri of Nigeria's Western Niger Delta". Urhobo Waado.
Urhobo Historical Society. Retrieved 2007-05-28.
2. Edevbie, Onoawarie. "Who Owns Warri?". Urhobo Kinsfolk. Urhobo Historical
Society. Archived from the original on 2010-12-22. Retrieved 2007-05-28.
3. The Times, Saturday, February 16, 1895; p.15 “The permanent cause of war is in
almost all cases along this coast the same. ..As the small shop system in European
towns has been ruined by the larger form given to the retail trade, so the native
 trading system on the West African coast is being displaced by European
enterprise. The steamers and exploration parties of European companies pass
far up the river courses and tap the markets behind the coast belt, buying for
themselves produce which must otherwise have reached the coast through the
medium of the native chiefs. That the chieftains of the coast should feel this to
be a serious grievance is not remarkable...These were the causes which led to the
rising and subjection of Jaja of Opoba...and to the late war against Nana of
Benin...”
4. Ekeh, Peter Palmer (2005). Studies in Urhobo Culture. Nigeria: Urhobo
Historical Society.
5. The Times, Tuesday, December 1, 1896; pg.7 “A Reuter despatch from Liverpool
says that the Royal mail ship Batanga...left Old Calabar on October 21, having on
board Nana, the Benin chief. Nana, his wife and son, were placed in the Batanga
for conveyance to Accra. It was reported at Old Calabar that for some time a
number of natives from Benin had surreptitiously been gathering at the back of
the river, and it was feared that Nana might with their aid escape...He was landed
at Accra on November 2. He is to be kept at Christiansborg, on the Gold Coast,
where he will have a house provided for his use and will be allowed full liberty to
move about the town, reporting himself to the authorities once a week. Nana was
in excellent health and conversed freely about the late war, for which he blamed
certain traders.”
Source: Wikipedia

EL-OUALI, MUSTAFA SAYED (1950-1976).

El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed (also known as El Uali, El-Wali, Luali or Lulei; b. 1948 –
9 June 1976) was a Sahrawi nationalist leader, co-founder and second Secretary-
General of the Polisario Front.

El-Ouali was born in 1948 in a Sahrawi nomad encampment somewhere on the

hammada desert plains in eastern Spanish Sahara or northern Mauritania; some
sources give his place of birth as Bir Lehlou, a location that is symbolic for the Polisario
Front, for being the place of the proclamation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic
Republic (SADR). His parents were poor and his father disabled, and with the sum of
the severe drought on the Sahara that year, and the consequences of the Ifni War, the
family had to abandon the traditional bedouin lifestyle of the Sahrawis, settling near
Tan-Tan (nowadays southern Morocco) at the late 1950s. Some sources stated that
Ouali's family was deported among others to Morocco by Spanish authorities in 1960.
He went to Primary School in Tan-Tan in 1962, and then to the Islamic Institute in
Taroudannt in 1966 with impressive results, being awarded scholarships to atte nd
university in Rabat in 1970. There he studied Laws & Political sciences, and met other
young members of the Sahrawi diaspora, who like him were affected by the radicalism
sweeping Moroccan universities in the early 1970s (heavily influenced by May 1968 in
France). He was the first alumnus in the history of Moroccan universities on achieving
a punctuation of 19 out of 20 in Constitutional law. He travelled to Europe for the only
time in his life about this time, visiting Amsterdam in the Netherlands & Paris in
France.

El-Ouali grew increasingly disturbed by the oppressive Spanish colonial rule over what
was then known as Spanish Sahara, and although never involved with the Harakat
Tahrir, news of the Zemla Intifada made a deep impression on him. In 1972, he
returned to Tan-Tan (former Spanish Sahara), where he began organizing a group
called the Embryonic Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de
Oro. After a Sahrawi demonstration in Tan-Tan in June 1972, a group of 20
participants including Ouali were detained and tortured by the Moroccan police; then
he met with other groups of Sahrawis from inside Western Sahara, Algeria &
Mauritania, and in 1973 founded with them the Polisario Front. Days after the
POLISARIO's foundation, El-Ouali and Brahim Gali led a group of six poorly armed
guerrillas in the 20 May 1973 El-Khanga raid, the first armed action of the Polisario
Front (El-Khanga was a Spanish military post in the desert). El-Ouali and another
fighter were briefly captured, but they managed to escape when the remaining patrol
headed by Gali overran the ill-prepared Spanish troops. The Khanga strike was to be
followed by similar attacks on isolated targets, in which the POLISARIO gathered
weapons and equipment, until they were finally able to enter into full-scale guerrilla
warfare.
In April 1974, El-Uali headed the POLISARIO delegation that took part in the Pan
African Youth Movement meeting in Benghazi, Libya.

In August 1974, El-Uali was elected secretary-general of the Polisario, replacing

Brahim Gali on the post.

In 1974–75 the Polisario Front slowly seized control over the desert countryside, and
quickly became the most important nationalist organization in the country. By 1975
Spain had been forced to retreat into the major coastal cities, and reluctantly accepted
negotiations on the surrender of power. At this point, the Polisario remained a
relatively small organization of perhaps 800 fighters and activists, although supported
by a vastly larger network of sympathizers.

According to claims by Alexander Mehdi Bennouna in his book Héros Sans Gloire, El-
Ouali was the son of a member of the Moroccan Army of Liberation. Allegedly, he was
a member of Union National des Étudiants Marocains (UNEM), the students union in
Morocco and was recruited by Mohamed Bennouna to join the "Tanzim" (The
Organisation or the Structure), an Arabic nationalist and socialist organization which
was created to overthrow the monarchy under Hassan II and obtained support from
Syria, Libya, and Algeria. El-Ouali was supposedly trained in Libya and his mentor was
a man named "Nemri". Bennouna claims the death of Mahmoud and Nemri, as well as
the fluctuating relationship between Tanzim and Algeria led to the creation of the
Polisario Front. Bennouna personally views this as part of the armed revolution in
Morocco and of the political dissidence against the Moroccan regime.

After the joint Moroccan–Mauritanian invasion of Western Sahara in late 1975, and
the Moroccan air raids on Sahrawi refugees columns in the desert, El-Ouali escorted
them into exile in the refugee camps of Tindouf, Algeria. From there, as the secretary-
general of Polisario he presided over the establishing of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic
Republic. The Sahrawi republic effectively became the government of some 50,000–
60,000 people in 1976, housed in the Tindouf refugee camps. At that point, the
Polisario Front, backed by Algeria and Libya, reinforced a guerrilla war against
Morocco and Mauritania, who had substantially larger forces and armament, mostly
from French and Spanish origin. The usual tactic of the Polisario guerrillas consisted
in raids (sometimes of hundreds of km) on military objectives like Moroccan military
posts on Tarfaya, Amgala or Guelta Zemmur, or economic objectives, as the Bou Craa
phosphate conveyor belt, the Zouerat iron mines and the Mauritania Railway.

By all accounts, El-Ouali was intensely charismatic, and often made public speeches
in the refugee camps. He frequently met with foreign journalists visiting the camps,
acknowledging the importance of publicizing the Sahrawi struggle. He was widely
respected by his compatriots for his habit of fighting at the front line with his troops,
although this would ultimately prove a fatal choice.

On 9 June 1976 El-Ouali was killed by a shrapnel piece through the head returning
from a major Polisario raid on the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, in which they
bombarded the Presidential palace. In the retreat, pursued by Mauritanian troops,
armored vehicles and aviation, a group with Ouali separated from the principal
column, going to Benichab (about 100 km north of Nouakchott) with the intention of
destroying the water pipeline that supplied the capital. Other sources claim that the
subsequent combat took place 60 km (37 mi) north of Akjoujt They were surrounded
and cornered by Mauritanian troops with Panhard AMLs and then annihilated. Ouali's
body was sent to Nouackchott and buried secretly in a military terrain (in 1996, 20
years after his death, his exact resting place was revealed), where it still lies. His
position as Secretary-General was briefly assumed in an interim capacity by Mahfoud
Ali Beiba, who was then replaced by Mohammed Abdelaziz at the Polisario's III
General Popular Congress in August 1976.

A book containing two letters and a speech of El Uali was published in 1978 entitled
"Three texts: Two letters and a speech", being reedited in 2010. In 1997, the University
of Alicante published the book "Luali: Now or never, the liberty", a joint effort by
Spanish writer and prosecutor Felipe Briones and Sahrawi writers Mohamed Limam
Mohamed Ali and Mahayub Salek, being the first published biography about El Ouali's
life and legacy.

Some selected quotes:

 "Anything usurped by force can only be recovered by force"

 "If you want your right is needed to sacrifice your blood"
 "Morocco and Mauritania were tiny enemies in comparison to illiteracy"
 "Stand together until the regaining of our land"
 "Moroccan revolutionary organizations have themselves at the service of the
system, revolutionary leaders take the suitcases of the King, support the regime
in its invasion and occupation of Western Sahara, support the occupation of our
country and the expulsion of our people out of their homeland into exile"

El-Ouali image appears on 2 Gold coins of 40000 Sahrawi Pesetas of Western Sahara
minted in 1997. One coin weighs 15.5 grams, purity 900 out of 1000, Mintage: 90
Pieces, the other coin weighs 15.52 grams, purity 999 out of 1000, Mintage: 10 Pieces
has a Proof quality. Both coins depict El-Ouali alongside of Simon Bolivar and were
minted to commemorate 15 years of friendship between Western Sahara and
Venezuela.

El-Ouali is revered as a Father of the Nation by the Sahrawi refugee population, and
there is a simple stone memorial built to his honour in the desert. The day of his death,
9 June, has been declared The Day of the Martyrs, a holiday of the republic that honors
all Sahrawi victims in the war for independence.

In Mauritania, the 9 June was declared by Mokhtar Ould Daddah the day of the
Mauritanian armed forces.

References

1. Bárbulo, Tomás (2002). La historia prohibida del Sáhara Español. Barcelona:

Ediciones Destino / Colección Imago Mundi vol. 21. pp. 100–101. ISBN 978-
84-233-3446-9.
2. Olga C.V. (8 August 1976). "El Sáhara ha perdido a Lulei" (in Spanish). El Eco
de Canarias. Retrieved 21 September 2010.
3. "Sahara : le retour du guerrier". Bladi.net. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
4. Alejandro García, Historias del Sáhara – El mejor y el peor de los mundos,
Catarata, 2001, Pages 111–113
5. .

Wikipedia

OUMAAR, HAJI FARAH (1864-1948).

OVARAMWEN, OBA OF BENIN (died 1914).

Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (ruled 1888–1897), also called Overami, was the Ọba
(king) of the Kingdom of Benin up until the British punitive expedition of 1897.
Born in circa 1857, he was the son of Ọba Adọlọ. He took the name Ovọnramwẹn
Nọgbaisi at his enthronement in 1888. Every Ọba took a new name at his coronation,
Ovọnramwẹn meaning "The Rising Sun" and Nọgbaisi meaning "which spreads over
all".
At the end of the 19th century, the Kingdom of Benin had managed to retain its
independence and the Ọba exercised a monopoly over trade which the British found
irksome. The territory was coveted by an influential group of investors for its rich
natural resources such as palm oil, rubber and ivory. The kingdom was largely
independent of British control, and pressure continued from figures such as Vice-
Consul James Robert Phillips and Captain Gallwey (the British vice-Consul of Oil
Rivers Protectorate) who were pushing for British annexation of the Benin Empire and
the removal of the Ọba.

A British invasion force headed by Phillips set out to overthrow the Ọba in 1896. The
force's weapons were hidden in baggage, with troops disguised as bearers. Phillips plan
was to gain access to Ovonramwen's palace by announcing that he intended to
negotiate. Ovonramwen's messengers issued several warnings not to violate Benin
territorial sovereignty, claiming he was unable to see Phillips due to ceremonial duties.
Having been warned on several further occasions on the way, Phillips sent his stick to
the Ọba, a deliberate insult designed to provoke the conflict that would provide an
excuse for British annexation. Phillip's expedition was ambushed and all but two were
killed. Subsequently, a punitive expedition against the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 led
by Sir Harry Rawson resulted in the razing of Benin City, the looting of the Benin
Bronzes, and the destruction of the city's fortifications. Although the British had orders
to execute the Ọba, Ovonramwen escaped, but returned to the city to formally
surrender on 5 August 1897. When Ovọnramwẹn returned to the city, after six months
spent in evading capture in the forest, he was richly dressed and laden with coral beads
and accompanied by an entourage of seven hundred to eight hundred people. He
attempted to escape exile by offering Consul General Ralph Moor 200 puncheons
(barrels) of oil worth £1500 at that time and to disclose where his 500 ivory tusks were
buried (of a value of more than £2M at that time). However, this offer was dismissed
as Moor had already discovered them.
Sculpture of Ovonramwen being exiled, Museum of Black Civilisations, Dakar
Ovonramwen was exiled to Calabar with two of his wives, Queen Egbe and Queen
Aighobahi. He was received and hosted in Calabar in a small town called “Essien
Town” by Etinyin Essien Etim Offiong, the progenitor of Essien Town. He died in
Calabar around the turn of the new year in 1914. Ovọnramwẹn was eventually buried
in the grounds of the royal palace in Benin City. He was succeeded by his first son and
legitimate heir, Prince Aguobasimwin, who ruled as Eweka II.
Eweka, Iro (1998). Dawn to Dusk: Folk Tales from Benin. Taylor & Francis.
ISBN 9780714643625.
Oba of Benin Archived 2012-04-07 at the Wayback Machine, Edostate.org,
accessed March, 2012
Thomas Uwadiale Obinyan, The Annexation of Benin, in Journal of Black
Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Sep., 1988), pp. 29-40
"Miscellaneous views in Calabar, Opobo and Sierra Leone, circa 1912-1913 -
King Ovonramwen of Benin and wives". Janus. Retrieved 2007-03-17.
Wikipedia.org