Resource 5: Key events in the move to independence
Background information / subject knowledge for teacher
| 1957 | Ghana becomes first independent black state in Africa under Kwame Nkrumah through Gandhi-inspired rallies, boycotts and strikes, forcing the British to transfer power over the former colony of the Gold Coast. | |
| 1958 | Chinua Achebe (Nigeria): Things Fall Apart, written in ‘African English’, examines Western civilisation's threat to traditional values and reaches a large, diverse international audience. | |
| 1958 | All-African People's Conference: Resolution on Imperialism and Colonialism, Accra, 5–13 December 1958 | |
| 1954– 1962 | French colonies (Francophone Africa) oppose continued French rule despite concessions, though many eager to maintain economic and cultural ties to France – except in Algeria, with a white settler population of 1 million. Bitterly vicious civil war in Algeria ensues until independence is gained in 1962, six years after Morocco and Tunisia had received independence. | |
| 1958 | White (Dutch-descent) Afrikaners officially gain independence from Great Britain in South Africa. | |
| 1964 | Nelson Mandela,on trial for sabotage with other ANC leaders before the Pretoria Supreme Court, delivers his eloquent and courageous ‘Speech from the Dock’ before he is imprisoned for the next 25 years in the notorious South African prison Robben Island. | |
| 1960– 1961 | Zaire (formerly Belgian Congo, the richest European colony in Africa) becomes independent from Belgium in 1960. Then, in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), ‘charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba was ... martyred in 1961, with the connivance of the [US] Central Intelligence Agency and a 30-year-old Congolese colonel who would soon become president of the country, Joseph Deséré Mobutu.’ (Bill Berkeley, ‘Zaire: An African Horror Story’, The Atlantic Monthly, August 1993; rpt. Atlantic Online) | |
| 1962 | Algeria (of Arab and Berber peoples) wins independence from France; over 900,000 white settlers leave the newly independent nation. | |
| 1963 | Multi-ethnic Kenya (East Africa) declares independence from the British. | |
| 1963 | Charter of the Organisation of African Unity, 25 May 1963. | |
| mid-60s | Most former European colonies in Africa gain independence and European colonial era effectively ends. However, Western economic and cultural dominance, and African leaders’ and parties’ corruption intensify the multiple problems facing the new nations. | |
| 1965 | Rhodesia: Unilateral Declaration of Independence Documents. | |
| 1966 | Bechuanaland gains independence and becomes Botswana. | |
| 1970s | Portugal loses African colonies, including Angola and Mozambique. | |
| 1976 | Cheikh Anta Diop (Senegal, 1923–1986), one of the great African intellectuals of the 20th century, publishes the influential and controversial book, The African Origin of Civilization, his project to ‘identify the distortions [about African history] we have learned and correct them for future generations’. | |
| 1980 | Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) gains independence from large white settler population after years of hostilities. | |
| 1970s–1980s | Police state of South African white minority rulers hardens to maintain blatantly racist and inequitable system of apartheid, resulting in violence, hostilities, strikes, massacres headlined worldwide. | |
| 1986 | Nigerian poet/dramatist/writer Wole Soyinka awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature. | |
| 1988 | Egyptian novelist and short story writer Nabuib Mahfouz awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first prizewinning writer with Arabic as his native tongue. | |
1994 | The Hutus massacre up to a million Tutsis in Rwanda; then fearing reprisals from the new Tutsi government, more than a million Hutu refugees fled Rwanda in a panicked mass migration that captured the world's attention. | |
1996 | 500,000 of Hutu refugees streamed back into Rwanda to escape fighting in Zaire. | |
| 2001 | After 38 years in existence, the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) is replaced by the African Union. | |
Adapted from original source: http://www.africanhistory.about.com/ gi/ dynamic/ offsite.htm?zi=1/ XJ/ Ya&sdn=africanhistory&cdn=education&tm (Accessed 2008)
Adapted from original source: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Decolonization_of_Africa#Timeline (Accessed 2008)
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Resource 4: African timelines template
