On this day: January 8 in African history

Unknown author, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

The African National Congress was founded in Bloemfontein under the name South African Native National Congress, with John Langalibalele Dube as its first president.

Sources: South African History Online ; Encyclopedia.com (aggregating the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 and International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences)

Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Romanus Pontifex, granting Portugal exclusive rights to trade with and colonize all of Africa south of Cape Bojador.

Sources: Doctrine of Discovery Project ; Carnegie Institution of Washington (via Internet Archive) ; Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz

Read the full article: Romanus Pontifex: The Papal Bull That Sanctioned Portugal's Slave Trade

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

British forces defeated a Batavian army at the Battle of Blaauwberg, north of Cape Town. Cape Town itself surrendered two days later, and the Dutch Cape Colony passed into British hands, this time permanently.

Sources: South African Tourism ; National Army Museum, London ; South African Military History Society, Military History Journal

Gundan, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

French voters approved a referendum backing Charles de Gaulle's policy of self-determination for Algeria, carried by about 75 per cent of votes cast. Turnout was about 76 per cent in metropolitan France but only about 59 per cent in Algeria, where the FLN had urged a boycott. It opened the way to the secret negotiations with the FLN that ended in Algerian independence.

Sources: UPI ; Digithèque MJP, Université de Perpignan (reproducing the Conseil constitutionnel's official proclamation of 14 January 1961 and décret n° 60-1299) ; Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Gunmen from a Cabinda separatist group attacked a bus carrying the Togo national football team ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola, killing three people.

Sources: France 24 ; Gulf News

Government of Seychelles, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

James Mancham, first President of the Seychelles after independence, died at age 77.

Sources: BlackPast ; News24 (AFP wire copy)

The U.S. Congress granted African American men the right to vote in Washington, D.C., overriding President Andrew Johnson's veto. It was three years ahead of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Sources: History.com ; The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara ; National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

J. L. B. Smith, the South African chemist and ichthyologist who identified the first modern coelacanth, died at age 70. The fish was caught off the Chalumna River in December 1938; Smith examined it the following February and named the species Latimeria chalumnae after the museum curator who saved it, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer.

Sources: Linda Hall Library ; Knysna Museums ; South African Journal of Science (Academy of Science of South Africa / SciELO SA)