On this day: January 11 in African history

Fidodog14, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

British forces under Lord Chelmsford crossed into Zululand, beginning the Anglo-Zulu War. Guy gives Chelmsford's force as about 5,500 British regulars, over 1,000 white colonial volunteers and 9,000 African levies, entering the kingdom in three columns.

Sources: National Army Museum (London) ; Journal of Natal and Zulu History ; Internet Archive

The founding congress of the African Convention (Convention Africaine) opened in Dakar, joining Léopold Sédar Senghor's Senegalese Popular Bloc with parties from Upper Volta and Niger. It was an attempt to build a bloc in French West Africa outside Félix Houphouët-Boigny's African Democratic Rally, whose own congress that year met in Bamako in September.

Sources: Assemblee nationale (France) ; Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA), fresques Les Independances

Gunmen killed at least 100 people at Sidi Hamed, 30 kilometres south of Algiers, in one of the deadliest massacres of Algeria's civil war. The interior ministry put the toll at 103 dead and 70 wounded, the highest it had acknowledged for a single attack; the newspapers El Watan and Liberté, citing survivors, reported about 400 killed, which the ministry denied.

Sources: Human Rights Watch ; Reuters, via Deseret News

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

A French special forces raid to free Denis Allex, an intelligence agent held by al-Shabaab since 2009, failed at Bulo Marer in southern Somalia. Two French commandos were killed, along with at least 17 militants and at least eight civilians. Paris said the hostage was executed by his captors; al-Shabaab claimed he had survived.

Sources: CNN ; Gulf News (AFP wire)

Wikimedia Commons (GFDL)

Alan Paton, South African author of Cry, the Beloved Country and anti-apartheid activist, was born (died 1988).

Sources: South African History Online ; Encyclopedia.com (reproducing Gale's Encyclopedia of World Biography)