Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1980 Robert Mugabe won a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister.
Sources: BBC News ; South African History Online
Politics
Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
On this day: March 4 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1980 
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 2009 The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, the first such warrant for a sitting head of state.
Sources: International Criminal Court ; UN News
Politics
Paul Weinberg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons 1932 Miriam Makeba, South African singer known as 'Mama Africa' who brought African music to the world stage, was born.
Sources: South African History Online ; Encyclopaedia Britannica
Birth
Auguste Couder, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1769 Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman military commander who became the founder of modern Egypt, was born.
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica ; Encyclopedia.com
Birth
Public Domain, Wikipedia 1877 Garrett Morgan, African-American inventor of the three-position traffic signal and an early gas mask, was born.
Sources: National Inventors Hall of Fame ; Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
BirthFire in an arms store at the Mpila barracks in Brazzaville set off a chain of explosions through the munitions depot. Trial records put the dead at 282, other counts at 300 or more, with about 2,300 injured and 17,000 people left without homes as hundreds of houses were flattened.
Sources: Institute for Security Studies ; Action on Armed Violence
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
Disaster