On this day: June 24 in African history

Photo Division, Government of India, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

South Africa's apartheid government passed the Group Areas Act, formally segregating cities and towns by race and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Sources: South African History Online ; South African History Archive (SAHA) ; Digital Innovation South Africa (University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Britain granted Zanzibar internal self-government in 1963, and the protectorate ended on 10 December that same year, when Zanzibar became an independent state within the Commonwealth.

Sources: The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk) ; UK Parliament (Hansard, Commons, 22 November 1963)

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Mabario, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Nelson Mandela presented South Africa's Rugby World Cup-winning captain Francois Pienaar with the Webb Ellis Cup, an iconic moment of post-apartheid reconciliation.

Sources: World Rugby ; BBC Sport ; South African History Online

A passenger train carrying more than 1,200 people rolled backwards down the Igandu hill in central Tanzania and struck a goods train, killing 281. It is among the worst rail disasters in African history but not the worst: about 400 people died when an express train left the rails above the Awash ravine in Ethiopia in 1985.

Source: South African History Online

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Samuel Johnson, the Nigerian Anglican priest whose History of the Yorubas became a foundational text of Yoruba historiography, was born.

Sources: Cambridge University Press ; Boston University, History of Missiology