On this day — August 22 in African history

Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.

2012

Raiders killed at least 52 people at Riketa in Kenya's Tana Delta, most of them women and children, in the deadliest attack of that year's fighting between Pokomo and Orma communities; Human Rights Watch put the Riketa dead at 54. The Kenya Red Cross counted more than 116 dead between 14 August and 11 September and nearly 20,000 people displaced. Human Rights Watch found that politicians hoping to win seats in the following year's elections were involved on both sides, and that the police had ignored six months of warnings from residents that violence was coming.

Sources: Human Rights Watch ; Kenya National Commission on Human Rights

Conflict
1791

Enslaved people rose across the northern plain of Saint-Domingue on the night of 22 August, burning the estates in the hinterland of Cap Français. The revolt grew into the Haitian Revolution, the only slave uprising to end in the founding of an independent state. UNESCO marks 23 August, the morning after, as the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

Sources: UNESCO ; EHNE (Digital Encyclopedia of European History)

History