On this day: August 22 in African history

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Jomo Kenyatta died in his sleep at Mombasa. He had been Kenya's first prime minister from independence in 1963 and its president from 1964 until his death.

Sources: The Africa Report ; Parliament of Kenya

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was released from prison and placed under house arrest while awaiting retrial following the 2011 revolution that ended his 30-year rule.

Sources: Deutsche Welle (DW) ; The Guardian

Rhodesia was barred from the Munich Olympic Games when the International Olympic Committee voted 36 to 31, with three abstentions, to withdraw its invitation over its racist minority-rule policies.

Sources: LA84 Foundation Olympic World Library (Maureen Smith) ; BBC News

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was shot and killed in Oakland, California.

Sources: Los Angeles Times ; U.S. National Archives

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

Corrected twice in September 2026 · change 1 · change 2

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)

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed