Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Morocco marked the dawn of its independence when Sultan Mohammed V declared the end of the French protectorate, a date still celebrated as Morocco's Independence Day.
Sources: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training ; Morocco World News
IndependenceBritish colonial police opened fire on striking miners at the Iva Valley colliery in Enugu, Nigeria, killing 21 people, one of them a bystander, and wounding 51. The men had stopped work over back pay owed under a casual-labour system later ruled illegal, and had occupied the mine. A British officer gave the order to fire, and the killings pulled together nationalist opinion that had been divided along regional and ethnic lines.
Sources: libcom.org ; British Documents on the End of Empire Project (Martin Lynn, ed., Nigeria Part I: Managing Political Reform 1943-1953, Series B vol. 7, 2001), hosted by SAS-Space, University of London ; Al Jazeera
HistorySouth Africa's Multi-Party Negotiating Forum adopted an interim constitution, a landmark package agreement that laid the legal foundation for the country's first democratic elections.
Sources: South African History Online ; Nelson Mandela Foundation (O'Malley archive)
Politics