1.Haile Selassie

Haile Selassie I, original name Tafari Makonnen (born July 23, 1892, near Harer, Eth.—died Aug. 27, 1975, Addis Ababa), emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 who sought to modernize his country and who steered it into the mainstream of post-World War II African politics. He brought Ethiopia into the League of Nations and the United Nations and made Addis Ababa the major centre for the Organization of African Unity (now African Union).

Tafari was a great-grandson of Sahle Selassie of Shewa (Shoa) and a son of Ras (Prince) Makonnen, a chief adviser to Emperor Menilek II. Educated at home by French missionaries, Tafari at an early age favourably impressed the emperor with his intellectual abilities and was promoted accordingly. As governor of Sidamo and then of Harer province, he followed progressive policies, seeking to break the feudal power of the local nobility by increasing the authority of the central government—for example, by developing a salaried civil service. He thereby came to represent politically progressive elements of the population. In 1911 he married Wayzaro Menen, a great-granddaughter of Menilek II.
When Menilek II died in 1913, his grandson Lij Yasu succeeded to the throne, but the latter’s unreliability and his close association with Islam made him unpopular with the majority Christian population of Ethiopia. Tafari became the rallying point of the Christian resistance, and he deposed Lij Yasu in 1916. Zauditu, Menilek II’s daughter, thereupon became empress in 1917, and Ras Tafari was named regent and heir apparent to the throne.

While Zauditu was conservative in outlook, Ras Tafari was progressive and became the focus of the aspirations of the modernist younger generation. In 1923 he had a conspicuous success in the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations. In the following year he visited Rome, Paris, and London, becoming the first Ethiopian ruler ever to go abroad. In 1928 he assumed the title of negus (“king”), and two years later, when Zauditu died, he was crowned emperor (Nov. 2, 1930) and took the name of Haile Selassie (“Might of the Trinity”). In 1931 he promulgated a new constitution, which strictly limited the powers of Parliament. From the late 1920s on, Haile Selassie in effect was the Ethiopian government, and, by establishing provincial schools, strengthening the police forces, and progressively outlawing feudal taxation, he sought to both help his people and increase the authority of the central government.
When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Haile Selassie led the resistance, but in May 1936 he was forced into exile. He appealed for help from the League of Nations in a memorable speech that he delivered to that body in Geneva on June 30, 1936. With the advent of World War II, he secured British assistance in forming an army of Ethiopian exiles in the Sudan. British and Ethiopian forces invaded Ethiopia in January 1941 and recaptured Addis Ababa several months later. Although he was reinstated as emperor, Haile Selassie had to recreate the authority he had previously exercised. He again implemented social, economic, and educational reforms in an attempt to modernize Ethiopian government and society on a slow and gradual basis.

The Ethiopian government continued to be largely the expression of Haile Selassie’s personal authority. In 1955 he granted a new constitution giving him as much power as the previous one. Overt opposition to his rule surfaced in December 1960, when a dissident wing of the army secured control of Addis Ababa and was dislodged only after a sharp engagement with loyalist elements

Haile Selassie played a very important role in the establishment of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. His rule in Ethiopia continued until 1974, at which time famine, worsening unemployment, and the political stagnation of his government prompted segments of the army to mutiny. They deposed Haile Selassie and established a provisional military government that espoused Marxist ideologies. Haile Selassie was kept under house arrest in his own palace, where he spent the remainder of his life. Official sources at the time attributed his death to natural causes, but evidence later emerged suggesting that he had been strangled on the orders of the military government.
Haile Selassie was regarded as the messiah of the African race by the Rastafarian movement.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Haile-Selassie-I


2. . Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela, in full Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, byname Madiba (born July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa—died December 5, 2013, Johannesburg), black nationalist and the first black president of South Africa (1994–99). His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts.

Early life and work
The son of Chief Henry Mandela of the Madiba clan of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people, Nelson Mandela renounced his claim to the chieftainship to become a lawyer. He attended South African Native College (later the University of Fort Hare) and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand; he later passed the qualification exam to become a lawyer. In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black-liberation group, and became a leader of its Youth League. That same year he met and married Evelyn Ntoko Mase. Mandela subsequently held other ANC leadership positions, through which he helped revitalize the organization and oppose the apartheid policies of the ruling National Party.

In 1952 in Johannesburg, with fellow ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Mandela established South Africa’s first black law practice, specializing in cases resulting from the post-1948 apartheid legislation. Also that year, Mandela played an important role in launching a campaign of defiance against South Africa’s pass laws, which required nonwhites to carry documents (known as passes, pass books, or reference books) authorizing their presence in areas that the government deemed “restricted” (i.e., generally reserved for the white population). He traveled throughout the country as part of the campaign, trying to build support for nonviolent means of protest against the discriminatory laws. In 1955 he was involved in drafting the Freedom Charter, a document calling for nonracial social democracy in South Africa.
Mandela’s antiapartheid activism made him a frequent target of the authorities. Starting in 1952, he was intermittently banned (severely restricted in travel, association, and speech). In December 1956 he was arrested with more than 100 other people on charges of treason that were designed to harass antiapartheid activists. Mandela went on trial that same year and eventually was acquitted in 1961. During the extended court proceedings, he divorced his first wife and married Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela (Winnie Madikizela-Mandela).

Underground activity and the Rivonia Trial
After the massacre of unarmed black South Africans by police forces at Sharpeville in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC, Mandela abandoned his nonviolent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime. He went underground (during which time he became known as the Black Pimpernel for his ability to evade capture) and was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC. In 1962 he went to Algeria for training in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, returning to South Africa later that year. On August 5, shortly after his return, Mandela was arrested at a road block in Natal; he was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.
In October 1963 the imprisoned Mandela and several other men were tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in the infamous Rivonia Trial, named after a fashionable suburb of Johannesburg where raiding police had discovered quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela’s speech from the dock, in which he admitted the truth of some of the charges made against him, was a classic defense of liberty and defiance of tyranny. (His speech garnered international attention and acclaim and was published later that year as I Am Prepared to Die.) On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

Incarceration
South Africa, history of: apartheid and MandelaStock footage courtesy The WPA Film LibraryFrom 1964 to 1982 Mandela was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town. He was subsequently kept at the maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison until 1988, when, after being treated for tuberculosis, he was transferred to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. The South African government periodically made conditional offers of freedom to Mandela, most notably in 1976, on the condition that he recognize the newly independent—and highly controversial—status of the Transkei Bantustan and agree to reside there. An offer made in 1985 required that he renounce the use of violence. Mandela refused both offers, the second on the premise that only free men were able to engage in such negotiations and, as a prisoner, he was not a free man.
Throughout his incarceration, Mandela retained wide support among South Africa’s black population, and his imprisonment became a cause célèbre among the international community that condemned apartheid. As South Africa’s political situation deteriorated after 1983, and particularly after 1988, he was engaged by ministers of Pres. P.W. Botha’s government in exploratory negotiations; he met with Botha’s successor, de Klerk, in December 1989.
On February 11, 1990, the South African government under President de Klerk released Mandela from prison. Shortly after his release, Mandela was chosen deputy president of the ANC; he became president of the party in July 1991. Mandela led the ANC in negotiations with de Klerk to end apartheid and bring about a peaceful transition to nonracial democracy in South Africa.

Presidency and retirement
Mandela, NelsonMirrorpix/Everett CollectionIn April 1994 the Mandela-led ANC won South Africa’s first elections by universal suffrage, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as president of the country’s first multiethnic government. He established in 1995 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated human rights violations under apartheid, and he introduced housing, education, and economic development initiatives designed to improve the living standards of the country’s black population. In 1996 he oversaw the enactment of a new democratic constitution. Mandela resigned his post with the ANC in December 1997, transferring leadership of the party to his designated successor, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela and Madikizela-Mandela had divorced in 1996, and in 1998 Mandela married Graca Machel, the widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and leader of Frelimo.

Mandela did not seek a second term as South African president and was succeeded by Mbeki in 1999. After leaving office Mandela retired from active politics but maintained a strong international presence as an advocate of peace, reconciliation, and social justice, often through the work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, established in 1999. He was a founding member of the Elders, a group of international leaders established in 2007 for the promotion of conflict resolution and problem solving throughout the world. In 2008 Mandela was feted with several celebrations in South Africa, Great Britain, and other countries in honour of his 90th birthday.

Mandela Day, observed on Mandela’s birthday, was created to honour his legacy by promoting community service around the world. It was first observed on July 18, 2009, and was sponsored primarily by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the 46664 initiative (the foundation’s HIV/AIDS global awareness and prevention campaign); later that year the United Nations declared that the day would be observed annually as Nelson Mandela International Day.

Mandela’s writings and speeches were collected in I Am Prepared to Die (1964; rev. ed. 1986), No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965; updated ed. 2002), The Struggle Is My Life (1978; rev. ed. 1990), and In His Own Words (2003). His autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was published in 1994.

Wel i thank God that there is no Nigerian leader there.I thank God that the likes of Obasanjo wudnt ne dere.

3. Thomas Sankara
Thomas Sankara, (born December 21, 1949, Yako, Upper Volta [now Burkina Faso]—died October 15, 1987, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), military officer and proponent of Pan-Africanism who was installed as president of Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso) in 1983 after a military coup. He held that position until 1987, when he was killed during another coup.

Sankara’s Roman Catholic parents wanted him to be a priest, but he opted for a military career instead. In 1970, at the age of 20, Sankara was sent for officer training in Madagascar, where he witnessed a popular uprising of students and workers that succeeded in toppling Madagascar’s government. Before returning to Upper Volta in 1972, Sankara attended a parachute academy in France, where he was further exposed to left-wing political ideologies. In 1974 he earned much public attention for his heroic performance in the border war with Mali, but years later he would renounce the war as useless and unjust.

By the early 1980s, Burkina Faso was being rocked by a series of labour union strikes and military coups. Sankara’s military achievements and charismatic leadership style made him a popular choice for political appointments, but his personal and political integrity put him at odds with the leadership of the successive military governments that came to power, leading to his arrest on several occasions. In January 1983, Sankara was selected as the prime minister of the newly formed Council for the Salvation of the People (Conseil de Salut du Peuple; CSP), headed by Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo. This post provided him with an entryway into international politics and a chance to meet with leaders of the nonaligned movement, including Fidel Castro (Cuba), Samora Machel (Mozambique), and Maurice Bishop (Grenada). Sankara’s anti-imperialist stance and grassroots popularity increasingly put him at odds with conservative elements within the CSP, including President Ouédraogo. Sankara was removed as prime minister in May and arrested once again. On August 4, 1983, Blaise Compaoré, Sankara’s close friend and fellow army colleague, led a group that freed Sankara, overthrew the Ouédraogo regime, and formed the National Council of the Revolution (Conseil National de la Révolution) with Sankara as its president.

Sankara declared the objectives of the “democratic and popular revolution” to be primarily concerned with the tasks of eradicating corruption, fighting environmental degradation, empowering women, and increasing access to education and health care, with the larger goal of liquidating imperial domination. During the course of his presidency, Sankara successfully implemented programs that vastly reduced infant mortality, increased literacy rates and school attendance, and boosted the number of women holding governmental posts. On the environmental front, in the first year of his presidency alone 10 million trees were planted in an effort to combat desertification. On the first anniversary of the coup that had brought him to power, he changed the country’s name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which means roughly “land of upright people” in Mossi and Dyula, the country’s two most widely spoken indigenous languages.

Despite the great strides that were made, there was growing dissent in the country, partly because of economic problems and opposition from traditional quarters to some of Sankara’s more progressive social policies. His administration gradually lost popular support, and internal conflict within his government grew as well. On October 15, 1987, Sankara was assassinated in a coup led by Compaoré and two others.
Collections of Sankara’s speeches, published posthumously, include Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–1987 (1988, reprinted 2001), Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, 2nd ed. (2007), and We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983–87, 2nd ed. (2007).

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Sankara

4 4. Nnamdi Azikiwe, (born November 16, 1904, Zungeru, Nigeria—died May 11, 1996, Enugu), first president of independent Nigeria (1963–66) and prominent nationalist figure.

Azikiwe, Nnamdi Azikiwe attended various primary and secondary mission schools in Onitsha, Calabar, and Lagos. He arrived in the United States in 1925, where he attended several schools. Azikiwe earned multiple certificates and degrees, including bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and a second master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1934 he went to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where he founded a nationalist newspaper and was a mentor to Kwame Nkrumah (later the first president of Ghana) before returning to Nigeria in 1937. There he founded and edited newspapers and also became directly involved in politics, first with the Nigerian Youth Movement and later (1944) as a founder of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), which became increasingly identified with the Igbo people of southern Nigeria after 1951. In 1948, with the backing of the NCNC, Azikiwe was elected to the Nigerian Legislative Council, and he later served as premier of the Eastern region (1954–59).

Azikiwe, Nnamdi Azikiwe led the NCNC into the important 1959 federal elections, which preceded Nigerian independence. He was able to form a temporary government with the powerful Northern People’s Congress, but its deputy leader, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, took the key post of prime minister. Azikiwe received the largely honorary posts of president of the Senate, governor-general, and, finally, president.

In the conflict over Biafra (1967–70), Azikiwe first backed his fellow Igbo, traveling extensively in 1968 to win recognition of Biafra and help from other African countries. In 1969, however, realizing the hopelessness of the war, he threw his support to the federal government. After Olusegun Obasanjo turned the government over to civilian elections in 1979, Azikiwe ran unsuccessfully for president as the candidate of a newly formed Nigerian People’s Party (NPP). Prior to the 1983 elections, the NPP became part of an unofficial coalition of opposition parties known as the Progressive Parties Alliance (PPA). The coalition, which was tenuous at best, could not agree on one presidential candidate and decided to field two—Azikiwe, representing the NPP, and Obafemi Awolowo, representing the United Party of Nigeria (UPN). Awolowo, the leader of the UPN, was a political rival of Azikiwe, with whom he was often at odds. The coalition had largely deteriorated by the time of the election, and neither Azikiwe nor Awolowo won.

An important figure in the history of politics in Nigeria, Azikiwe had broad interests outside that realm. He served as chancellor of the University of Nigeria at Nsukka from 1961 to 1966, and he was the president of several sports organizations for football, boxing, and table tennis. Among his writings are Renascent Africa (1937) and an autobiography, My Odyssey (1970).

5. Mobutu Sese Seko,

also called Mobutu Sese Seko Koko Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, original name Joseph (-Désiré) Mobutu (born October 14, 1930, Lisala, Belgian Congo [now Democratic Republic of the Congo]—died September 7, 1997, Rabat, Morocco), president of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) who seized power in a 1965 coup and ruled for some 32 years before being ousted in a rebellion in 1997.
Mobutu was educated in missionary schools and began his career in 1949 in the Belgian Congolese army, the Force Publique, rising from a clerk to a sergeant major, the highest rank then open to Africans. While still in the army, Mobutu contributed articles to newspapers in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa). After his discharge in 1956 he became a reporter for the daily L’Avenir (“The Future”) and later editor of the weekly Actualités Africaines.

Through his press contacts Mobutu met the Congolese nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, whose Congolese National Movement (Mouvement National Congolais; MNC) he joined soon after it was launched in 1958. In 1960 Mobutu represented Lumumba at the Brussels Round Table Conference on Congo independence until the release of Lumumba, who had been jailed for his nationalist activities in the Congo. During the conference, Mobutu supported Lumumba’s proposals (which were adopted) for a strongly centralized state for the independent Congo.
When the Congo became independent on June 30, 1960, the coalition government of President Joseph Kasavubu and Premier Lumumba appointed Mobutu secretary of state for national defense. Eight days later the Congo’s Force Publique mutinied against its Belgian officers. As one of the few officers with any control over the army (gained by liberally dispensing commissions and back pay to the mutineers), Mobutu was in a position to influence the developing power struggle between Kasavubu and Lumumba.

Mobutu covertly supported Kasavubu’s attempt to dismiss Lumumba. When Lumumba rallied his forces to oust Kasavubu in September 1960, Mobutu seized control of the government and announced that he was “neutralizing” all politicians. In February 1961, however, Mobutu turned over the government to Kasavubu, who made Mobutu commander in chief of the armed forces. Many believe that Mobutu bore some responsibility for the death of Lumumba, who was arrested by Mobutu’s troops and flown to Katanga, where, it is believed, he was killed by Congolese or Katangese troops.
As commander in chief Mobutu reorganized the army. In 1965, after a power struggle had developed between President Kasavubu and his premier, Moise Tshombe, Mobutu removed Kasavubu in a coup and assumed the presidency. Two years later Mobutu put down an uprising led by white mercenaries attached to the Congolese army. His efforts to revive the Congo’s economy included such measures as nationalizing the Katanga copper mines and encouraging foreign investment. Agricultural revitalization lagged, however, and consequently, the need for food imports increased.

As president, Mobutu moved to Africanize names. The name of the country was changed in October 1971 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo [Kinshasa]) to the Republic of Zaire (the country reverted to its earlier name in 1997). In January 1972 he changed his own name from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Koko Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (“The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake”).
Mobutu attempted to soften the military nature of his regime by filling government posts with civilians. He sought to build popular support through his Popular Movement of the Revolution (Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution; MPR), which until 1990 was the country’s only legal party. Opposition to his rule came from numerous Congolese exiles, ethnic groups that had played decisive roles in previous governments, small farmers who gained no share in the attempted economic revival, and some university students. He also faced a continuing threat of attacks on the Shaba region (Mobutu’s Africanized name for the Katanga province) by Katangese rebels based in Angola.

In 1977 Mobutu had to request French military intervention to repel an invasion of Zaire by Angolan-backed Katangese. He was reelected to the presidency in one-man contests in 1970 and 1977. Over the years Mobutu proved adept at maintaining his rule in the face of internal rebellions and attempted coups, but his regime had little success in establishing the conditions needed for economic growth and development. Endemic governmental corruption, mismanagement, and neglect led to the decline of the country’s infrastructure, while Mobutu himself reportedly amassed one of the largest personal fortunes in the world.

With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, Mobutu lost much of the Western financial support that had been provided in return for his intervention in the affairs of Zaire’s neighbours. Marginalized by the multiparty system and ill, Mobutu finally relinquished control of the government in May 1997 to the rebel leader Laurent Kabila, whose forces had begun seizing power seven months earlier. Mobutu died in exile a short time later.


66. Julius Nyerere,

in full Julius Kambarage Nyerere, also called Mwalimu (Swahili: “Teacher”) (born March 1922, Butiama, Tanganyika—died October 14, 1999, London, England), first prime minister of independent Tanganyika (1961), who became the first president of the new state of Tanzania (1964). Nyerere was also the major force behind the Organization of African Unity (OAU; now the African Union).
Nyerere was a son of the chief of the small Zanaki ethnic group. He was educated at Tabora Secondary School and Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he taught in several Roman Catholic schools before going to Edinburgh University. He was the first Tanganyikan to study at a British university. He graduated with an M.A. in history and economics in 1952 and returned to Tanganyika to teach.
Nyerere, .By the time Nyerere entered politics, the old League of Nations mandate that Britain had exercised in Tanganyika had been converted into a United Nations trusteeship, with independence the ultimate goal. Seeking to hasten the process of emancipation, Nyerere joined the Tanganyika African Association, quickly becoming its president in 1953. In 1954 he converted the organization into the politically oriented Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Under Nyerere’s leadership the organization espoused peaceful change, social equality, and racial harmony and rejected tribalism and all forms of racial and ethnic discrimination.
In 1955 and 1956 he journeyed to the United Nations in New York City as a petitioner to the Trusteeship Council and the Fourth Committee on trusts and non-self-governing territories. After a debate that ended in his being granted a hearing, he asked for a target date for the independence of Tanganyika. The British administration rejected the demand, but a dialogue was begun that established Nyerere as the preeminent nationalist spokesman for his country.

The British administration nominated him a member of the Tanganyikan Legislative Council, but he resigned in 1957 in protest against the slowness of progress toward independence. In elections held in 1958–59, Nyerere and TANU won a large number of seats on the Legislative Council. In a subsequent election in August 1960, his organization managed to win 70 of 71 seats in Tanganyika’s new Legislative Assembly. Progress toward independence owed much to the understanding and mutual trust that developed during the course of negotiations between Nyerere and the British governor, Sir Richard Turnbull. Tanganyika finally gained responsible self-government in September 1960, and Nyerere became chief minister at this time. Tanganyika became independent on December 9, 1961, with Nyerere as its first prime minister. The next month, however, he resigned from this position to devote his time to writing and synthesizing his views of government and of African unity. One of Nyerere’s more important works was a paper called “Ujamaa—The Basis for African Socialism,” which later served as the philosophical basis for the Arusha Declaration (1967). When Tanganyika became a republic in 1962, he was elected president, and in 1964 he became president of the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar).

Nyerere was reelected president of Tanzania in 1965 and was returned to serve three more successive five-year terms before he resigned as president in 1985 and handed over his office to his successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi. From independence on Nyerere also headed Tanzania’s only political party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).

As outlined in his political program, the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere was committed to the creation of an egalitarian socialist society based on cooperative agriculture in Tanzania. He collectivized village farmlands, carried out mass literacy campaigns, and instituted free and universal education. He also emphasized Tanzania’s need to become economically self-sufficient rather than remain dependent on foreign aid and foreign investment. Nyerere termed his socialist experimentation ujamaa (Swahili: “familyhood”), a name that emphasized the blend of economic cooperation, racial and tribal harmony, and moralistic self-sacrifice that he sought to achieve. Tanzania became a one-party state, though certain democratic opportunities were permitted within that framework.

As a major force behind the modern Pan-African movement and one of the founders in 1963 of the OAU, Nyerere was a key figure in African events in the 1970s. He was a strong advocate of economic and political measures in dealing with the apartheid policies of South Africa. Nyerere was chairman of a group of five frontline African presidents who advocated the overthrow of white supremacy in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, and South West Africa/Namibia (now Namibia).

Nyerere’s concerns on the domestic front were dominated by economic hardships and by difficulties between Nyerere and Idi Amin of Uganda. In 1972 Nyerere denounced Amin when the latter announced the expulsion of all Asians from Uganda. When Ugandan troops occupied a small border area of Tanzania in 1978, Nyerere pledged to bring about the downfall of Amin, and in 1979 the Tanzanian army invaded Uganda in support of a local movement to overthrow him. Nyerere’s intervention helped to unseat Amin and brought about the return to power in Uganda of Milton Obote in 1980.

Nyerere, JuliusHanos/Liaison AgencyThough enthusiastically adopted by his countrymen and steadfastly supported by sympathetic western European nations, Nyerere’s socialist policies failed to spur economic development in Tanzania. At the time of his resignation in 1985, Tanzania was still one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per capita income of about U.S. $250. Agriculture remained at the subsistence level, and the country’s industrial and transportation infrastructures were chronically underdeveloped. One-third of the national budget was supplied by foreign aid. Tanzania had one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, however, and the society was both politically stable and notably free of economic inequalities. Nyerere himself remained committed to socialist policies throughout his political career.
Nyerere continued as chairman of the CCM until 1990. Thereafter he assumed the role of elder statesman and was regularly called upon to act as arbiter in international crises such as those in Rwanda and Burundi.

Soft-spoken, unpretentious, small of stature, and quick to laugh, Julius Nyerere was widely credited with impressive oratorical skills and unusual powers of political perception. His thoughts, essays, and speeches are collected in his books, Uhuru na Umoja (1967; Freedom and Unity), Uhuru na Ujamaa (1968; Freedom and Socialism), and Uhuru na Maendeleo (1973; Freedom and Development). He also translated two plays by William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar, into Swahili.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Nyerere

Thomas Sankara ...great Marxist

OKUCHI11:
Thomas Sankara ...great Marxist

the men that shaped africa

7. Samora Machel,

(born September 29, 1933, Chilembene, Mozambique—died October 19, 1986, Mbuzini, South Africa), Mozambican politician, who was the first president of independent Mozambique (1975–86).
Born more than 200 miles north of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, Machel received his education through mission schools. He refused to enter a seminary for higher education and instead became a nurse in Maputo. The experience radicalized him, and, after 10 years in the profession, he joined the clandestine Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), which sent him to Algeria for military training. He rose quickly through the leadership ranks and became Frelimo’s leader in 1970, after the 1969 assassination of Eduardo Mondlane.

Machel claimed that his radical political stance came originally not from reading Marx but from the experiences of his family; his parents were forced to grow cotton for the Portuguese and were displaced from their land in the 1950s in favour of Portuguese settlers. After Mozambique became independent in 1975, Machel became president. Frelimo followed Marxist ideology by nationalizing many institutions and supported Robert Mugabe in his fight to end white domination of his country, Zimbabwe. Machel, however, did sign the Nkomati Accord with South Africa in 1984, under which each country agreed not to support the other country’s opposition movements, and thereby maintained an economic relationship with the white minority government battling the African National Congress. His charisma and personal style kept his government in power despite the droughts and floods of the early 1980s and the ongoing civil war with the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo).

In 1986 Machel was returning to Mozambique from Zambia when his plane crashed in South Africa. It was believed by many that the South African government was somehow responsible for the crash, although it strongly denied a connection. Machel’s widow, Graça, who married South African President Nelson Mandela in 1998, gave evidence to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that supported the involvement of the minority South African government. A memorial to Machel was erected in 1999 at the site of the crash.


8. Kwame Nkrumah Facts


Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) was the first president of Ghana. Though he effected Ghana's independence and for a decade was Africa's foremost spokesman, his vainglory and dictatorial methods brought about his downfall in 1966, with him a discredited and tragic figure in African nationalism.

The career of Kwame Nkrumah must be seen in the context of the Africa of his period, which sought a dynamic leader but lacked the structures that would make possible the common goal of continental unity. Ghana's and Africa's very inadequacies initially made them insensitive to Nkrumah's failings, conspicuous among which was the ever-widening gap between his rhetoric, which called for a socialist revolution, and his practice, which accommodated itself to the worst aspects of tribal and capitalist traditions.

Preparation for Leadership
Kwame Nkrumah, whose original name was Francis Nwia Nkrumah, was born on Sept. 21, 1909, into the tiny Nzima tribe; his origins, although clouded by controversy, were indisputably humble. His early education was in Catholic mission schools and in a government training college. In 1935, after teaching for several years, with the help of friends and the example of Nnamdi Azikiwe (later Nigeria's first president), Nkrumah left for Lincoln University in the United States.

By this time, Nkrumah was already the most radical of the young "Gold Coasters," resenting deeply the exploitative aspects of colonialism. But it was during the years at Lincoln, and the ensuing ones as a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, that he was to give substance to his feelings by studying, as he later wrote, "revolutionaries and their methods" (such as Lenin, Napoleon, Gandhi, Hitler, and, most important, Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican whose followers proclaimed him "provisional president of Africa". Nkrumah never obtained a thorough grounding in any field and never really demonstrated the intelligence and sensitivity that would have demanded discipline in his thinking. This combination of an inferior schooling and a less than first-rate mind made possible the eclectic and incoherent ideological thought seen in his later writings on "Nkrumaism."

Nkrumah's formal political activity started in America but only began in earnest in London, where he went for further studies in 1945. While in England, he edited a pan-African journal, was vice president of the West African students' union, and helped organize the Fifth Pan-African Conference in Manchester. There, too, George Padmore, the important former-Communist pan-Africanist, became his mentor and was a crucial restraining influence until he died in 1959.

Gold Coast Leader
In 1947 Nkrumah had his chance to return to Africa in a position of leadership. The United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), a conservative nationalist movement, invited him to be general secretary. He arrived on Nov. 14, 1947. With weak British leadership and the postwar recession, the Gold Coast was ripe for more radical leadership, which Nkrumah ably provided. Riots in early 1948 resulted from economic grievances but were blamed on the UGCC leadership. Nkrumah and others, including Joseph B. Danquah, who later died in one of Nkrumah's political jails, were detained side by side.

After their release later that year, the UGCC leadership demoted Nkrumah, who responded by organizing the Committee on Youth Organization, which (composed of his now numerous admirers) provided the nucleus of Nkrumah's personal support. The inevitable rupture between Nkrumah and the UGCC came in June 1949. At an emotion-packed meeting, the Convention People's party (CPP) was born, with Nkrumah its leader.

The 1948 riots speeded the pace of political reform. Yet Nkrumah, always the radical, rejected proposals for a new Gold Coast constitution. He proposed to precipitate a crisis through "positive action": his followers took the cue and agitated for immediate self-government, leading to a state of emergency and Nkrumah's detention once again by the British. But reform ensued, and the first national elections were held in 1951. The CPP triumphed, thanks to brilliant organization and to the symbol of its incarcerated leader; on Feb. 12, 1951, Nkrumah was released from prison and made "leader of government business." A wholly new period began, in which the principle of ultimate independence was no longer in question.

Power was divided between Nkrumah, who was renamed prime minister in 1952, and the governor. This diarchy symbolized Nkrumah's dilemma of the reconciliation of his image as a revolutionary with his close relationship with the imperial authority. Although this gap was papered over with rhetoric, it always existed in some form. A new enemy of Nkrumah's power appeared in 1954-1956 in the form of a conservative, tribally based political movement derived from the UGCC which even tried to delay independence. The need to struggle for the "political kingdom" against domestic forces intensified Nkrumah's desire for revenge and for total power. Marxist ideology became his congenial and increasingly convenient justification.

Search for the Political Kingdom
On March 6, 1957, the Gold Coast became independent as Ghana. Although Nkrumah was the prime minister (the governor-general was British) and had the governmental machinery in his hands, watchful British and domestic eyes cautioned him from attempting, for example, to transform the professional civil service into a personal political tool. But in the next 3 years he did much—he called two pan-African conferences, made state tours throughout Africa and to America and Britain, and accelerated educational and social development—and with all of this his power grew. He used a preventive detention act to detain many members of Parliament and supporters of the opposition, and by 1960 it took considerable courage to oppose him.

Debate in Africa and in the West, particularly Britain, over the colonial independence movement and the ability of Africans to govern themselves frequently became a debate over Nkrumah and his professed democratic goals. In 1960 a plebiscite made Ghana a republic with a new constitution, and an election resembling a plebiscite made Nkrumah its first president.

President of the Republic
With the founding of the republic on July 1, 1960, Nkrumah had achieved the political kingdom from which "all else"—in pan-African, domestic, and international policy—was to follow. Pan-African concerns had been laid aside during the struggle for domestic power. Now having established firm control of the republic, Nkrumah could center his activity on the uniting of the continent. But other states with their own leaders and heroes had now emerged, and they resented the constant advice from Accra; nor were they likely to surrender their newly won sovereignty to a great union.

Precisely as the new states consolidated their own positions, and as union became less and less a practicable proposition, Nkrumah's insistence on, and his absorption in, the "Union Government" cause grew. Nkrumah sincerely resented Africa's weakness and sought to prevent its "Latin-Americanization," but his method, his ambition, and the ill-defined nature of his goals doomed the obsession. "Union Government" became a joke in Africa. Thus Ghana's own diplomatic position eroded until, in 1963, it was even denied a position of eminence in the new Organization of African Unity. Yet in the more radical states, Nkrumah himself remained an honored statesman until 1964, when Julius Nyerere, the prestigious president of Tanzania, publicly denounced him in strident terms. After this, nothing sacred was left either of the cause or of the man.

In domestic affairs, the new constitution had been amended by fiat after the plebiscite so as to bestow dictatorial powers on the "Osagyefo" (redeemer—Nkrumah's self-advocated title). In the ensuing years, the remaining opposition within and without his party were detained, driven to exile, or frightened into silence. A small coterie of expatriate and Ghanaian Marxists pressed him to make Ghana Africa's first Communist state and as quid pro quo honored "Nkrumaism." Assassination attempts in 1962 and 1964 made Nkrumah accelerate his timetable for the building of socialism. The first attempt led to a new intimacy in relations with the Communist world and his own public advocacy of "scientific socialism"; the second led to a plebiscite making Ghana a one-party state.

The caution and inconsistency that had always characterized Nkrumah's statecraft remained. Moderates—and rich businessmen—could successfully cloak their sentiments in flattery. The steadily deteriorating financial situation, combined with the reluctance of Nikita Khrushchev's more cautious successors in the Kremlin to bail Nkrumah out, preserved his ultimate dependence on the West. Instinctively opposed to breaking diplomatic relations with Britain over the Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) question, Nkrumah was forced to do so in order to appear to remain in the vanguard of African radicalism. Actions, not motivations, counted.

Exile and Death
The momentum of Nkrumah's actions, symbolized by the break with Britain, threatened the independence of the army and the police; early on Feb. 24, 1966, three days after Nkrumah had left on a gratuitous peace mission to Vietnam, they toppled the regime, outlawed the party, and announced that "the myth of Kwame Nkrumah is ended forever." The jubilant populace destroyed Nkrumah's statues and renamed the many roads, circles, buildings—even universities—that had borne his name. From a dreary exile in Guinea, Nkrumah ineffectually tried to rally Ghana against the new regime. Though initially proclaimed "copresident of Guinea" on his arrival, a gesture of sentiment, Nkrumah soon found himself watched, isolated, without even his Egyptian wife of 8 years. He died in Conakry, Guinea, on April 27, 1972.

Yet Ghana could no more remove the memory and effects of 15 years of its remarkable first leader than Nkrumah could remove the memories and structures of Ghana's colonial and traditional past. On the negative side were the heavy debts that the country had accrued.

More positively, there were the schools and universities, the Volta Dam, and the aluminum industry which Nkrumah had dreamed of in the 1950s and through persistence had seen through. And, he had given most Ghanaians a sense—and pride — of nationhood in the 1950s and had given people of African blood throughout the world a new pride in their color. Ironically, he had wanted to unite and lead a continent, but he founded a nation; of its small size he was continually embarrassed. Yet it is by his successes and failures as leader of that country that his biographers must ultimately judge him.


Read more at http://biography.yourdictionary.com/kwame-nkrumah#Tx1iAJKxPW3Eg8GS.99

9. Kenneth Kaunda,


in full Kenneth David Kaunda (born April 28, 1924, Lubwa, near Chinsali, Northern Rhodesia [now Zambia]), politician who led Zambia to independence in 1964 and served as that country’s president until 1991.

Early years
Kaunda’s father, who was from Nyasaland (now Malawi), was a schoolteacher; his mother, also a teacher, was the first African woman to teach in colonial Zambia. Both taught among the Bemba ethnic group in northern Zambia, where young Kaunda received his early education, completing secondary school in the early 1940s. Like the majority of Africans in colonial Zambia who achieved some measure of middle-class status, he also began to teach, first in colonial Zambia and in the middle 1940s in Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
Struggle against colonial rule

Kaunda returned to Zambia in 1949. In that year he became interpreter and adviser on African affairs to Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, a liberal white settler and a member of the Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council. Kaunda acquired knowledge of the colonial government as well as political skills, both of which served him well when later that year he joined the African National Congress (ANC), the first major anticolonial organization in Northern Rhodesia. In the early 1950s Kaunda became the ANC’s secretary-general, functioning as its chief organizing officer, a role that brought him into close contact with the movement’s rank and file. Thus, when the leadership of the ANC clashed over strategy in 1958–59, Kaunda carried a major part of the ANC operating structure into a new organization, the Zambia African National Congress.
Kaunda became president of the new organization and skillfully used it to forge a militant policy against the British plan for a federation of the three central African colonies—Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland. African leaders opposed and feared any such federation because it would tend to place ultimate power in the hands of a white minority of settlers. Kaunda employed the Zambia congress as an instrument for executing what he called “positive nonviolent action,” a form of civil disobedience against the federation policy. His campaign had two major results: first, the British government modified the federation policy and eventually agreed to discard it; second, the imprisonment of Kaunda and other militant leaders elevated them to the status of national heroes in the eyes of the people. Thus, from 1960 on, the nationwide support of Zambia’s independence movement was secured, as was too the dominant status of Kenneth Kaunda in that movement.

Kaunda was released from prison by the colonial government on Jan. 8, 1960. At the end of that month he was elected president of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), which had been formed in October 1959 by Mainza Chona, a militant nationalist who was disenchanted with the older ANC. The UNIP enjoyed a spectacular growth, claiming 300,000 members by June 1960. In December 1960 the British colonial authorities invited Kaunda and several other UNIP leaders to participate in discussions on the status of the three colonies at a conference in London. Early in the following year the British government announced that formal decolonization of Zambia would commence.
The first major elections leading to final decolonization were held in October 1962. The constitutional proposals upon which the election was based provided the European settlers in Northern Rhodesia with a disproportionate share of the votes. Yet the two major African parties—the UNIP and ANC—gained a majority of the votes. The UNIP was the winner, gaining 15 of the 37 seats in the new Legislative Council.
The UNIP’s success was attributed overwhelmingly to the leadership of Kaunda. He had been astute both in allaying the European settlers’ fears that an African regime would unfairly disregard their interests and in quelling the factionalism prevalent in large sections of the country’s African population. It was this same skill that enabled Kaunda to negotiate further constitutional advances, and in 1964 Zambia was granted independence with Kaunda as its president.

President of Zambia
Like other African leaders, Kaunda faced many complex postindependence problems, especially the issue of tribalism. He succeeded in continuing to negotiate on this issue, saving Zambia the trauma of tribal civil war. Nevertheless, interparty political violence occurred during the elections of 1968, in which Kaunda and his party were returned to power. In response, Kaunda in 1972 imposed one-party rule on Zambia, and in 1973 he introduced a new constitution that ensured his party’s uncontested rule.

In the 1970s Kaunda’s government acquired a majority interest in the country’s copper-mining operations and undertook to manage other industries as well. While investing large sums in the mining sector, the government neglected agriculture while nevertheless having to spend increasing sums on subsidized food for the urban poor. These policies reduced agricultural production and increased Zambia’s dependence on exports of copper and on foreign loans and aid. From the 1970s on, the result of these policies was the progressive impoverishment of Zambia; unemployment rose, living standards steadily declined, and the provision of education and other social services decayed. In foreign affairs, Kaunda led other countries of southern Africa in confronting the white-minority governments of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. He imposed economic sanctions against Rhodesia in the 1970s at great cost to his country’s own economy, and in the late 1970s he allowed Zambia to be used as a base by black nationalist guerrillas led by Joshua Nkomo.

In 1976 Kaunda assumed emergency powers, and he was reelected as president in one-candidate elections in 1978 and 1983. Several attempted coups against him in the early 1980s were squelched. The Zambian economy continued to deteriorate owing to a fall in the world price of copper (Zambia’s chief export), the rising price of oil (its chief import), the withdrawal of foreign aid and investment by developed countries, and worsening corruption within Kaunda’s government. With public dissatisfaction mounting and a credible political opposition in the process of formation, Kaunda in 1990 legalized opposition parties and set the stage for free, multiparty elections in 1991. In the elections, held late that year, Kaunda and the UNIP were defeated by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) in a landslide. Kaunda’s successor, Frederick Chiluba, took office on Nov. 2, 1991.

After the presidency
After leaving office, Kaunda clashed frequently with Chiluba’s government and the MMD. He planned to run against Chiluba in the 1996 presidential election but was barred from doing so after constitutional amendments were passed that made him ineligible. On Dec. 25, 1997, Kaunda was arrested on charges of inciting an attempted coup that had occurred earlier that year in October. He was released six days later, but he was placed under house arrest until all charges were withdrawn in June 1998. The next month, Kaunda announced that he would resign from his role as UNIP’s president once a successor was chosen. However, the lack of agreement regarding his successor caused a rift within the UNIP, and ultimately Kaunda did not resign until 2000. In March 1999 a judge ruled that Kaunda should be stripped of his Zambian citizenship because his parents were from Malawi and furthermore, because of that fact, Kaunda had held office illegally for most of his period in government. Kaunda mounted a challenge, and his citizenship was restored the next year when the petition that generated the court ruling was withdrawn.
In 2002 Kaunda was appointed the Balfour African President-in-Residence at Boston University in the United States, a position he held until 2004. In 2003 he was awarded the Grand Order of the Eagle in Zambia by Chiluba’s successor, Pres. Levy Mwanawasa.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Kenneth-Kaunda


President: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Africa's 'Iron Lady' Image caption Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa's first elected woman head of state in 2006 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa's first elected woman head of state in 2006
Profile: Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa's first female president in 2005, two years after the end of a brutal 14-year conflict.

She was re-elected in November 2011 in a poll marred by a low turn-out and a boycott by her main rival.

Winston Tubman pulled out of the second round of the presidential race, saying the vote had been rigged. He said he would not cooperate with Ms Johnson-Sirleaf's government, raising the prospect that her initiatives could be slowed in a hung parliament where her Unity Party failed to win a majority.

Ms Johnson Sirleaf has been accused by critics of having little to show for her first term, with alleged failures in the areas of anti-corruption, decentralisation and national reconciliation.

However, supporters say she deserves praise for ensuring stability and the rule of law, as well as for managing to gain international forgiveness of huge national debt, putting the country on a sound financial footing and making the impoverished country much more attractive to foreign investors.

The opposition has accused her of nepotism over the appointment of one of her sons as chairman of the national oil company. The son, Robert Sirleaf, in April 2012 began legal action against newspapers over the accusations, dismissing them as unsubstantiated. Another of her sons is deputy governor of the central bank.

She was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2011 for what the prize committee said were her efforts to secure peace, promote economic and social development and strengthen the position of women.

Ms Johnson Sirleaf served as finance minister under President William Tolbert in the late 1970s and fled the country after the Tolbert government was overthrown. She has worked for the UN and the World Bank.

Some of the opposition to Ms Johnson Sirleaf stems from her one-time association with former Liberian leader Charles Taylor. She briefly supported the then warlord in his quest to overthrow military leader Samuel Doe.

She admitted to her initial support for Mr Taylor, saying he had misled her into believing the war was necessary for change to happen. However, she has so far ignored a Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendation that she should not hold public office for 30 years for backing Charles Taylor.

Born in 1938, she is a widowed mother-of-four.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13729506

op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

I agreed with all but Mobutu Sese seko. He was a dictator and a despot in the mold of Idi Amin of Uganda. He was also a colonial puppet that was used to overthrow the revolutionary govt of one of Africa's brightest, Patrice Lumumba.
I will rather choose Felix Houphouet Boigny of cote de ivoire.

kaze4blues:
op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

For how long are we going to live in sentiments and tribalism. Why not come up with your own thread. C'mon you can reason better than this

Elose11:
I agreed with all but Mobutu Sese seko. He was a dictator and a despot in the mold of Idi Amin of Uganda. He was also a colonial puppet that was used to overthrow the revolutionary govt of one of Africa's brightest, Patrice Lumumba.
I will rather choose Felix Houphouet Boigny of cote de ivoire.

ok guys feel free to add or oppose anyone

cc: lalasticlala and ashilove

kaze4blues:
op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

Go and commit suicide!

doublewisdom:

Go and commit suicide!

abeg where do they "commit suicide" lol

take it easy man

robosky02:


abeg where do they "commit suicide" lol

take it easy man

Ask Awolowo!

where is uthman dan fodio? the jihad master

kaze4blues:
op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

Yoruba vs Igbo dick measuring

kaze4blues:
op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

yes owolowo is great just like desmond tutu and other in south africa



but we are talking of men who didnt just become leaders but were also presidents or rulers of thier country


thats were owo didnt meet up , but he was great in nigerian circle. thank you

civil disobedience in the philosophy of henry david thoreau: a critique
http://www.bravoprojecthelp.com/philosophy/civil-disobedience-in-the-philosophy-of-henry-david-thoreau-a-critique/

robosky02:



yes owolowo is great just like desmond tutu and other in south africa



but we are talking of men who didnt just become leaders but were also presidents or rulers of thier country


thats were owo didnt meet up , but he was great in nigerian circle. thank you

u nailed it



ofonjas and dick measuring with igbos.....nawa for this people

cc: Ednite

come and see the Ethiopian renaissance

kaze4blues:
op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

tibalisim go kill u



look at this one comparing Awolowo to Nnamdi Azikiwe.........no try am again before Awolowo will slap u from his grave



are u ook atol

robosky02:
cc: Ednite
come and see the Ethiopian renaissance

sorry robo, but I don't like haile selassie

Ednite:


sorry robo, but I don't like haile selassie

really?

so tell me his part of the history I don't know

so I can understand

robosky02:



really?

so tell me his part of the history I don't know

so I can understand

he claims to be a christian but he's illumnati, he was on tour when italy came for revenge, he didn't respond quick when drought first came in Ethiopia for the sake of his pride

kaze4blues:
op is a fool for excluding obafemi awolowo and putting nnamdi azikwe.

that alone rubbishes everything you put up there.

Zik if far well known in Africa than Awolowo

kingzizzy:


Zik if far well known in Africa than Awolowo

thank u ......i tire for ofonjas

Revolution in Frantz fanon: a paradigm for the North African revolutions
http://www.bravoprojecthelp.com/philosophy/revolution-in-frantz-fanon-a-paradigm-for-the-north-african-revolutions/

Revolution in Frantz fanon: a paradigm for the North African revolutions
http://www.bravoprojecthelp.com/philosophy/revolution-in-frantz-fanon-a-paradigm-for-the-north-african-revolutions/