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The decolonisation of Africa was a series of political developments in Africa that spanned from the mid-1950s to 1975, during the Cold War. Colonial governments gave way to sovereign states in a process often marred by violence, political turmoil, widespread unrest, and organised revolts.
- The Sharpeville Massacre
- The Rivonia Trial
- Shut Down at Home, Organizing Overseas
By the late 1950s, a growing number of activists questioned the tactics of the African National Congress. The young founders of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), formed in 1959, believed that only an all-black African organization, in league with anti-colonial Africans throughout the continent, could adopt the forceful posture necessary to overcom...
In 1963, three years after the terror of the Sharpeville massacre carried out by government forces, the Rivonia Trial began with the government seeking to accuse its opponents of fomenting violence. Ten defendants, including six black Africans, three white Jews, and the son of an Indian immigrant, were charged with sabotage and attempting to violen...
In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre and the government crackdown that followed, the ANC leadership charged Oliver Tambo, the organization's deputy president, with the task of beginning to organize overseas. With protest nearly impossible within the country and so many top ANC leaders in prison, Tambo looked for new ways to fight against th...
5 days ago · By the mid-1950s there were more than two million schoolchildren in Nigeria, about 6 percent of the total population and a much higher proportion of the population of the south, in which the schools were concentrated; in the Gold Coast there were nearly 600,000, some 12 percent of the population.
Key points. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, many African countries gained their independence from Britain. One of the first African colonies to gain independence was the Gold Coast, which...
New African Nations changed the balance of power in the United Nations. The newly independent nations that emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s became an important factor in changing the balance of power within the United Nations.
5 days ago · Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s broke the pattern of public facilities’ being segregated by “race” in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period (1865–77).
Jun 24, 2015 · That year, South Africa’s first democratically elected government took office. After four decades of pressure, including arms embargoes and sporting boycotts, the General Assembly removed the item of apartheid from its agenda. Despite this progress, the UN does not consider its task to be complete.
