Although the oldest dated bones of human beings have been found in eastern Africa, little else is known of the 3 or 4 million years from the days of these ancestors to the earliest substantial accounts of peoples inhabiting Africa. This article will highlight the history of these peoples, generally in sub-Saharan Africa. For accounts of archaeological findings in Africa and the ancient civilizations of North Africa, see the following articles: \TAfrican prehistory\t; \TCarthage\t; \TCyrene\t; \TEgypt, ancient\t. EARLY AFRICA Aksum and the Eastern City-States \TCush\t, with its Egyptian-like civilization on the Nile, and the flourishing, irrigation-based culture of \TSheba\t (or Saba, modern north Yemen) together contributed in about the 2d century AD to the rise of the kingdom of Aksum. This kingdom was located in the highlands above the Red Sea in and around what is now the Tigre region of northern Ethiopia. Originally a colony of emigrants from Yemen, Aksum had begun trading with Greece, Rome, Cush, and Egypt. Local farmers grew spices and gum arabic, which Aksum exchanged--together with tortoise shell collected along the Red Sea and ivory and gold obtained in Cush--for Egyptian cloth, linen, articles of flint, glass, brass, sheets of soft copper, iron ingots, wine, olive oil, and gold and silver. The army of this young kingdom made its force felt along and across the Red Sea and beyond the Nile. In the 3d century Aksum conquered Yemen. During the 4th century, Aksum's famed king Ezana unified his African holdings and converted himself and his kingdom to Christianity. To the south a profitable commerce had begun to develop between the peoples of the coastal towns and seafaring merchants from Arabia, Persia, and other Asian centers. Some of the visitors, especially the \TArabs\t, settled and intermarried with indigenous residents. Their descendants formed the nuclei for a series of impressive East African city-states that flourished until the arrival of the more powerful Portuguese in the 16th century. Interior Migrations During the centuries of the ascent of Aksum and the city-states, the pattern of life of innumerable interior Africans began to alter drastically. Agriculturists, endowed with new crops and new tools and weapons of iron, began to effect a major change in the preexisting arrangements of African life across a great belt of Africa from Nigeria in the west to Kenya in the east. The change included or was generated by a population explosion. This in turn propelled at least one set of agriculturists from their original base in eastern Nigeria southeastward toward the border of Zaire and Zambia; this group then traveled westward, southward, and northeastward until it met a southern- and western-moving flank of peoples involved in pastoral pursuits. The descendants of the first group now inhabit nearly all of Africa south of an imaginary line across central Kenya, southern Uganda, northern Zaire, and southern Nigeria. The second, linguistically less numerous and markedly different from the first in the features of its members, includes the cattle herders of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Sudan, and northern Nigeria. Yet both migrated (and were migrating until the colonial incursions of the 19th century) in large numbers, and both may well have owed their newfound mobility to the adaptation of new crops and new techniques from Asia. Whatever the impetus, a demographic and political revolution resulted from the dramatic movement of agriculturists and pastoralists from opposite directions and their final clash in the interior, possibly as late as the 8th century. West African Kingdoms For West Africa the pattern seems strikingly different, at least insofar as it emerges from the Arabic writings of early travelers and geographers. These writings, which date back to the 8th century, contain much information about the powerful empires and other significant states that succeeded one another in western Africa (from the Senegal River to Lake Chad) from that period to the 19th century. The main theme of early West African history was the rise and fall of imperial fortunes along the great rivers that thread through the sub-Saharan dry zones--rather than in the crowded preurban environment of Nigeria's forests. From the earliest years small, tightly knit, and fiercely autonomous states existed side by side, were created and destroyed, and fought to avoid being swallowed up by the major empires that sprang periodically from the ambitions, economic circumstances, or martial abilities of a particular emerging state. Although some peoples of eastern and southern Africa lived, and still live, without chiefs or other hierarchically arranged organizations, West Africans experienced the government of single chiefs (sometimes men accorded divine rights and powers), the government of chiefs and their councils, and--rarely--the government of councils of equals. Alluvial gold was the first of the important raw materials that the states monopolized in order to supply the markets of northern Africa and southern Europe; a second was salt mined near oases in the southern Sahara. Slaves captured in raids and war grew in importance as a commodity after about the 10th century. Kola nuts and other agricultural products were also important, as were the dyestuffs of northern Nigeria. All these goods were highly prized in and around the Mediterranean basin, and West Africans traveled across the vast desert in mighty caravans to the markets of Fez and Marrakesh in Morocco, Tunis in Tunisia, Tripoli in Libya, and Cairo in Egypt. In exchange the traders of the north brought cloth, horses, glass and metal ware, swords and armor, and--in time--muskets and other equipment of early modern warfare. The caravans from the north also brought \TIslam\t and its scriptures and written language. \TGhana\t was the earliest of the great empires. In the markets of its capital in the southeastern corner of what is now Mauritania, not far from the Senegal River, local entrepreneurs bartered the gold, ivory, and slaves of black Africa for the salt of the Sahara and for the horses, cloth, swords, and books of North Africa and Europe. Salt was worth its weight in gold. The empire of Ghana then controlled the major sources of Africa's alluvial gold. Early writers in Arabic called the king of Ghana the richest person in the world because of his gold. Ghana reached its imperial zenith in the 10th and 11th centuries. In 990 its cavalry regiment conquered the state of Sanhaja, now part of Morocco. It governed peoples living as far south and east as the middle reaches of the Senegal River and the great bend of the Niger River. Ghana was ruled by a powerful monarch. He administered his far-flung empire with the assistance of viceroys and counselors with oracular power. In addition to the major export of gold, which was taxed, the Ghanaians also traded honey, kola nuts, dried fruit, and cowrie shells within the empire. Ghana was conquered from the south by Islamic fundamentalists in the middle of the 11th century. The \TAlmoravids\t swept out of what is now Senegal and across Ghana, into Morocco, and eventually subdued all of southern Spain. Ghana, reduced in size, continued to function, but its major trading ties had been sundered and by the 13th century it was no longer a significant power. Ghana's fall may have contributed to the development, from a series of smaller states in the old Ghana, of the nucleus of what became the empire of Mali. Mali, with its center in the comparatively fertile plateau region between the upper reaches of the Senegal and Niger rivers, replaced Ghana as the most important kingdom of the western Sudan. Mali grew from a minor state into Ghana's successor in the early 13th century, after its leader Sundiata transformed it from an age-group or clan organization into the nucleus of a powerful army and began to expand its borders. His army conquered Kaniaga in the upper Niger River region and attacked the capital of diminished Ghana. Later Sundiata made his own state the economic center of trade across the Sahara. Mali controlled the gold trade after Ghana and also monopolized imports of salt. By the middle of the 13th century the kings, or mansas, of Mali reigned supreme from the upper Senegal River to the great bend of the Niger River, 800 km (500 mi) to the east, and from the Sahara in the north to the upper Volta rivers in the south. Mali was ruled by generals, many of whom were Muslims, and several of whom as early as 1300 were making pilgrimages all the way to Mecca. The most famous of these pilgrims was \TMansa Musa\t, who ruled from 1312 to 1337. In about 1324 he went to Cairo with 500 slaves, each carrying a 6-lb (2.72-kg) staff of gold. His following caravan consisted of 100 camels, each individually laden with 300 lbs (136 kg) of gold. In Cairo, Musa's wealth, piety, generosity, and fine clothes all made a favorable impression--so much so that until about 1750 the great blank spaces of inner Africa were inscribed by mapmakers only with Rex Melli or Musa Mali. The rulers of Mali, a mercantile state much more sophisticated than Ghana, held splendid court, but they maintained traditional rituals and observed the integrity of local chiefs. They set the governmental tone for succeeding empires and for the smaller states that somehow managed to maintain their autonomy within or on the borders of the larger entities. In northern Nigeria several city-states existed between Mali and its successor \TSonghai\t to the west and \TKanem-Bornu\t, the growing empire to the east. Bornu dominated the Lake Chad region throughout the 16th and 17th centuries and until the onset of colonialism. Songhai succeeded Mali as the major empire of the sub-Saharan region. Its capital, Gao, was on the Niger River far to the east of Mali and on the frontier of the very different forest zone to the south. After the reign of its king, Sonni Ali, in the mid-15th century, the might of Songhai encompassed the semidesert regions once ruled by Ghana, the northern sections of today's Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) and Dahomey, and all the lands in between, on both sides of the Niger River. Early European Contacts With the coming of the Europeans and, after about 1550, an increasing demand for slaves to open up America, first Portugal and Spain and then England, France, and others began trading along the coasts of Senegal and Guinea and, later, in the Gulf of Guinea. They even established fortified warehouses along the Gold Coast (Ghana)--the first toeholds of colonialism. At these warehouses and on ships, floating warehouses, along the eastern Nigerian coast, goods of the interior--eventually mostly slaves--began to be traded for the copper, cloth, and guns of Europe. The guns in turn gave the forest kingdoms new power over their neighbors and assisted the rise to power of \TBenin\t (see \TBenin, Kingdom of\t) and Oyo in western Nigeria; Dahomey, Akwamu, and Ashanti along the Gold Coast; and smaller states to the west and north along the Atlantic. Westernization followed this trade. Farther south, the king of \TKongo\t was converted to Christianity. Seeking a sea route around Africa to the Orient, Portuguese sailors began sailing down the unknown west coast of Africa in 1418. They reached the coast of sub-Saharan Africa in 1441, crossed the equator and reached the mouth of the Congo River in 1482, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, and sailed past the city-states of eastern Africa in 1498. In the 16th century the Portuguese established themselves on the coast of present-day Mozambique, moving up the Zambezi River to make contact with the wealthy kingdom of the Monomotapa, which eventually fell (1629) under their control. The neighboring Roswi kingdom of the Chanamire, however, successfully resisted their pressure, and maintained its independence. The discovery of America quickened Europe's demand for slaves. On the islands of the Caribbean, at first indigenous Indians were enslaved to work plantations and dive for pearls. Similarly, on the mainland, Indians were for a short time used in the gold and silver mines. The Indians soon died, however, and Africans were thus sought as replacements by the Portuguese and Spanish colonists in the Americas. Even so, the trade from Africa grew only gradually until the last decades of the 16th century, when the American demand suddenly began to outstrip the available supply. Thereafter, the slaves were taken out of Africa in increasing numbers from all along the coast, but more and more from the lands in and around what is now Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola. Portugal and Spain were the original merchants of the Atlantic slave trade, but the profits of the trade were sufficiently enticing to attract competition. In the 17th century the Dutch entered African commerce in earnest, to be followed in the middle of the century by Swedish, Danish, German, French, and English syndicates. Each established trading posts and forts wherever it could along the coast of West Africa. From these, they shipped slaves, gold, and agricultural produce to their colonies in the New World and sometimes home to Europe. Despite their activity and the profits involved, they were dependent throughout upon the cooperation and toleration of African entrepreneurs. These early colonial ventures were ineffectual. Except in Mozambique and the Congo, the merchants of Europe knew nothing of most of Africa and, aside from providing markets for slaves and thus the thrust of Africa's commercial energies, influenced the evolution of inner Africa little until about 1700. There, rivalries between pastoralists and agriculturists for available arable lands continued. Masses of people moved out of the central African heartland eastward and westward into Malawi, Zambia, and Angola, out of the upper Nile region into Uganda and Kenya, and across the sub-Saharan zone of western Africa from the Atlantic highlands toward and into northern Nigeria. These migrations of peoples and cultures--and the effect each had on the face of Africa--were more important, until the 19th century, than the activities of Europeans and, in most respects, more than the trade in slaves that the Europeans had intensified. EARLY MODERN AFRICA Two Africas During the 17th century two Africas emerged. One focused inward on the kinds of problems of statecraft and economic self-sufficiency that had long engendered interethnic conflict, migration of peoples, and the wholesale transformation of regions from one religious and cultural persuasion to another. Around the central African lakes, centralized, highly stratified kingdoms began to replace the egalitarian, clan-based societies of an earlier era. A similar growth in centralization was occurring in the grasslands of the Cameroons and, with an intensity and success peculiar to its locale, in and around the Gold Coast. In the basin of the Congo and on the high plateau along its rim this process would occupy the 18th century as well, with many preexisting agricultural peoples being absorbed into larger collectivities ruled by groups of innovative migrants. In religion, too, it was a time of elaboration and differentiation. Economically, it was a period of expanding horizons, of the intensification of long-distance trade involving astonishing journeys from the center of the continent to either coast, and of the development of markets, especially in the west and the north but also in the east and central regions. Parts of Africa that had not yet fully entered the Iron Age began to use the metal, thus enhancing their abilities to cultivate and hunt--and also their propensity for wars. The stakes of war had grown higher too, making conflict everywhere more frequent and costly. The first Africa merged into the second Africa in and because of the clash of armies. The second Africa was, from the 17th century, thoroughly involved with the wider world. European contacts increased everywhere and were felt in a special way in the south after the settlement of the Dutch Boers (see \TAfrikaners\t) at the Cape of Good Hope in the mid-17th century; contact also grew with the Arabs in the east. The predominant form of involvement was the enslavement and sale of men and women. Wars supplied captives, and, as the needs of the Americas increased, so the frontier of European and Arab influence--but at this point not of European and Arab settlement--expanded. The underlying cause of this process was the growing demand for, and increased production of, sugar. Only in the 17th century did sugar begin to be cultivated successfully and extensively in the West Indies. The production of sugar requires backbreaking labor, especially during the cane-cutting season. Without ready supplies of African labor, it would have proved costly--perhaps impossible--to grow cane successfully in the West Indies and Brazil. The Slave Trade Fueled by this foreign demand, the slave trade enveloped Africa throughout the 17th and 18th and a large part of the 19th centuries. The apparatus necessary for obtaining slaves, walking them to the marshaling yards at the coast, fattening and feeding them there, and selling them--individual by individual--to ship captains for transport overseas demanded entrepreneurial initiative and managerial competence of a high and complex order. As the enlightenment of the 18th century superseded the mercantilism of the 17th, it presumably also required a strong stomach and a hard heart on the part of Europeans and Africans alike. Certainly the treatment of slaves in the African ports was degrading. Even more inhumane was the shackling and cramming of anxious, potentially rebellious slaves into ships and their transport across often stormy seas to auction yards in the Americas. If enslavement was an abomination--even by the standards of the day--the sea voyage, the so-called Middle Passage of six to ten weeks, was totally destructive. Approximately 10 million Africans were forcibly removed from Africa. A large number must have died during the Middle Passage, others as a result of abortive rebellions or the original opposition to capture. Nevertheless, some of the areas well known for their slaves--eastern Nigeria, the Gold Coast, western Angola, and others--flourished demographically as well as economically during the centuries of the slave trade. As cruel as enslavement was for individuals, the societies of Africa may themselves have suffered far less than has often been supposed. For individuals fortunate enough to remain behind, the trade in slaves brought new sources of capital for development, markets for commodities in addition to slaves, the transfer of technology from the West to Africa, and an outlet--however perverse--for the talents of certain groups within the coastal and forest states. The rise of \TAshanti\t, Dahomey, Oyo, and many less well-known peoples in the Congo basin and the hinterlands of Angola stem directly from their important roles in taking advantage of new, slave-centered terms of trade. When pressure from humanitarians in Europe was brought to bear on the iniquities of the slave trade in the late 18th century, the merchants of Africa were naturally among the loudest in defending their livelihood. After slavery's abolition (1807) by Britain, and Britain's effective persuasion of France, Portugal, and Spain--and later Zanzibar in the east--to follow suit, Africans complained ever more bitterly and sought to frustrate the activities of Britain's antislave patrol in the Atlantic. Yet as they protested, many of these Africans found that their commercial talents could be put to good use supplying industrializing Europe with palm oil--for soap and industrial lubricants--and other crops. The effects of the slave trade and its abolition were felt increasingly in the inland regions as well as in areas nearer the coast. The quest for slaves naturally involved peoples farther and farther afield. In the mid-19th century, for example, Arabo-Swahili caravan leaders from \TZanzibar\t were scouring the lands within the distant Congo basin for slaves to supply the developing markets of Arabia and the Indian Ocean islands, where sugar was being grown, as well as the clove plantations of Zanzibar itself. Earlier the hinterlands of Malawi and Zambia had been crisscrossed innumerable times for slaves and ivory, and virtually no part of Africa was unacquainted with the horrors of enslavement. Areas Resistant to the Slave Trade Some peoples, however, erected effective barriers against the traders. Those who were warlike and aggressive, like the \TMasai\t and their herding cousins the \TTurkana\t and the Karamojong, all in East Africa, were never molested. Also, where there were centralized kingdoms like \TRwanda\t and Buganda on the great lakes, Africans moved freely and feared the slave trade little. In Buganda, the nucleus of modern Uganda, a kabaka, or king, ruled autocratically with the assistance of a complex bureaucratic apparatus. Throughout the middle of the 19th century, successive rulers of Buganda increased their personal power by curbing the religious authority of the indigenous priests, phasing out the autonomy of clans and clan leadership by installing regional subordinates in their place, and enlisting an army responsible to themselves. By breaking the old societal bonds, the kabakas of Buganda created a society remarkably fluid and achievement oriented (as was the \TIbo\t society of eastern Nigeria); commoners could obtain advancement and prestige more easily than they could elsewhere in Africa. As a result, the people of Buganda were receptive to Islam and Christianity when both arrived toward the end of the century. THE RISE OF NEW POWERS Zulu Nation and Nguni Dispersal The rise of Buganda was paralleled in time by the rise of other aggressive new states. Each was stimulated by a set of local circumstances--by a shift in ecological fortunes or the nature of trade, or by the rise of a great leader. Each, in one way or another, was the end product of a chain of reactions set off by the increasing activity and encroachment of Europeans. Among the more dramatic and far-reaching of these developments, which set off a series of chain reactions of its own, was the forcible integration of a number of Nguni-speaking clan units of southeastern Africa (what is now \TNatal\t) into the great \TZulu\t nation. Under \TShaka\t (c.1787-1828), a charismatic leader who modernized methods of warfare and introduced new, superior weapons, the Zulu, unified for the first time, presented a solid front to the British and Boers, or Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch and Protestant French who settled the Cape of Good Hope during the 17th and 18th centuries). Shaka was a tyrant who came to power behind an assegai (a powerful stabbing spear) and left a legacy of autocratic centralization. Yet Shaka could not gain the obedience of all Zulu. After their defeat by his armies, several clans set in motion a far-ranging diaspora that, before the mid-19th century, engulfed virtually the whole of southern and central Africa. Three Zulu groups conquered their way northward, creating havoc and ending the independence of numerous peoples across whose territories they marched. In nearby Rhodesia, the \TNdebele\t offshoot established a major state that ruled south of the Zambezi River until the coming of the Europeans. The Kololo offshoot gained control for a time and thus linguistically and materially influenced the kingdom of the Lozi on the upper reaches of the Zambezi River. A larger detachment of Nguni smashed its way northward through Mozambique, eastern Rhodesia, and modern Zambia until, in about 1839, it too suffered from internal rivalry. Fission resulted, with one Nguni group carving out a niche for itself in western Tanzania, another in southwestern Tanzania; a third began to dominate eastern Zambia; a fourth similarly ruled northern Malawi; and two others held sway in southern Malawi. In addition, a separate segment gained control of southern Mozambique. Taken as a whole, the Nguni diaspora profoundly altered the nature of government and society in most of central and southern Africa. By laying waste to the territories through which they passed and thoroughly cowing the agricultural peoples whom they encountered, the Nguni made conditions easier for slavers and, ultimately, for the conquest of the area by Europeans. Islamic Revolutions This cataclysm in the east had its counterpart in the west. However, where the Nguni were thoroughly traditional in their culture and religion, in their delight in cattle, and in their willingness to absorb the conquered into their new states, in the west--as later in the north--the significant upheavals in large part received their legitimacy by promising religious purification. Without the support of the doctrines of fundamentalist Islam, the leaders of what was a religious revival might not have been able to stimulate a war between believers and traditionalists throughout the breadth of Hausaland--now northern Nigeria. Most believers were also immigrants, largely \TFulani\t from the west, who, like so many minorities, felt themselves disadvantaged under the various rulers of the separate \THausa\t city-states. \TUsman dan Fodio\t, a Fulani leader who had studied with Muslim theologians, was in the forefront of this movement of reform. He particularly wanted to reintroduce into Hausaland a spirit of religious orthodoxy that was in keeping with the literal teachings of the Koran and that would help foster the ideal society of an earlier golden age. Usman's followers overran Hausaland; the cities of Kano, Katsina, and Zaria fell like duckpins. By 1810 the victory had been won, and Usman ruled about 460,000 sq km (180,000 sq mi) and 15 city-states. His revolution integrated an enormous area that remained intact until its conquest, early in the 20th century, by the British and its subsequent incorporation into the mammoth state of Nigeria. Three other Islamic revolutions transformed sub-Saharan Africa on the eve of colonial rule. Ahmadu bin Hammadi Boubou, a Fulani who had studied under Usman, in 1818 led Muslims in the Macina region of the upper Niger River against their \TBambara\t overlords. By 1827, his state reached to the northern extremities of the Volta rivers in the south and to \TTimbuktu\t in the north. Over its five emirates, Ahmadu ruled as the head of an intolerant theocracy. Beer, tobacco, and dancing were banned, and even foreigners were compelled to order their daily lives according to the dictates of the new government. In the 1850s al-Hajj \TUmar\t, another religious reformer who had studied with the descendants of Usman, led a further revival along the upper reaches of the Niger River. His armies won victories against the Bambara and against peoples to the west in what is now Senegal. They even battled the French, who were approaching from the west. Toward the east, al-Hajj Umar conquered Ahmadu's empire, proclaiming a holy war against it, although it had earlier been created by the same process. These victories were short-lived, however, as Umar died soon after, and the French destroyed his state a decade later. A Muslim holy war of even greater consequence took place in the \TSudan\t during the twilight years of African independence. By 1880 the Sudan had been controlled for 60 years by the Turkish-speaking administration of Egypt. During these years trade in slaves had provided its economic lifeblood. The more powerful of these slavers even came to rule vast regions in the south and southwestern portions of the territory. In the 1860s and 1870s, however, the rulers of Egypt attempted to curtail the slave trade, employing foreigners to manage the campaign. Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdallah took advantage of these dissatisfactions by uniting the proslavers, the anticorruptionists, and the anti-Egyptians in a brilliantly arranged revolution that engulfed the Sudan in the 1880s. Proclaimed the \Tmahdi\t, or Savior, this learned Islamic fundamentalist declared a holy war against backsliding infidels--who happened to be the rulers of the Sudan. In a series of decisive battles, his fanatical warriors conquered the Egyptian army and captured Khartoum (1885). For the next 13 years the puritanical followers of the Mahdi reigned supreme throughout virtually all of the Sudan. It took a major British assault to subordinate the Sudan in 1898. By then, however, most of the rest of Africa had also fallen to one or another of the European powers. EUROPEAN SUPREMACY Colonial Partition The European conquest of Africa began with the slave trade and the subsequent establishment of commodity exchange centers along the coasts. It was fueled by the exciting explorations of Mungo \TPark\t, David \TLivingstone\t, Henry Morton \TStanley\t, Sir Richard \TBurton\t, and Joseph \TThomson\t, who provided a collective prelude to the partition of Africa. Equally important were the activities of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries, who intrepidly entered the interior in the wake of the explorers, developed systems for writing the indigenous languages, and then expounded their beliefs on why and how Western influence would benefit Africa. Commercial interests were also important, especially in West Africa where, during the 19th century, the early outposts became enclaves ruled by Europeans with the collaboration of Africans. Minor wars led to the gradual, unanticipated growth of these outposts. In South Africa, too, animosity between English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites led to wars with Africans, the expansion of the frontier there, and the occupation by European powers of all of southern and central Africa. Everywhere the actions of a few commercial promoters were important. Above all, it was the political rivalries of the new Europe that accelerated the decisive carving up of the continent. Throughout the late 19th century, France, Germany, and Britain each attempted to gain a competitive edge over the others by controlling sources of raw materials overseas--in East and South Asia and in the Pacific Islands, among other places. A war in Europe to end competition seemed an undesirable alternative; so instead they exploited Africa to satisfy their strategic and economic needs. Between 1880 and 1914, Europe systematically occupied Africa. Persuading Africans to sign treaties requesting protection, or using machine guns to silence opposition when treaties were disdained, Europeans annexed one region after another. Because the Europeans had superior weapons and ready access to ammunition and other supplies, there was surprisingly little resistance. Most important, Africans were rarely united, and many welcomed whites for protection against more powerful Africans, such as the Nguni. Nevertheless, there were bitter battles in opposition. The Ashanti resisted British conquest from the 1820s to 1902, and the French had to overcome the armies of Ahmadu and Umar as well as those of a late 19th-century mercenary state created by Samori of Guinea. Along the coast opposite Zanzibar, Arabo-Swahili warriors resisted the Germans for two years in the late 1880s. Up-country, Hehe warriors were subdued only after long, costly battles. In \TNatal\t the Zulu twice defeated the British and the Afrikaners before being humbled by bigger and better guns. In Rhodesia the Ndebele fought to retain their power. There were innumerable rearguard actions too where isolated clans or tribes burned European camps and for years continued to attack European soldiers before finally being worn down. In the \TSouth African War\t (1899-1902), Britain defeated the Afrikaners and established its dominance over South Africa. In Ethiopia, King \TMenelik II\t was able in 1896, at Adowa near the capital of much earlier Aksum, totally to oust a large army of invading Italians, as he had sufficient guns of European manufacture and a large, well-trained army. As a result Ethiopia remained undominated by outsiders until 1936, when the Italians avenged their previous defeat, then governed the empire until 1941. Colonial Rule Racial prejudice and segregation accompanied colonial rule, preeminently in the settler colonies of southern and eastern Africa, but their collective taint poisoned the atmosphere everywhere. Legal segregation and denial of voting and other rights, the hated pass, or identification certificate, that everyone with black skin had to carry, the taking of African-owned land without compensation, and the effective denial of any remedy in the courts were standard practices across the entire swath of Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to the northern borders of Kenya. These measures themselves, and more particularly the attitudes that accompanied them, effectively stymied African creativity and initiative and fostered a strong, deep-seated resentment of whites as well as their colonial regimes. The actions of missionaries did little to counter this reaction; Africans heard them preaching equality as they heard the administrators talking about trusteeship and protection. Nevertheless, when it came to their own advance, however limited, toward the distant objective of home rule, Africans could never achieve satisfaction. When whites of the day even understood this complaint, they often pointed to their economic, educational, and medical achievements. According to their justification, the powers of Europe had brought the progressive ideas of their civilization to Africa. They opened schools and hospitals, introduced mercantile concepts, built roads and railways, erected impressive buildings, extracted minerals, and harvested profitable crops. Everywhere they advanced the cause of materialism and launched Africa on the road toward modernity. Resistance to Colonial Rule It is hardly surprising that colonial rule, with its coercive demands and regulations, its racism, and its unfulfilled promises of personal growth and national evolution, encouraged a hostile response. This response took many forms. Some protest was manifested religiously, with Africans taking refuge in millennialistic flights from the reality of foreign rule. Many Africans, most commonly but not always those from a traditional, rural background, were less patient. When foreign rulers attempted to exact the last ounce of flesh, Africans rebelled violently. In 1896-97 the Ndebele and \TShona\t almost succeeded in ending settler control of Rhodesia. In 1898, Bai Bureh led a revolt against taxation in Sierra Leone that undercut British rule. For three years in the first decade of the 20th century German rule in East Africa was threatened by the success of the conglomerate of ethnic groups that was called Maji Maji. In 1915 in Nyasaland (now Malawi) an abortive uprising was led by John \TChilembwe\t, a Christian preacher educated in the United States. Although few lives were lost, Chilembwe's followers might have overrun the colony had their preparations been more complete. The most recent of these violent outbursts against colonial rule was the \TMau Mau\t rebellion in Kenya. From 1951 to 1956 whites farming in the rural areas lived in terror. So did Africans, mostly \TKikuyu\t, who refused to pledge their loyalty to the forces of Mau Mau. In no case, not even the last, did Africans succeed in overthrowing white rule by force. Their actions may, however, occasionally have changed policies for the better. THE NATIONAL PERIOD At the beginning of 1954, few would have predicted that with the exception of the Portuguese and Spanish possessions, and southern Rhodesia (later \TZimbabwe\t), the next 10 years would constitute tropical Africa's last decade of dependence. Although the Sudan had already begun to govern itself and the Gold Coast (later Ghana) soon followed, the Mau Mau emergency still engulfed Kenya, and elsewhere on the continent only a few movements of nationalism had organized broadly. Well-meaning Africans, Americans, and Europeans envisaged a gradual transfer of power. They thought of independence in terms of half centuries, not years, and failed to understand the extent to which the first transfers of power would lead the rest. The First Independent Countries In 1953, Sudanese leader Ismail al-Azhari's Egyptian-backed National Unionist party won a clear majority of seats in his country's British-style parliament. IN 1955 Azhari and Britain agreed on a peaceful handover of power and on the first day of 1956, the Sudan became an independent republic. Two years later, however, the first of several coups d'etat occurred, and the army assumed power until 1964. Since then, rule by soldier-dictators has alternated with parliamentary government. Given the turbulence of the period from 1948 to 1950, the Gold Coast became Ghana with a minimum of friction. In 1951, Kwame \TNkrumah\t agreed with British authorities there to work within a framework of "responsible government" that he had originally labelled as "bogus". Thereafter, as chief minister, he assumed more and more of the prerogatives of the British governor. He "Africanized" the local civil service and prepared his Convention Peoples' party for national elections in 1954. Nkrumah won two-thirds of the seats in the local legislative assembly and the British rulers allowed the Gold Coast to become self-governing. In 1957, this experiment seemed to be working so well that Britain granted Gold Coast its independence, as Ghana. Nkrumah remained very much in command, becoming more and more authoritarian and corrupt. In 1966 soldiers ousted him and other civilians and commenced two decades of nearly continuous military rule in Ghana and in many other parts of black Africa. In West and Equatorial Africa, the government of France had increasingly shared its control of local territorial affairs with a new generation of indigenous leaders. In 1956, a special law passed by the French national assembly permitted the granting of increased powers to overseas territorial assemblies. It gave substantial authority to African-dominated embryo cabinets in each of the French-speaking colonies. It also introduced universal suffrage. France still ruled, however, and before 1958 only Sekou \TToure\t, the head of the Parti Democratique de Guinee, and Sylvanus Olympo, the leader of the Comite de l'Unite Togolaise, openly asked for independence. Others, like Felix \THouphouet-Boigny\t, the \TIvory Coast\t's leader, continued to value the French connection and to concern themselves with territorial rather than anti-colonial rivalries. In 1958, when Gen. Charles de Gaulle became president of France, he permitted each of France's overseas territories to vote for or against the constitution of the Fifth Republic and on membership in the new \TFrench Community\t; only \TGuinea\t voted against the proposal and was separated from France. All of the other French colonies remained self-governing until 1960, when they peacefully gained their independence along with \TTogo\t and \TCameroon\t (French-run trust territories of the United Nations). In British \TNigeria\t, Africa's most populous colony, politics assumed a regional character during the 1950s. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an American-educated journalist, had formed the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in 1944. After adoption of the 1951 constitution, which emphasized the three regions of the country more than the whole, the NCNC catered more and more to the Ibo-and Ibibio-speaking peoples of the Eastern region. Yoruba-speakers from the West and Hausa-speaking Nigerians from the North formed their own political parties. In the West, Obafemi Awolowo, a bitter antagonist of Azikwe, formed the Action Group. In the North, Abubakar Tafawa \TBalewa\t, at the behest of the traditional ruling emirs in the region, gained control of the Northern People's Congress. Each of these parties became the dominant majority in its own regional assembly and each region gained self-government in 1957-58. Because the Northern Region was the most populous and the outgoing British government distrusted southern "radicalism," Balewa began to lead an embryo national regime in 1957. Three years later Britain granted Nigeria independence. But by the end of 1965 the regional compromise had failed. In 1967 Ibo secessionists established the independent republic of \TBiafra\t in southeastern Nigeria. After three years of bitter struggle, the Ibo were defeated and Biafra was reincorporated into Nigeria. The country subsequently remained largely under military control. Elsewhere in West Africa, where there was very little indigenous protest in the 1950s, Britain's retreat from imperialism after the disastrous \TSuez Crisis\t (1956) also led to responsible government in \TSierra Leone\t in 1958, and independence for that country in 1960. Sierra Leone had started its colonial existence as a British-inspired refuge for freed slaves in the late 1780s. \TFreetown\t, its capital, had been home to rootless thousands plucked from slave ships and deposited on Africa's shores. The \TGambia\t, a 475 km (300 mi) long sliver of riverine territory surrounded by \TSenegal\t, did not become independent until 1965 because Britain first wished to explore the possibility of a Gambian-Senegalese union. The Congo In the Belgian Congo (later \TZaire\t), Belgian authorities had always forbidden politics, whether by blacks or by white settlers. The Belgians emphasized the exploitation of copper and other natural resources and condoned no protests. They also preferred to leave Africans uneducated. Before the 1950s, black organizations were almost completely unknown. One of the first local leaders was Joseph \TKasavubu\t, a member of the Kongo people, who formed the Abako party in 1955 and began to demand full political rights, freedom of thought, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. The colonial government was hostile. It believed that simply by modernizing Belgium's paternal approach it could continue to rule the Congo for at least another thirty years. The governor-general permitted local elections in 1957, and Kasavubu's party won most of the seats on the city council of Leopoldville (now \TKinshasa\t), the capital. By then too, the Africans of French-controlled Moyen Congo (now the People's Republic of the \TCongo\t) across the Congo River were voting in the French referendum of 1958, and a number of newly ambitious Africans began in the Belgian territory to campaign against continued colonial domination. At the end of 1958, budding nationalists from all over the continent went to \TAccra\t, Ghana, to attend the first All-African People's conference. Patrice \TLumumba\t represented the Belgian Congo because Kasavubu was thought too "dangerous" to be permitted to travel there. Dr. Hastings Kamuzu \TBanda\t attended from Nyasaland (\TMalawi\t), Kenneth \TKaunda\t and Harry Nkumbula led opposing delegations from Northern Rhodesia (\TZambia\t), and Joshua \TNkomo\t came from Southern Rhodesia. These young political organizers returned to their respective countries more determined than before to carry the battle against white rule to its ultimate conclusion. In Accra they had received ample moral support from other nationalists. President Nkrumah of Ghana and Gamel Abdel \TNasser\t, the fiery leader of Egypt, probably promised to supply funds and some arms. Lumumba returned to Leopoldville convinced that only a national campaign could succeed against the Belgians. He began to advocate immediate independence for the colony. On the eve of 1959, the Congo erupted into violence, marking the beginning of the \TCongo crisis\t. Although only a few whites and Africans lost their lives in the initial rioting, the ferocity with which the rioters expressed their hatred of whites and white rule overwhelmed the Belgians and contributed to the swift pace of change. Indeed, the riots panicked the Belgians, and, despite the total lack of previous preparation, the government of Belgium agreed to hold elections at the end of 1959. Unlike the British and French colonies, the Belgian colony had never known elections or government in local hands. Nor had the Belgians bothered to educate more than a handful of Congolese. At the end of 1959 Lumumba's Mouvement National Congolais emerged victorious in the elections, which had been boycotted by Kasavubu's Abako. Early in 1960 Belgium's King BAUDOIN sponsored a representative conference in Brussels to decide what to do next. Under great pressure, the Belgians agreed to give the Congo its freedom. They assumed that Baudoin would remain king of the Congo and that the ex-colony would remain tied economically to the mother country. The Belgian administration sought to isolate Kasavubu and to transfer sovereignty to Africans gradually. But, in the end, since Lumumba, Kasavubu, and others threatened violence, independence came all in a rush, leaving future relationships unclear, leaders untrained, and the country in a state of confusion. The Congo moved rapidly from crisis to crisis. The central government lost control of provincial affairs. Lumumba was murdered. The rich southern province of Katanga (\TShaba\t), where copper was mined, seceded under Moise \TTshombe\t, and the United Nations entered the ex-colony to restore order and essential services. The United Nations also ended Katanga's separation and attempted to unify the Congo. U.S. paratroops and U.N.-mobilized forces helped end the rebellion of 1964. Fearful of Soviet intentions, the United States also installed Gen. Joseph Desiree Mobutu (later \TMobutu Sese Seko\t) as a stabilizing ruler of the Congo. He later became its dictator, converted the wealth of the country to his own uses. East Africa The British colonies east of the Congo had many more educated Africans than the Belgian domain. From the 1950s, if not before, there was an upsurge of anti-colonial agitation. In \TKenya\t the \TKikuyu\t leader Jomo \TKenyatta\t, head of the Kenya African Union (KAU) began to urge Britain to permit the direct election of Africans to the local Legislative Council. Meanwhile, the Mau Mau rebellion broke out, and Britain proclaimed a state of emergency; Kenyatta was accused of leading the insurgents, and he and five others were sent into virtual exile. British repression largely brought the Mau Mau disturbances to an end by 1956, and nationalist politics began on a localized basis. The youthful Tom \TMboya\t, a \TLuo\t, helped organize the Kenya African National Union (\TKanu\t) in \TNairobi\t, Kenya's capital, and prepared for the time when colony-wide politics would again be permitted. That occurred in 1959 and 1960, after Britain decided it could no longer back local white farmers and businessmen. In 1961, KAU, with Mboya standing in for the still exiled Kenyatta, won a plurality of Legislative Council seats. Opposing KAU was a non-Kikuyu, non-Luo regionalist grouping called the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), led by Daniel arap \TMoi\t. A year after Kenyatta was released in late 1961, KAU and KADU formed a coalition government. In early 1963 the voters of Kenya gave Kenyatta, their hero, and \TKanu\t, a decisive victory in balloting for the Legislative Council. Kenya became independent later that year. Kenyatta's arbitrary, single-party, pro-Western rule lasted until he died at 89 in 1978. Moi, a Kalenjin and his compromise vice-president, succeeded him, and slowly took power away from the dominant Kikuyu (and the Luo). In neighboring \TUganda\t, the British governor, Sir Andrew Cohen, inspired a resurgence of indigenous anti-colonial feeling by exiling (1953) Mutesa II, the Kabaka of Buganda, who headed the dominant kingdom in the colony. Britain wanted no separatism, but the governor's actions encouraged the rise of the Uganda People's Congress (UPC). A. Milton \TObote\t, a Lango northerner, became its leader. Its opposition, the Roman Catholic-backed Democratic party, won the 1961 election. But a further election in 1962 gave power to Obote's UPC coalition with the Kabaka's supporters. Obote became prime minister and led Uganda to independence later in 1962. Nine years later, after Obote's regime had become increasingly corrupt and inefficient, he was ousted by a coup under the leadership of Gen. Idi \TAmin\t, commander of Uganda's army and air force. Amin ruled harshly and capriciously until 1978, when the army of neighboring Tanzania invaded Uganda from the south and returned Obote to power. But Obote could never reestablish his government in the state that Amin had plundered and destroyed. After Obote's fall (1985), Uganda experienced renewed civil war. In 1986, a new leader, Yoweri Museveni, began the arduous process of rebuilding the shattered country. Tanganyika, the other British-run East African territory, was a Trust Territory of the United Nations. It also was spared the ethnic antagonisms of Kenya and Uganda. Julius \TNyerere\t and Oscar Kambona, two well-educated teachers, formed the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in 1954. Prodded by the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations, TANU gradually became nationalistic. In 1958 it arranged a coalition with Asians and whites and won a multiracial election. Nyerere, returned from the University of Edinburgh, espoused peaceful change in a harmonious, color-blind environment. Without serious opposition, he was able to move Tananyika to independence in 1961. The young nation became the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in April 1964, after racial riots and a coup in Zanzibar in 1963 replaced the Arab-dominated government of Sheikh Ali Muhsin with Abeid Karume's pro-African party. The name \TTanzania\t was adopted in October 1964. Nyerere transformed Tanzania into a socialist state; he also bankrupted it. But he remained the founding father of Tanzanians, stepping down peacefully in 1987. The Later Independence Movement To the south, in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, the British government in 1953 opted for a transfer of power to the white settlers, not Africans, creating the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Settlers were in charge, but Africans were supposed to gain an increasing share of power and responsibility. A federation of the three colonies had economic advantages, but black leaders had no faith in the settlers' government, and formed the African National Congresses of Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and of Nyasaland to oppose white rule. In 1958, Hastings \TBanda\t returned home after 40 years in Britain and Ghana to run the Nyasaland African Congress. Joshua \TNkomo\t took charge of the ANC in Southern Rhodesia. In Northern Rhodesia Kenneth \TKaunda\t broke away from Harry Nkumbula's moderate Northern Rhodesian ANC to establish the United National Independence Party (UNIP). In 1959, unrest and militant agitation gripped Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. In protest against the federation, Nyasas defied colonial regulations at every turn. They burned mission buildings, stoned the police, destroyed government property, and blocked rural roads. In Northern Rhodesia, the UNIP boycotted the country's first national election for blacks. Emergencies were declared in all three colonies. Five hundred members of the Southern Rhodesian ANC were arrested. Banda and about 1,000 of his followers were jailed. Kaunda and other top UNIP members were also detained. Whites in the three territories hoped for the death of nationalism. But the violence and retaliation of 1959 marked the beginning rather than the end of the nationalist struggle in Central Africa. The British realized that they could only govern their African dependencies with the consent of the majority. Britain therefore announced the coming end of the Federation (it died in 1963), and held a series of elections like those in East Africa, which showed the strength of multiracial or African power. Nyasaland was the most unified. In 1961, coming out of prison, Banda led his new Malawi Congress Party to victory in a broadly-based poll. Independence followed in 1964, and Nyasaland became Malawi. In Northern Rhodesia, after more African protests, and two bitter elections with white and black competition, UNIP won a full mandate in 1963 and the colony became independent as \TZambia\t in late 1964. Both nations subsequently became one-party states. Whites in Southern Rhodesia were numerous, and determined to avoid black rule. In 1965 they unilaterally declared the colony independent, naming it simply Rhodesia. No other country recognized its sovereignty; the United Nations, Britain, the United States, and other nations boycotted Rhodesian exports and attempted to strangle the land-locked territory economically. But sanctions failed and settler rule seemed secure until Africans led by Robert \TMugabe\t and Josiah Tongogara began (1972) a guerrilla war that progressively eroded the white economy and white confidence. In 1979 representatives of all parties met at a conference in London. The congress agreed to end the war, to accept a new constitution, and to hold national elections under British supervision. In 1980 the voters gave Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) a strong victory over Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), and Rhodesia became \TZimbabwe\t with Mugabe as prime minister. He turned Zimbabwe into a one-party state and became president in 1988, when he and Nkomo merged their parties. ZANU's military impact was greatly helped after a revolution in Portugal in 1974 led to independence for \TMozambique\t, which adjoins Zimbabwe, and \TAngola\t, \TGuinea-Bissau\t, \TCape Verde\t, and \TSao Tome\t and \LPrincip\le. Mozambique became an independent Marxist state in 1975 under Samora \TMachel\t, who had led an 11- year rebellion against Portuguese rule. After independence, Machel's support of Rhodesian and South African black nationalists led to the creation of the Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO). Attacks by this guerrilla organization, supported first by the white Rhodesian government and later by South Africa, devastated the Mozambican economy. Angola, where three African movements had fought the Portuguese, also became independent in 1975. The Soviet Union and Cuba prevented a South African military thrust from installing Jonas \TSavimbi\t's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in power. Soviet and Cuban soldiers instead backed the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which formed the first government. After independence, civil war between UNITA and the MPLA continued. Guinea-Bissau became independent in 1974. So did the island states of Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe, in 1975. Equatorial Guinea, a Spanish colony, gained its independence in 1968, but suffered harsh dictatorial rule under Francisco Macias Nguema from 1972 to 1979. The \TComoros\t separated from France in 1975, leaving the island of Mayotte as a French colony. The \TSeychelles\t, also in the Indian Ocean, became independent from Britain in 1976. In Southern Africa, the two British-run African monarchies of \TLesotho\t and \TSwaziland\t were given their independence in 1966 and 1968, respectively. In 1966, \TBotswana\t became an independent multiparty democracy under the leadership of Sir Seretse Khama, its first president. In Ethiopia the monarchy was replaced (1974) by a military regime that developed close ties to Cuba and the \TUSSR\t, officially proclaiming itself Communist in 1984. The country was in a continuous state of civil war, as secessionist groups representing various ethnic minorities challenged the authority of the central government. South Africa From the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s the new nations of southern Africa as far north as Angola, Zambia, and Mozambique were subjected to continual interference by \TSouth Africa\t, the region's economic and military power, and the last stronghold of white supremacy. On numerous occasions, South African troops both invaded and occupied Angola. South Africa also raided Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia several times, helped to install a new government in Lesotho in 1986, intervened in Swaziland for a number of years during the 1980s, and maintained a tight grip on \TNamibia\t, which it had originally received as a League of Nations mandate, until 1989. The Afrikaner-dominated \TNational party\t came to power in South Africa in 1948, thrusting \Tapartheid\t--rigid, legalized segregation--onto all South Africans. Blacks, comprising about 80 percent of the country's population, were no longer permitted to go to school with, attend university with, worship with, or consort socially (or sexually) with whites. Freedom of assembly for blacks was abrogated, as were civil liberties such as habeas corpus. South Africa, a stratified and segregated society before 1948, became an oppressive, rigidly organized society based exclusively on gradations of color. Blacks protested the onrush of apartheid in the 1950s. After police fired into a peacefully protesting crowd of Africans at Sharpeville (near Vereeniging, south of Johannesburg) in 1960, killing 69 and wounding hundreds, the leading African protest groups--the \TAfrican National Congress\t (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC)--were banned. Nelson \TMandela\t, leader of the ANC, and others went underground and began to attack the state with bombs and guns. This phase of urban and rural sabotage and assassination ended in the mid-1960s, with the capture and sentencing to life imprisonment of Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and several white accomplices. South African security became especially brutal and effective in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1976, however, the calm and stability of South Africa was shattered by a student-led uprising. About 600 blacks of high school and college age were killed by troops and police; about 10,000 were wounded before the revolt was suppressed in 1978. Meanwhile the ANC had obtained Soviet military and financial support and had opened up exile bases in Zambia, Mozambique, and Angola. After the 1976-1977 rising the ASNC began sending guerrilla cadres into South Africa to place bombs near commercial buildings or military installations in the urban areas. By the late 1970s the ANC had begun to pose a serious threat to the once-complacent white government of South Africa. South Africa's raids against its neighbors were initially designed to compel those weaker countries to cease giving aid and comfort to the ANC. After they had complied, South Africa continued to attack them in order to ensure its own hegemony in the region and in order to keep the countries weak and confused. South Africa also began to fund and arm UNITA in its effort to unseat the Soviet-backed government of Angola, and helped to sustain Mozambique's Renamo insurgents, who were attempting to disrupt and overthrow the fragile socialist government of that country. These activities formed the core of South Africa's policy of destabilization. South Africa refused to return Namibia (South West Africa) to the United Nations after that international body succeeded the League of Nations in 1946. Indeed, at first it incorporated Namibia into South Africa. It attacked the Angolan bases of the South West Africa People's Organization (\LSwa\lpo), an exiled black nationalist group, and originally began helping UNITA because UNITA was willing to oppose \LSwa\lpo. In the late 1970s, U.S. pressure compelled South Africa to begin negotiations over the future of the former mandate. The talks dragged on until 1988, when South Africa, Cuba, and Angola finally agreed upon a cease-fire for Angola and Namibia linked to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. In UN-supervised elections in November 1989, \LSwa\lpo won a majority of seats in a constitutional assembly. Nambia gained full independence on Mar. 21, 1990. After the repression of the 1976-78 rising, white South Africa began to modernize its manner of coping with the realities of minority rule in a bitterly divided plural society. The National party began in the late 1970s to remove aspects of social segregation (petty apartheid). Sex and marriage across the color line was permitted, and the pass laws were repealed. The National party also altered parliament to include assemblies for Asians and Coloureds, as well as whites, while ensuring that white legislators retained ultimate power. In the 1980s, Asians and Coloureds were allowed to vote in national elections for the first time since the mid-1950s. Blacks welcomed reform, scorned the tripartite parliament, and continued to demand political rights. In 1984 a new wave of violent protest engulfed South Africa's black ghettos. It lasted three years and left about 3,500 blacks dead. At its peak, many of the country's black townships were under local (youth-dominated) black control. After declaring sweeping states of emergency, imposing increasingly strict censorship, and imprisoning or detaining about 40,000 blacks, the government regained control of the townships. The far-right Conservative party won a surprising number of seats in the white legislative assembly in 1987, and the dominance of the National party continued to erode in the 1989 elections, when it lost additional seats to both the right and the left. An overall majority in 1989, however, went to candidates favoring interracial dialogue and cautious reform. F.W. \Tde Klerk\t, who had replaced Botha as party leader and president earlier that year, moved dramatically in 1990 in an effort to satisfy black aspirations while protecting white rights. He lifted a 30-year ban on ANC, released ANC leader Nelson Mandela, lifted the state of emergency in all provinces except Natal, and pledged to dismantle apartheid as part of an overall settlement. In August, as negotiations between de Klerk and Mandela proceeded, the ANC abandoned its armed struggle against the government. A peaceful resolution of the nation's internal problems still seemed far away, however, as criticism from both white conservatives and young black radicals and violence between supporters of the ANC and backers of Zulu chief Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha movement mounted. Recent Developments By 1990, battered by rapid population growth, declining export earnings, foreign debt, drought, and civil war, the average per capita income in Africa was below what it had been in 1960, and more than half of all foreign aid was consumed by debt service. The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait caused further distress for the oil-importing nations of the region. In addition, more than 1 million Africans, primarily in Central and East Africa, were thought to be infected with the \TAIDS\t virus. This further complicated matters, particularly the rebuilding of Uganda after years of brutal dictatorship and bloody conflict. Economic distress, the wave of change sweeping Eastern Europe, and popular dissatisfaction with corrupt and autocratic rule spurred demands for political and economic reform. In country after country, due in part to demands from international lenders, governments moved toward free-market economies, increasing prices paid to farmers and reducing the role of government in the economy. Tunisia's long-time leader Habib \TBourguiba\t was ousted in 1987, and multiparty elections were held in Algeria, where the ruling FLN renounced its monopoly on power in 1989. In 1990 newly independent Namibia joined Africa's few genuinely multiparty democracies; plans were announced to introduce multiparty systems in several other nations, including Benin, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, and Tanzania. Nigeria was scheduled to return to civilian rule in 1992. There were protests against such long-time rulers as Kenya's Daniel Arap \TMoi\t, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda. Countering this trend was Zimbabwe, which was essentially converted to a one-party state. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola, and a number of other African countries, internal strife combined with economic dislocation, and failed harvests caused widespread food shortages. Chad and Libya restored diplomatic ties in 1988, and there were moves toward a settlement in Western Sahara. There were signs of progress in ending some of the region's other long-term conflicts as well, due in part to the fact that the continent was no longer involved in a global cold war. The Soviet refusal to continue military aid to the Ethiopian government and the withdrawal of South African support for rebel forces in Mozambique and Angola prompted hopes for negotiated settlements in these nations. The long civil war in Sudan continued, however, and a West African peacekeeping force was sent to Liberia in 1990 in an effort to end the more recent civil war there. Robert I. Rotberg Bibliography: The Cambridge History of Africa, 8 vols. (1977- 85); Carter, G.M., and O'Meara, P., eds., African Independence: The First Twenty-Five Years (1985); Durtin, Philip, et al., African History (1978); Fage, J.D., History of Africa (1978); Freund, Bill, The Making of Contemporary Africa (1984); Hibbert, Christopher, Africa Explored (1983); Oliver, Roland, and Atmore, Anthony, Africa Since 1800, 3d ed. (1981), and African Middle Ages (1981); Oliver, R., and Fage, J.D., A Short History of Africa, 6th rev. ed. (1989); Rotberg, Robert I., A Political History of Tropical Africa (1965).