Author: Msomi Bora

VIDEOS OF OSCAR KAMBONA Oscar Salathiel Kambona was the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tanganyika. He is the second-most influential and most popular leader in the country after President Julius Nyerere. Kambona was born on 13 August 1928 on the shores of Lake Nyasa in a small village called Kwambe near Mbamba Bay in the district of Nyasa near Songea in Ruvuma region southern Tanganyika. He died in London in November 1997. Kambona became the secretary-general of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) during the struggle for independence and worked closely with Nyerere who was president of TANU, the…

VIDEOS OF RASHIDI KAWAWA Rashidi Mfaume Kawawa (27 May 1924 – 31 December 2009) was the Prime Minister of Tanganyika in 1962 and of Tanzania in 1972 to 1977. He was the effective ruler of the country from January to December 1962 while Julius Nyerere toured the countryside. Kawawa was a strong advocate of economic statism. He later served as Defense Minister He was the son of an elephant hunter and the eldest of eight children, Rashidi Mfaume Kawawa was born in the Songea district of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in eastern Africa. After primary schooling in Dar es Salaam, he…

VIDEOS OF EDWARD SOKOINE Edward Moringe Sokoine (1 August 1938 – 12 April 1984) was a two-term Prime Minister of Tanzania serving from 13 February 1977 to 7 November 1980 and again from 24 February 1983 to 12 April 1984. Sokoine was born in Monduli, Arusha Region, Tanzania. From 1948 to 1958, he had his Primary and Secondary Education in the towns of Monduli and Umbwe. In 1961, he joined the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), after he took studies in administration in the Federal Republic of Germany (1962–1963). In 1977 he began his first term in office as Prime…

VIDEOS OF ABOUD JUMBE Aboud Jumbe Mwinyi (14 June 1920 – 14 August 2016) was a Zanzibari politician. He held several positions, including the second president of Zanzibar, chairman of the Revolutionary Council, Vice-President of the Union, and the vice-chairman of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party. Jumbe served as president of Zanzibar from 11 April 1972 until 30 January 1984. He succeeded Abeid Karume as president, following Karume’s assassination on 7 April 1972. He was initially elected by the Revolutionary Council as a part of the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). While he was in office, in 1977, the two ruling…

VIDEOS OF MUAMMAR GADDAFI Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi (1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi, was a Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the “Brother Leader” of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. He was initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism but later ruled according to his own Third International Theory. Born near Sirte, Italian Libya, to a poor Bedouin family, Gaddafi became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha,…

VIDEOS OF HAILE SELASSIE Haile Selassie I (born Lij Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 1892 – 27 August 1975) was an Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. Prior his coronation in 1930, he had been Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia from 1916. He is a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history. He was a member of the Solomonic dynasty who traced his lineage to Emperor Menelik I. Selassie’s internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter member of the United Nations. At the League of Nations in 1936, he condemned Italy’s use of chemical weapons against its people during the Second…

VIDEOS OF EDUARDO MONDLANE Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane (20 June 1920 – 3 February 1969) served as the founding President of the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) from 1962, the year that FRELIMO was founded in Tanzania, until his assassination in 1969. He was an anthropologist by profession but worked as a history and sociology professor at Syracuse University. In 1969, a bomb was planted in a book sent to him at the FRELIMO Headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It exploded when he opened the package in the house of an American friend, Betty King, killing him. The assassination remains unsolved. Theories…

VIDEO OF MOBUTU SESE SEKO Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the President of Zaire (renamed from the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville) and later to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1971) from 1965 to 1997. He also served as Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed the democratically elected government…

VIDEOS OF SAMORA MACHEL Samora Moisés Machel (29 September 1933 – 19 October 1986) was a Mozambican military commander, politician and revolutionary. A socialist in the tradition of Marxism–Leninism, he served as the first President of Mozambique from the country’s independence in 1975. Machel died in office in 1986 when his presidential aircraft crashed near the Mozambique-South Africa border. 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…

VIDEOS OF KWAME NKRUMAH Kwame Nkrumah was born on 21 September 1909 in Nkroful, Gold Coast (now in Ghana) to a poor and illiterate family. Nkroful was a small village in the Nzema area, in the far southwest of the Gold Coast, close to the frontier with the French colony of the Ivory Coast. His father did not live with the family, but worked in Half Assini where he pursued his goldsmith business until his death. Kwame Nkrumah was raised by his mother and his extended family, who lived together in traditional fashion, with more distant relatives often visiting. He…