Reclaiming Africa for Africans

Although conquered fairly late in the game by Europeans, Africa didn’t wait long to get

in on the rebellion business. Although their revolt failed, the people of Zimbabwe

rebelled against the British in 1896. Africans in Tanzania rose against their German

government in 1905, but that movement, too, was crushed. Germany’s colonial troops

burned crops to create a famine and weaken the Tanzanian rebels.

The Herero and Nama people of Namibia suffered incredible losses in uprisings against

the Germans. The cattle-raising Nama were reduced from a population of 20,000 to

less than half that. Of the estimated 80,000 Herero living in central Namibia before the

war, only 15,000 were left in 1911.

This struggle finally began to result in self-rule for African nations in the 1950s. In

1948, riots shook Ghana (then called the Gold Coast) and the British, whose home

nation was impoverished by World War II, realized that they could no longer afford an

empire. Other colonial powers also woke up to the same reality during WWII. The war

had rocked the European empires to their foundations.