The African continent has produced many leaders. Some leaders are infamous for their acts while in leadership, while others are famous for their great and significant achievements that have helped some states be where they are today. This article will talk about some of these leaders.
Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada was a Ugandan military officer who served as the UG President from 1971-1979. The world considers him as one of the most brutal despots in the world’s history. Idi Amin was born in Koboko to a Lugbara mother and a Kakwa father. In the mid-20th century (1946), he joined KAR of the British Colonial Army as a cook. He rose to the lieutenant rank, participating in British actions against Somali rebels in the Shifta War and then the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. Idi Amin became aware that Milton Obote, then UG President, was planning to arrest him for misappropriating army funds. He launched a military coup in the late 20th century (1971) and declared himself President.
During his years in power, Idi shifted from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying support from Israel to East Germany, the Soviet Union, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, and Libya’s Gaddafi backing him. In 1975, Idi became the chairman of the OAU (Organization of African Unity). He tried to annex Tanzania’s Kagera area in 1978, and Julius Nyerere had his soldiers invade UG. They captured Kampala in 1979 and ousted Idi from power. Idi Amin went into exile in Libya, then Iraq, and finally in Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his demise in 2003.
Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi was a Libyan revolutionary, political theorist, and politician. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the LAR from 1969-1977 and then as the Brotherly Leader of the GSPLAJ from 1977 to 2011. He was first ideologically committed to Arab socialism and Arab nationalism but later ruled according to his Third International Theory. Born near Sirte, Gaddafi became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha, later joining the Royal Military Academy. He founded a revolutionary group within the army that deposed the western-backed Senussi monarchy of Idris in a coup.
Having seized power, Gaddafi converted Libya into a Republic, which his Revolutionary Command Council governed. Ruling by decree, he deported Libya’s Italian population and removed its Western army bases. Strengthening ties to Arab nationalist authorities, especially Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, he unsuccessfully advocated for the Pan-Arab political union. As an Islamic modernist, he introduced Sharia and promoted Islamic socialism. Gaddafi nationalized the oil industry and used the state revenues to sustain the army, fund foreign revolutionaries, and implement social programs emphasizing healthcare, education projects, and house-building. Gaddafi changed the Libyan state into a new socialist state known as a Jamahiriya.
Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician, political theorist, and anti-colonial activist. He governed Tanganyika as PM from 1961 to 1962 and then as President from 1963-1964. As an African nationalist and African socialist, he promoted Ujamaa. Julius Nyerere was born in Butiama and was the son of a chief. He studied at Makerere College in UG and then Edinburgh University in Scotland. Nyerere’s administration pursued Africanization and decolonization of the civil service while promoting unity between local Africans and the country’s European and Asian minorities. He encouraged the establishment of a one-party state.
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who ruled Kenya as its PM from 1963-1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his demise in 1978. Jomo Kenyatta was the nation’s first local head of government and played a significant role in Kenya’s transformation from a British Empire colony into an independent Republic. As an African nationalist and conservative, Jomo Kenyatta led the KANU party (Kenya African National Union) from 1961 until his death. His son, Uhuru Kenyatta, is the current President of Kenya.
Jomo Kenyatta was born to Kikuyu farmers in Kiambu. He worked in several jobs before becoming politically engaged through the KCA. In the early 20th century (1929), he went to London to lobby for Kikuyu land affairs. During the 1930s, Jomo Kenyatta studied at Moscow’s Communist University of the Toilers of the East, the London School of Economics, and the University College London. In 1938, Kenyatta published an anthropological study of Kikuyu life prior to working as a farm laborer in Sussex during the Second World War. Jomo Kenyatta returned to Kenya in 1946 and became a school principal. In 1952, Kenyatta was among the Kapenguria 6 apprehended and charged with masterminding the anti-colonial Mau Mau Uprising. He remained incarcerated at Lokitaung until 1959, and later, he got exiled to Lodwar.
Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko was among Congolese leaders, politicians, and military officers who was the President of Zaire from 1965-1997. He also served as Chairman of the OAU from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu deposed Patrice Lumumba. Mobutu Sese Seko installed a regime that arranged for Patrice Lumumba’s execution in 1961 and continued to lead the nation’s armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in the mid-20th century (1965).
Mobutu established the Popular Movement of the Revolution as the only legal, political party in 1967. Mobutu developed a rigidly authoritarian government. Mobutu tried to purge the state of all colonial cultural influence through his national authenticity program. During his rule, Sese Seko amassed a big personal fortune through corruption and economic exploitation. Under Mobutu’s rule, the country suffered from inflation, large debts, and currency devaluations.
Mobutu received strong support from the US, France, and Belgium, who believed Mobutu was an opponent of communism in Francophone Africa. He also established ties with the governments of Apartheid SA, Israel, and the Greek military junta.
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie was the Ethiopian Emperor from 1930 to 1974. Before his coronation, he had been the Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia from 1916. Haile Selassie is a defining figure in present-day Ethiopian history. Selassie was a member of the Solomonic Dynasty who traced his lineage to Emperor Menelik the first.
Haile Selassie tried to modernize the state through a series of social and political reforms. Selassie led the failed efforts to safeguard Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and spent the period of Italian occupation in exile in a foreign land (England). He returned to lead Ethiopia after the British Kingdom defeated the Italian occupiers in the East African campaign. He dissolved the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Selassie’s internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter participant of the UN. He presided over the formation of the OAU and served as its first chairman. The Derg, a Marxist-Leninist junta, overthrew Haile Selassie in a 1974 military coup. The junta murdered Selassie on 27th August 1975.
Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe was born on 21st February 1924 to a Shona family in Kutama. He received an education at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare. Robert Mugabe worked as a schoolteacher in Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Ghana. Gabriel Mugabe was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as PM of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987-2017. His successor and current Head of State is called Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mugabe served as leader of the ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) from 1975 to 1980. He led its successor political party ZANU-PF (ZANU-Patriotic Front), from 1980-2017.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was one of the leaders in South African, an anti-apartheid revolutionary, philanthropist, and political leader who served as President of SA from 1994-1999. Nelson Mandela was the nation’s first black president and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. Mandela’s government concentrated on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalized racism and fostering racial reconciliation. As an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the African National Congress party’s President from 1991-1997. Nelson Mandela was a Xhosa speaker and was born to the Thembu royal family in Mvezo. Mandela studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Fort Hare before working as a lawyer in Joburg.
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was an Egyptian politician who served as the second President of Egypt from 1954 until his demise in 1970. Abdel Hussein led the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy and introduced land reforms the following year. People elected him formally as President in June 1956.
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian revolutionary and politician. He was the first PM and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in the mid-20th century (1957). Kwame Nkrumah was a founding member of the OAU and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. Nkrumah was responsible for the CPP formation (Convention People’s Party). His administration was majorly socialist and nationalist. It funded energy projects, and national industrialists developed a national education system and promoted a Pan-Africanist culture. The National Liberation Council deposed Nkrumah in 1966. Nkrumah resided for the rest of his life in Guinea.
Besides, other vital African leaders have done more important things for the continent. An example is John Pombe Magufuli, who died recently. He has done great things for Tanzania, which Tanzanians will forever remember him for.
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