60 of 60 events · showing 41–60
Country in southern Africa
1906
The Bambatha Rebellion (also known as the Zulu Rebellion) was a 1906 uprising against colonial rule in the British colony of Natal led by the Zulu chief Bhambatha, who lived in the Mpanza Valley (now a district near Greytown). It was sparked by unpopular taxation policies levied by the Natal colonial administration, which exacerbated ongoing economic crises.
15 September 1914 – 4 February 1915
The Maritz rebellion, also known as the Third Boer War, or the Five Shilling rebellion, was an armed pro-German insurrection in South Africa in 1914, at the start of World War I. It was led by Boers who supported the re-establishment of the South African Republic in the Transvaal. Many members of the South African government were themselves Boers who had fought with the Maritz rebels against the British in the Second Boer War, which had ended twelve years earlier.
28 December 1921 – March 1922
The Rand Rebellion (Afrikaans: Rand-rebellie; also known as the 1922 Miners' strike and the Rand Revolt) was an armed uprising of White Syndicalists, Communists, and Nationalists in the Witwatersrand region of South Africa, in March 1922. Following a drop in the global price of gold from 130 shillings (£6 10s) per fine troy ounce in 1919 to 95s/oz (£4 15s) in December 1921, the mining companies owned by the Randlords tried to cut their operating costs by decreasing wages, and by promoting black mine workers – who were paid lower wages – to skilled and supervisory positions.
29 October 1929 – 1941
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was marked by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and business failures around the world.
21 March 1960
The Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960, when police opened fire on a crowd of people who had assembled outside the police station in the township of Sharpeville in the then Transvaal Province of the then Union of South Africa (today part of Gauteng) to protest against the apartheid system and its pass laws. A crowd of approximately 5,000 people gathered in Sharpeville that day in response to the call made by the Pan-Africanist Congress to leave their pass-books at home and to demand that the police arrest them for contravening the pass laws.
16 June 1976
The Soweto uprising, also known as the Soweto riots or the Soweto rebellion, was a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa during apartheid that began on the morning of 16 June 1976. Students from various schools began to protest in the streets of the Soweto township in response to the introduction of Afrikaans, considered by many black South Africans as the "language of the oppressor", as the medium of instruction in black schools.
19 October 1986
On 19 October 1986, a Tupolev Tu-134 jetliner with a Soviet crew carrying President Samora Machel and 43 others from Mbala, Zambia to the Mozambican capital Maputo crashed at Mbuzini, South Africa. Nine passengers and one crew member survived the crash, but President Machel and 33 others died, including several ministers and senior officials of the Mozambican government.
17 March 1992
A referendum on ending apartheid was held in South Africa on 17 March 1992. The referendum was limited to white South African voters, who were asked whether or not they supported the negotiated reforms begun by State President F. W. de Klerk two years earlier, in which he proposed to end the apartheid system that had been implemented since 1948.
17 June 1992
The Boipatong massacre took place on the night of 17 June 1992 in the township of Boipatong, South Africa.
7 September 1992
The Bisho massacre occurred on 7 September 1992 in Bisho, in the then nominally independent homeland of Ciskei which is now part of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Twenty-eight African National Congress (ANC) supporters and one soldier were shot dead by the Ciskei Defence Force (CDF) during a protest march when they attempted to enter Bisho (now renamed to Bhisho) to demand the reincorporation of Ciskei into South Africa nearly six months after the 1992 South African apartheid referendum was held.
26 December 2004
On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7), a Mw 9.2–9.3 earthquake struck with its epicenter off the west coast of Aceh, in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, was caused by a rupture along the fault boundary between the Burma plate and the Indian plate, and reached a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX in some areas.
16 August 2012 – 20 September 2012
The Marikana massacre was the killing of thirty-four miners by the South African Police Service (SAPS) on 16 August 2012 during a six-week wildcat strike at the Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana near Rustenburg in South Africa's North West province. The massacre constituted the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the Soweto uprising in 1976 and has been compared to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.
12 October 2015
#FeesMustFall was a student-led protest movement that began in mid-October 2015 in South Africa. The goals of the movement were to stop increases in student fees as well as to increase government funding of universities.
1 December 2019
The global COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020.
18 April 2021
The 2021 Table Mountain fire (also known as the Rhodes Memorial fire or Cape Town fire) was a major fire that started on 18 April 2021 in and around Table Mountain National Park and the neighbourhoods of Newlands, Rosebank, Mowbray and Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa. The damage to sites in the Table Mountain area included the Rhodes Memorial, where a restaurant burned down; the upper campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT), where the Special Collections library was gutted; and Mostert's Mill, a historic windmill that burned down.
9 July 2021 – 17 July 2021
The 2021 South African unrest, also known as the July 2021 riots, the Zuma unrest or Zuma riots, was a wave of civil unrest that occurred in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces from 9 to 18 July 2021, sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for contempt of court. Resulting protests against the incarceration triggered wider rioting and looting, much of it said to be undertaken by people not in support of Zuma and fuelled by job layoffs and economic inequality worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic policies.
8 April 2022
In April 2022, days of heavy rain across KwaZulu-Natal in southeastern South Africa led to deadly floods. Particularly hard-hit were areas in and around Durban.
2023
There were floods in South Africa in February and March, then again in September and again in December 2023.
5 February 2023
From February to late-December 2023, floods killed over 2,600 people in 15 countries across Africa.
31 August 2023
On 31 August 2023 at around 01:30 SAST, a fire engulfed an illegally occupied government-owned building in Johannesburg, South Africa; 77 people were killed and 88 others were injured. It was one of the deadliest fires in South African history.