1964: British troops put down mutinies in post-colonial Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda
Just one month following Kenya's official independence, Jomo Kenyatta invited British troops to put down a mutiny of soldiers who were conducting a sit-down protest against the continued presence of British officers in the army and low pay. In the same week, the British also put down mutinies with similar demands in Julius Nyerere's Tanzania and Milton Obote's Uganda, also at invitation. All three armies had originated in the King's African Rifles.
The post-war strike wave in East, West, and Southern Africa
From the end of the Second World War until the mid-'60s there was a wave of strikes in British East and West Africa, French West Africa, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The history of this class struggle has been neglected by both mainstream historians and most revolutionary tendencies based in Europe and the US.
The East African Railway Strike, 1959-60: labour’s challenge of inter-territorialism
David Hyde examines a pivotal working-class struggle which erupted within East Africa’s transport system near the end of the colonial period. Though this was arguably the most important working-class struggle to occur during the decolonisation process within Britain’s African colonies, it has been rarely acknowledged and barely attended to.
1948: Zanzibar City General Strike
In 1948 dock workers in Zanzibar struck for higher pay, the use of force by the British Colonial authorities lead to other workers coming out in sympathy making the strike a general one.
Security guards murder locals scavenging for gold in Papua New Guinea
Private security guards employed by ‘Barrick Gold’, aided by local police have killed at least five miners at the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea. The shootings came after mine security confronted a group of 300 locals who they deemed to be ‘illegal miners’ and ‘trespassers’. Barrick Gold – the world’s largest producer of gold - has a long history of using violence, gang rape, and murder against their workers, and local people in Papua New Guinea. Barrick founder and owner, Peter Munk, claimed that ‘gang rape’ is just a ‘cultural habit’.
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