On this day 42 years ago, Swaziland achieved its independence. The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small landlocked country bordering Mozambique to the east and otherwise entirely surrounded by South Africa. The history of the country since independence, like that of many other African countries, has not been an entirely happy one. Sixty percent of the population live in absolute poverty, and the HIV infection rate is the highest in the world at over 50% of adults in their 20s.

King Mswati III became the country’s head of state in 1986 following the death in 1982 of his father King Sobhuza II. The King appoints the prime minister and a number of the members of parliament, with the rest being elected. The current King is known for his many wives – currently 14 wives and 23 children – and his reckless extravagance in purchasing expensive cars and other luxury items at public expense.

Although the country has a parliament, the Swazi king is generally considered to be an absolute monarch with few practical limits to his power other than those imposed by tribal tradition. In response to the AIDS crisis, he proposed that all HIV-positive people should be sterilised and branded, but at the same time he persists in his personal polygamous practices.

On this day 175 years ago, a group of people from the schooner Enterprize disembarked near the mouth of the Yarra River to start a settlement. The Enterprize was owned by John Pascoe Fawkner, a Tasmania publican who was the son of a convict and had himself spent some time in jail. Fawkner did not arrive until two months after the settlement began because he was detained in Launceston because of seasickness and money owed to creditors.

The new settlement was known as Bearbrass, which is thought to have been a mispronunciation of the aboriginal name Birrarung. Fawkner’s party was joined by a rival group of settlers financed by John Batman, who had previously “purchased” 600,000 acres of land from the Aboriginals in exchange for a range of trinkets. Batman’s group included William Buckley, who had escaped from a convict settlement at Sorrento some 32 years previously then lived with a group of Aboriginal people who mistook him for a recently deceased relative returned from the dead.

The settlement of Bearbrass was renamed Melbourne two years later, in honour of the then British Prime Minister, the Viscount Melbourne. After another ten years, Queen Victoria issued letters patent declaring Melbourne to be a city, and four years after that, in the same year that the gold rush commenced, the colony of Victoria became a separate colony from that of New South Wales. Three decades later, the city was the richest in the world and the second largest in the British Empire.

Last Tuesday the Republic of Gabon celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from France. Gabon is located on the western coast of Africa, bordering Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. First visited by Europeans in the 15th Century, the country became a French colony in 1885 and remained a part of French Equatorial Africa until granted independence on 17th August 1960.

Although international pressures forced France to grant the country independence, France continued to protect its financial and political interests in the country by funding the election campaign of the pro-French Léon M’ba, who was elected first president in 1961, with Omar Bongo Ondimba as vice president. M’ba was an authoritarian ruler, suppressing the press and political opponents. An army coup in 1964, which sought to restore parliamentary democracy, was defeated by the intervention of French paratroopers.

M’ba died in 1967 and was succeeded by Bongo, who remained president until his death in 2009, after which his son Ali Ben Bongo became president. Although the country’s governance record has been poor, governance in many other African countries is far worse. Gabon has a substantial income from offshore oil and it exports manganese, iron and wood, so that it is one of the richest countries in Africa in terms of income per person.

Last Friday the Central African Republic celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from France. During the Scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century, the French under the leadership of Count Savorgnan de Brazza had set up a post at Bangui. Negotiations over the country’s borders with Congo and Sudan left the new landlocked country of Ubangi-Shari with less-than-desirable geographic characteristics.

During colonial rule, the country was subjected to frequent raids by African slave traders and the people were brutally oppressed by the colonisers, who subjected them to forced labour. In 1960 the country was granted independence under the name Central African Republic, and since then it has been subjected to mismanagement by a series of inept governments. Jean-Bédel Bokassa was perhaps the best known of the country’s rulers, coming to power through a coup in 1966 and crowning himself Emperor in 1976 before being overthrown in 1979.

The country, which is one of the ten poorest countries in the world, has very poor infrastructure, with almost no paved roads, telephone lines, television or print media outside of the capital. With a very high level of insecurity, it is a haven for warlords, rebels and refugees from neighbouring African conflicts. Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army have been known to hide out and carry out raids there. The country is rich in natural resources, but prosperity will remain elusive until peace and good government are established.

Last Thursday, the West African country of Burkina Faso, which remains one of the 25 poorest countries in the world, celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from France. Known as the Republic of Upper Volta for the first 24 years of its independence, the country was renamed Burkina Faso, meaning “the land of upright people” on 4th August 1984 by the revolutionary president Thomas Sankara.

The fighter pilot and military captain Thomas Sankara seized power in a popularly-supported coup in 1983, and proceeded to launch a very ambitious Marxist program for economic and social change. He replaced the government limousines with simple cars and redistributed land from the wealthy to the peasants. He improved the status of women and created extensive environmental and health initiatives. He was anti-imperialist and refused foreign help.

However, Sankara was executed in 1987 in another coup, and the country’s rapid economic growth was over. The current president Blaise Compaoré is more notable for his ruthless ability to stay in power than for anything significant he has achieved. The unemployment rate is almost 70%, and almost 20% of the population is forced to seek work in a neighbouring country.

On this day 28 years ago there was indiscriminate pillaging and vandalism in Nairobi. At 3.30am on the preceding day, rebels from the Kenyan Air Force had seized the radio station and post office and announced that they had taken over the country. In many African countries whoever controls the radio station controls the country, and after several hours of fighting government forces managed to recapture the radio station and quell the coup. Fighting continued for several more days at the Nanyuki air base.

Daniel arap Moi had become president of Kenya in 1978 following the death of president Kenyatta. The country’s economy was struggling, and the salaries of the civil service, police force and armed services were being paid late or not at all. There was a growing feeling of discontent with the new president’s performance, and various politicians, lawyers and intellectuals began trying to form an opposition party.

Moi responded by cracking down on suspected dissidents, who were arrested by the secret police. This simply led to more discontent and, ultimately, to the almost-successful coup attempt by air force personnel. Initially the armed forces seemed to be undecided as to whether they would support the president or the coup leaders, but they came down on the side of the president, and the coup was suppressed.

On this day 57 years ago, a group of 135 young revolutionaries attacked the Moncada Military Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The men had gathered the preceding day at a farm in Siboney, and they left early in the morning, planning to attack at dawn. However, the car carrying the rebels’ heavy weapons got lost along the way, and the rebels accidentally started the attack before entering the barracks, so the attack was easily repulsed.

In spite of the disastrous outcome of the attack, from the point of view of the revolutionaries, it marked the start of the Cuban Revolution, and the guerrillas’ leader, Fidel Castro, named his revolutionary movement “Movimiento 20 Julio” after the date on which it had occurred. Although only about 9 of the rebels were killed in the attack, around 50 of them were captured and illegally executed, while most of the rest were put on trial.

FIdel Castro, who was a lawyer, wrote a speech entitled “History Will Absolve Me”, giving plans for reforms in Cuba, and smuggled it out of his prison cell. Some of the prisoners’ mothers started a campaign to free the imprisoned rebels, and an amnesty was granted after Castro had spent almost two years in prison. He went to Mexico with other Cuban rebels to continue the struggle, and in 1959 he succeeded in overthrowing the Cuban government.

On this day 1299 years ago, Tariq ibn Ziyad’s forces of Berber Muslims from northern Africa attacked the Visigoth forces of King Roderic, putting to flight a numerically superior army and establishing a foothold in Spain as part of an eight-year campaign which resulted in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The name of the “Rock of Gibraltar” derives from a mispronunciation of “Jabl Tariq”, meaning “Tariq’s Mountain”.

The Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was completed less than 90 years after the death of Muhammad, indicating the extraordinary speed with which Islam spread in the early days. The Islamic world was at the time rules by the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I of Damascus. Al-Walid built a strong navy, supporting the expansion into Spain. The Muslim-ruled Iberian Peninsula became known as Al-Andalus

After consolidating Islamic control of Al-Andalus, the Muslim forces marched north across the Pyrenees into France. In October 732 they attacked the French forces of Charles Martel in the Battle of Tours, and were defeated, thus halting the spread of Islam into Europe. Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula continued for several centuries before non-Muslim forces gradually reconquered the territory, with the last significant Muslim stronghold of Granada being conquered in 1492.

The most famous potter of all time, Josiah Wedgwood, was born on this day 280 years ago in Staffordshire, England. After spending some time working for a famous pottery-maker, Thomas Whieldon, Wedgwood began experimenting with different pottery-making techniques. The Industrial Revolution was just beginning, and he turned his pottery works in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, into the first pottery factory.

The critical elements which worked together to enable the Industrial Revolution included scientific advances, improvements in transportation, mechanisation, and new methods of marketing, and Wedgwood was interested in all of these. He took full advantage of scientific advances to create great improvements in the quality of his pottery. He was a major backer of the Trent and Mersey Canal. He was regarded as the inventor of direct mail marketing, money-back guarantees, travelling salesmen, self-service, free delivery, buy one get one free, and illustrated catalogues.

Wedgwood came from a family of dissenting Christians, and his personal beliefs were reflected in his involvement in the campaign against slavery. He mass produced medallions featuring an image of a slave with the words “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” These medallions were worn by supporters of the campaign and became a significant tool for bringing public attention to the cause of abolition. Wedgwood died in 1795, some years before the abolition campaign succeeded.

Last week the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrated 50 years of independence. There is less to celebrate about the past 50 years of history in the DRC than there is in most other countries. The République du Congo achieved independence on 30th June 1960, and almost immediately the provinces of Katanga and South Kasai began fighting to secede. In September 1960 the president Joseph Kasavubu attempted to dismiss the prime minister Patrice Lumumba, and a power struggle ensued.

Lumumba was kidnapped and murdered in 1961, and in 1965 the army, under the command of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, overthrew the president. Mobutu became head of state, renaming the country Zaire in 1971 and in 1972 renaming himself Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (“The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.”)

In 1997 Rwandan-backed rebel forces overthrew Mobutu in the First Congo War and installed Laurent-Désiré Kabila as president.  However, a new rebel movement arose, leading to the Second Congo War. Many African countries were involved on one side or the other, and around 5 million people were killed in the two wars. The DRC remains a highly insecure country with very high levels of extreme poverty.