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Article

Adams, John Michael Geoffrey Manningham  

Leslie R. James

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

popularly known as “Tom,” was born on 24 September 1931 into the politically prominent Barbadian Adams family. He was the son of Sir Grantley Adams, a Barbadian lawyer who later served as the only Premier of the failed West Indian Federation (1958–1962) and Grace Thorne. Tom Adams’s political philosophy and career were significantly influenced by his father, Sir Grantley Adams, his early Barbadian education and upbringing, study at Oxford University, work at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and membership and leadership of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP).

The political upheavals of the 1930s altered the political landscape of the Caribbean and impacted the role that the Adams family and Barbados played in the region’s political evolution. By 1938 Tom s father Grantley Adams became a leading political figure in the struggle for civil rights in Barbados when he founded the Barbados Progressive League later called the Barbados ...

Article

Ahmed, Dini Ahmed  

Walter Clarke

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

nationalist leader and first prime minister of independent Djibouti, was born in the Mabla mountain area north of Obock, Afar. Ahmed Dini Ahmed was fired by an intense sense of social justice and fairness and worked at one time or another with all of Djibouti’s early preindependence leaders with the objective of facilitating an independent government in which all ethnic groups would work together for the betterment of all citizens. The failure of his close friendship with Hassan Gouled Aptidon immediately after independence was a personal blow to both of them, but was probably inevitable in two such committed but divergent individuals. Ahmed Dini had a political career roughly parallel to that of Hassan Gouled. He completed his primary school in Djibouti and then worked as a nurse’s aide. He became interested in politics at a young age. In 1959 after Gouled had been elected to the French National ...

Article

Anthony, Kenny Davis  

A. L. Dawn French

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born on 8 January 1951 at Riviere Doree, a community in the southeast section of the island. He was one of nine boys of David William Barnard and Andrazine Anthony, better known as (and officially known as) Lucy Rosemond, who hailed from Saltibus. They also had two girls, both of whom died in infancy.

Anthony grew up in the south of the island, in the villages of Degatierre and River Dorée. His education started at the River Dorée Anglican Combined School, but was interrupted when he moved to the nearby island of St. Vincent. From 1959 to 1963 he attended the Kingstown Preparatory School in the capital, Kingstown. In 1963 he returned to Saint Lucia and attended the Laborie Boys School for one year; in 1964 he moved to the Vieux Fort Secondary School. Upon graduation in 1968 he worked at the business house of Minvielle and Chastanet ...

Article

Ayandho, Bernard-Christian  

Richard A. Bradshaw and Juan Fandos-Rius

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2013

prime minister of the Central African Republic (CAR), was born 15 December 1930 to a Yakoma father at Bangassou in southeastern Ubangi-Shari. He attended the Collège moderne (modern middle school) in Bambari, then the École normale (teacher training college) at the École des cadres supérieurs (school for training upper-level cadres) in Brazzaville. On 24 September 1951, he joined the civil service of French Equatorial Africa (FEA) as a secretarial assistant and was sent to Ubangi-Shari, where he worked at Bangui’s payments department from 1951 to 1954. In 1954 he was promoted to secretary and then served as a finance agent for Fort Crampel from 1955 to 1957. From 1957 to 1958, he was head of Bimbo district, located southwest of Bangui.

Ayandho studied at the École nationale de la France d’outre-mer (ENFOM; French national school for training administrators for service overseas) in France from 1958 to ...

Article

Bakary, Djibo  

Klaas van Walraven

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

prime minister of Niger, was born in Soudouré, west of the capital, Niamey. Although he was the son of a village chief, Bakary was a talaka (a commoner), since his father did not hail from a noble family. Bakary was related by blood to Hamani Diori, Niger’s later president. Although he was a member of the Zarma ethnic community, many people in western Niger regarded Bakary as a Songhay, a closely related ethnic group. Later, he used this to mobilize political support along the Niger River valley.

At the age of 7 Bakary was taken by his uncle to the city of Tahoua central Niger where he was enrolled in a colonial primary school A diligent student he learned to speak Hausa before continuing his education in the capital It was here that his political consciousness began one day he met his father who had been sentenced to forced labor ...

Article

Banda, Hastings Kamuzu  

Owen J. M. Kalinga

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

physician and president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994, was born in about 1896 at Mphonongo, approximately 18 miles (29 kilometers) east of the headquarters of the present-day Kasungu district. Given the name, Kamunkhwala, denoting the medicine that his mother took to enable conception, Banda attended two local junior elementary schools of the Livingstonia Mission of the Church of Scotland. In 1908, he went to the more established school at Chilanga Mission where, in that year, Dr. George Prentice baptized him as Akim Kamunkhwala Mtunthama Banda. He was to drop all three names and replace them with Hastings Walter (after a Scottish missionary, John Hastings), before finally settling on Hastings Kamuzu Banda, substituting kamuzu (root) for Kamunkhwala.

In 1914 Banda passed three standard exams a mandatory step to continue to the full primary school level the satisfactory completion of which was the highest qualification one could attain ...

Article

Banda, Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu  

Ari Nave

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Known as the “Lion of Malawi,” Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda was also known as the dictator who showed so little appreciation for his country’s people and culture that he was sometimes suspected of being an American impostor. Kamuzu Banda was born to Chewa peasants in a village near Kasunugu, Nyasaland (present-day Malawi). No birth records were kept at the time; while his official year of birth is 1906, other sources cite 1898. As a child Banda left the household of his maternal grandmother and entered a newly established school built by Church of Scotland missionaries. Influenced by his uncle, Hanock Phiri, Banda converted to Christianity and adopted the surname of missionary John Hastings.

Shortly after completing primary school, Banda traveled with his uncle to South Africa (supposedly walking the 1667 km [1000 mi]), where they initially worked in a coal mine in Dundee, Natal. Upon reaching Johannesburg ...

Article

Barrow, Dean Oliver  

Lawrence Vernon

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2020

was born in Belize City, Belize, on 2 March 1951, to Arthur Innes Barrow, a pharmacist, and Joyce Erica Barrow née Lindo, a housewife. Barrow was the second in a family of three children. His early education in Belize City occurred at St. Michael’s College; he then went on to study law at the University of the West Indies at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados where he earned a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1973. He attended the Norman Manley Law School, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, and achieved a Certificate of Legal Education in 1975. He attended the University of Miami School of Law in 1981 and earned a Master of Laws (LL.M.) as well as a Masters in International Relations.

Barrow was admitted to practice law in Belize in 1975 beginning his career at the law firm of his uncle Dean Lindo He eventually formed ...

Article

Barrow, Errol Walton  

Pedro L V Welch

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born to the Reverend Reginald Grant Barrow and his wife, Ruth Alberta Barrow (née O’Neal), in St. Lucy Parish, Barbados, on 21 January 1920. His family lineage provided some of the strong influences that would eventually lead him to local and Caribbean prominence. His father was certainly not averse to using the pulpit to challenge the prevailing racist social and economic order. Indeed, in 1922 he was deported from St. Croix for his radical comments in a local newspaper. He eventually migrated to the United States, leaving his children behind. There can be little doubt that Reverend Barrow’s radical stance played an important role in the later development of Errol Barrow’s political philosophy.

Errol Barrow s uncle Charles Duncan O Neal was another pivotal influence in the young Barrow s life O Neal a medical doctor who was trained at Edinburgh University in Scotland returned to the Caribbean ...

Article

Barrow, Errol Walton  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Errol Walton Barrow was a founding member of the Barbados Labor Party (BPL) and the Democratic Labor Party (DPL).

See also Barbados.

Article

Bérenger, Paul  

Ari Nave

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in Quatre Bornes, Mauritius, Paul Bérenger was raised in a Franco-Mauritian family. He became interested in Marxist politics while studying philosophy, French, and journalism in Wales and in Paris, France. Upon returning to Mauritius, he immediately became involved in the independence movement. Finding the politics of the Mauritius Labour Party (MLP) too conservative, he created the left-wing Club des Étudiants Militants and began organizing demonstrations against the MLP and allied parties. He also became a union organizer, leading a series of strikes.

Bérenger envisioned a country unified by a common language and culture rather than divided by ethnic tensions. In 1969 he founded a new political party, the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), together with Dev Virahsawmy, a Telegu, and Jooneed Jeerooburkhan, a Muslim. The party’s socialist platform and nonethnic orientation appealed to the large working class, particularly dockhands, plantation workers, and unemployed youth.

In response to Bérenger s disruptive ...

Article

Bird, Vere Cornwall  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Vere Cornwall Bird began his political career in 1939 as a member of the newly created Antigua Trade and Labor Union. Within this labor organization, he founded the Antigua Labor Party (ALP). Bird was first elected to the Legislative Council, the governing body of the island, in 1945 He ...

Article

Bishop, Maurice  

Lisa Clayton Robinson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Maurice Bishop became the prime minister of Grenada in a 1979 coup and rose to prominence as one of the most controversial figures in the Caribbean. Bishop was born in Aruba in 1944, but his parents, both native Grenadians, moved the family back to Grenada in 1950. He was educated at Catholic schools in St. George's and in 1963 won a scholarship to attend university in England. Bishop studied at Gray's Inn, London University's Holborn College of Law, and King's College. During this time he became involved in the Black Power Movement and was influenced by such leaders as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, and Walter Rodney.

On his return to Grenada in 1970 Bishop went into private legal practice and cofounded a discussion group of young radical intellectuals and professionals The group evolved into the Movement for Assemblies of the ...

Article

Botha, Pieter Willem  

Ryan Irwin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

South African Prime Minister (1978–1984) and executive state President (1984–1989), was born 12 January 1916 on a farm near the town of Paul Roux in Orange Free State. An Afrikaner by birth, Botha is commonly referred to as either “P.W.” or “Die Groot Krokodil” (The Great Crocodile). His parents, Pieter Willem and Hendrina, were influenced greatly by the South African War (Second Anglo-Boer War).

Upon completing his education in the early 1930s, Botha worked as a reporter and a National Party organizer in South Africa’s Western Province. He flirted briefly with a pro-Nazi organization named Ossewabrandwag in the years before World War II but ended his connections to the group in 1941. Following a stint as a government information officer during the war, Botha was elected to Parliament as a National Party representative in 1948 He was appointed Deputy Interior Minister ten years later ...

Article

Botha, Pieter Willem  

Alonford James Robinson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Pieter Willem Botha was raised in a militantly nationalistic Afrikaner family in the Eastern Cape. His mother’s first husband was killed in the Boer War (1899–1902), in which his father also fought for the Boers. At an early age Botha himself became an Afrikaner nationalist, leaving the University of Orange Free State Law School in 1935 to help found the National Party. A year later he became public information officer for the party and served on the Sauer Commission, the agency that helped to formulate the National Party’s racial program.

In 1948 Botha proved instrumental in helping D. F. Malan and the National Party come to power. That year he won a seat in Parliament, representing the Eastern Cape district of George. As a reward for party loyalty, Botha was appointed to a series of cabinet positions in the apartheid-era governments of Hendrik Verwoerd and Balthazar Johannes Vorster ...

Article

Boye, Mame Madior  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

first female prime minister of Senegal, was born in the coastal city of Saint Louis, Senegal. She came from a family of lawyers, including her father, one brother who worked for the Supreme Court of Senegal, and another brother who received an advanced law degree, became a professor of international law, and eventually became the head of the University of Dakar. Boye herself attended primary school in her home city before graduating from the Lycée Faidherbe secondary school and enrolling in an undergraduate law degree program at the University of Dakar in 1963 She then studied law at the Centre National d Études Judiciaries CNEJ in Paris Once she finished her studies in France she returned to Senegal and began to work as an assistant prosecutor for the government Boye became an assistant judge in a court at Dakar and later rose to be president of the Senegalese Court ...

Article

Bradshaw, Robert Llewellyn  

Shani Roper

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born on 16 September 1916 in St. Paul’s Village, St. Kitts, to domestic worker Mary Jane Francis, and blacksmith and laborer William Bradshaw. His interaction with trade unions began at an early age. His grandmother often sent him to pay her union dues to her union representative, one Gabriel Douglas, on his way to school. Like many boys in his community, Bradshaw worked on the neighboring sugar estate after completing his education. At the age of 16, he was apprenticed to the foreman in the machine shop at the St. Kitts-Bassetere Sugar Company. He joined the St. Kitts Workers League on the recommendation of his boss in the machine shop. In 1935 another boy pushed Bradshaw and his right hand went through a glass window during the altercation severing all the tendons After he recovered Bradshaw was promoted to the office of the machine shop This accident changed ...

Article

Burnham, Linden Forbes Sampson  

Alonford James Robinson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham was born in 1923 to James Ethelbert Burnham and Rachel Abigail Sampson. James Burnham was headmaster of the Methodist Primary School in Kitty, a suburb of the capital city Georgetown. He instilled in his five children an appreciation for education, and Linden, the youngest male of the family, ambitiously pursued academic excellence.

After graduating from Central High School, Burnham attended the prestigious, all-male Queen's College. While there he won a British Guyana scholarship to study at the University of London in England. However, World War II forced Burnham to remain in British Guyana, where he earned his bachelor's degree in correspondence and accepted an administrative position at Queen's College.

After the war, Burnham traveled to England to complete his law degree, which he received in 1947 from the University of London While in London Burnham became the first Guyanese student to be ...

Article

Bush, William McKeeva  

David Simonelli

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in West Bay on Grand Cayman Island on 20 January 1955 to a mother named Faith and a father whose name has not been recorded. As a boy, McKeeva was taunted as an “outside child,” a Caymanian term for being born out of wedlock. He grew up poor in West Bay, the second-largest town in the Caymans after the capital, George Town. In the Caymans, since 2002 recognized as a British Overseas Territory with the highest per capita income in the Caribbean poverty amounted to a serious social stigma Education was one potential way out of poverty and Bush moved from one school to another in West Bay He excelled at none of them however and eventually dropped out His social status may well have done much to shape his future political outlook in opposition to the colonial elites that dominated the islands government Eventually as a ...

Article

Busia, Kofi Abrefa  

Maxwell Akansina Aziabah

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Ghanaian prime minister and sociologist, was born in Wenchi in the British Gold Coast colony on 11 July 1913. His mother was Nana Yaa Nsowaa, a prominent member of the royal Safoase Yefre matrilineage of Wenchi, and his father was Yaw Bosea. His mother later remarried, not long after Kofi was born. It is believed that Busia grew up under the tutelage of his stepfather, Kwabena Janso, since his biological father had little to do with him. At age six he was baptized Joseph Busia, a misspelling of his biological father’s surname that he would retain throughout his career.

As a boy Busia developed a keen interest in religious studies, which was bolstered by his contact with Wesleyan Methodist missionaries, notably the Reverend William Whittle and his wife Alice Whittle, a teacher. Busia impressed the Whittles, who encouraged his academic interests. In 1922 the Whittles brought Busia with ...