Monthly Archives: April 2012

Bingu wa Mutharika, President of Malawi:
Born 24 February 1934. Died April 5, 2012.

Posted on April 14, 2012 by

Bingu wa Mutharika – who died in hospital after having a cardiac arrest early on Thursday April 5, 2012 had nursed ambitions of ruling Malawi since the dictatorship of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda began to unravel in 1993. That ambition was first realised in May 2004 – and five years later he won a second term, with a resounding victory. But both Dr Mutharika’s terms in office were mired in controversy. Critics demanded Mutharika’s resignation, saying he had not so much run the country as run the country into the ground. He had been accused of trampling on democratic freedoms and economic mismanagement. In 2011, as people struggled with rising … Continue reading →

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Ahmed Ben Bella President of Algeria (1963-1965)
Born December 25, 1916. Died April 11, 2012

Posted on April 11, 2012 by

Algeria’s first President and one of six historic leaders of the bloody independence struggle from France who has passed away in his family home in the capital Algiers at the age of 96, was a symbol of pan-Arabist ideology as well as the global anti-colonial movement, and president of Algeria from 1963 until he was overthrown in a military coup in 1965 by the army chief of staff, Col. Houari Boumedienne. Until 1980 Ben Bella was under house arrest but later went into self-exile in Switzerland until 1990 when he returned to Algeria. A giant of Algeria’s independence struggle, he played only a symbolic role in the latter years of … Continue reading →

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