In May 1876, Stanley reached Ujiji and set out on a circumnavigation of Lake Tanganyika. He established that the lake’s only outlet was the Lukuga River which flowed westwards towards the Lualaba. He also observed that the Lukuga valley was used as a slave route by groups of ruga-ruga bandits preying on the local population. While exploring the area, Stanley came across a caravan of 1,200 men, women and children, captured in Manyema, being taken to Ujiji. Many of the children were close to death. After completing a circumnavigation of the lake in fifty-one days, Stanley returned to Ujiji and made ready for the journey to Manyema and the Lualaba.
Since Livingstone’s travels there in 1871, Manyema had become the fiefdom of a powerful Zanzibari trader, Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi. He was better known as Tippu Tip, a nickname derived either from his habit of nervously blinking his eyelids or, as Tippu Tip preferred, the sound of gunfire. Ostensibly, Tippu Tip, born in Zanzibar in 1837 to a Swahili father and an Omani mother, owed allegiance to the sultan, but in reality he acted as an independent ruler with control over much of the Upper Congo region.
Both his grandfather and his father had taken part in the caravan trade on Lake Tanganyika, and Tippu Tip’s own earliest journeys were with Nyamwezi caravans travelling round the south end of Lake Tanganyika to Katanga. He was also active in his youth in slave raiding, as he recalled in his memoirs: ‘I went into every part of Zaramu country and in the space of five days had seized 800 men. They called me Kingugwa Chui [the leopard], because the leopard attacks indiscriminately, here and there. I yoked the whole lot of them together and went back with them to Mkamba.’
On his travels, Tippu Tip played host to several European explorers. In 1867, when David Livingstone was stranded south of Lake Tanganyika (in northern Zambia), weak with fever and hunger, Tippu Tip had supplied him with provisions, given him a letter of introduction to a neighbouring African king and assigned guides to accompany him on the way. He had helped John Speke on his second expedition to discover the source of the Nile in the 1860s. He had also been hospitable in 1874 to Lieutenant Lovett Cameron, a British naval officer who became the first European to cross Africa from the east coast to the west coast, ending up in Angola two years later.
Stanley met him in October 1876 at his headquarters at Kasongo on the banks of the Lualaba. ‘He was a tall, black-bearded man, of negroid complexion, in the prime of life, straight and quick in his movements, a picture of energy and strength. He had a fine intelligent face, with a nervous twitching of the eyes.’ His paternal grandmother had been the daughter of a Nyamwezi chief. ‘His clothes were of a spotless white, his fez-cap brand new . . . his dagger was splendid with silver filigree, and his tout ensemble was that of an Arab gentleman in very comfortable circumstances.’
The journey that Stanley proposed to take down the Lualaba presented far greater hazards than he had hitherto faced: it would lead him into the depths of the rainforest, completely unknown territory where cannibal tribesmen were reputed to live. Stanley feared that his porters would desert him. Not even Tippu Tip had ventured there. Nor did he see any reason why he should. As he told Stanley:
If you Wazungu [white men] are desirous of throwing away your lives, it is no reason we Arabs should. We travel little by little to get ivory and slaves, and are years about it – it is now nine years since I left Zanzibar – but you white men only look for rivers and lakes and mountains, and you spend your lives for no reason, and to no purpose. Look at that old man who died in Bisa [David Livingstone]! What did he seek year after year, until he became so old that he could not travel? He had no money, for he never gave us anything; he bought no ivory or slaves; yet he travelled further than any of us, and for what?
Yet Tippu Tip recognised that the journey would give him an opportunity of extending his empire of slaves and ivory. The rainforest was said to harbour large herds of elephant and nobody who lived there knew what tusks were worth. He was also impressed when Stanley demonstrated his advanced weaponry – a repeating rifle capable of firing fifteen rounds. And when Stanley offered to pay the sum of 5,000 Maria Theresa dollars, he soon agreed to accompany him with an armed party, though for no longer than sixty days.
Even with the support of Tippu Tip’s men, the risks were severe. But Stanley was resolved: ‘I can die, but I will not go back . . . The unknown half of Africa lies before me. In three or four days we shall begin the great struggle with this mystery.’
So, in November 1876, they set off, entering ‘the dreaded black and chill forest’, as Stanley described it, ‘bidding farewell to sunshine and brightness’. Stanley’s party consisted of 146 men, women and children; 48 of them were armed with guns of some sort. Tippu Tip provided an escort of 210 men armed with guns and spears and an assortment of camp followers. Day after day, they persevered, descending through the twilight, hacking their way through riverside jungle, fighting off hostile tribesmen and braving malaria, dysentery and smallpox.
After travelling together for 125 miles down the Lualaba, they parted company. Tippu Tip went off to collect another fortune in ivory from virgin territory. ‘At this time the locals did not use ivory as exchange,’ he recalled. ‘They hunted elephant and ate the meat but used the tusks in their homes for a stockade. With others they made pestles and mortars for cooking their bananas.’ After a month he returned to Kasongo with his booty, having opened up a new domain to plunder.
Stanley continued his perilous journey downstream for another 1,500 miles, eventually reaching the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic coast seven months later with the remnant of his party, starving, haggard and close to defeat. The toughest part of his journey came in the last 180 miles. It took him five months to struggle through a series of thirty-two rapids – ‘the wildest stretch of river that I have ever seen’ – losing men and boats on the way. Utterly exhausted and in desperate need of food, he reached the village of Nsanda in August 1877 and sent a message to the Portuguese trading post at Boma pleading for help:
I have arrived at this place from Zanzibar with 115 souls, men, women & children. We are now in a state of imminent starvation . . . I therefore have made bold to dispatch . . . this letter craving relief from you.
Three days later, a relief party of carriers arrived.
Stanley’s expedition unlocked the entire Congo region. For it showed that beyond the cataracts and canyons that had hitherto blocked exploration inland lay a web of interconnecting rivers, navigable by steamboat, running for thousands of miles into the interior. On his return to London, Stanley began campaigning vigorously for European powers to open up the Congo to ‘trade and civilization’.
By the 1880s, Tippu Tip’s empire in central Africa extended over an area of some 250,000 square miles. Though his principal business concerned ivory and slaves, he also laid the foundations of a state, appointing officials, collecting tributes, building roads, encouraging plantations and imposing a monopoly on the sale of ivory.
In 1882, after spending twelve years in the interior, he decided to visit Zanzibar, setting out from Manyema with a huge caravan of ivory. As the caravan passed through Mpwapwa, 200 miles from the coast, its progress was observed by a British mariner, Alfred Swann.
Swann had been hired by the London Missionary Society to transport a boat from the coast to Ujiji, to reassemble it there and then to sail it on Lake Tanganyika on missionary business. He had arrived in Zanzibar fired with missionary zeal to destroy the slave trade but was shocked to find that his own porters were themselves slaves. He was even more horrified by what he saw of Tippu Tip’s caravan:
As they filed past, we noticed many chained by the neck. Others had their neck fastened at the forks of poles about six feet long, the ends of which were supported by the men who preceded them. The women, who were as numerous as the men, carried babies on their backs in addition to a tusk of ivory or other burden on their heads. They looked at us with suspicion and fear, having been told, as we subsequently ascertained, that white men always desired to release slaves in o
rder to eat their flesh, like the Upper Congo cannibals.
It is difficult adequately to describe the filthy state of their bodies; in many instances, not only scarred by the cut of a ‘chikote’ [a raw-hide whip]. . . but feet and shoulders were a mass of open sores, made more painful by the swarms of flies which followed the march and lived on the flowing blood. They presented a moving picture of utter misery, and one could not help wondering how any of them had survived the long tramp from the Upper Congo, at least 1,000 miles distant . . .
The headmen in charge were most polite to us, as they passed our camp . . . Addressing one, I pointed out that many of the slaves were unfit to carry loads.
To this, he smilingly replied: ‘They have no choice! They must go, or die!’ . . .
‘Have you lost many on the road?’
‘Yes! Numbers have died of hunger!’
‘Any run away?’
‘No, they are too well guarded. Only those who become possessed of the devil try to escape; there is nowhere they could run to if they should go.’
‘What do you do when they become too ill to travel?’
‘Spear them at once! . . . For if we did not, mothers would pretend they were ill in order to avoid carrying their loads. No! we never leave them alive on the road; they all know our custom.’
‘I see women carrying not only a child on their backs, but, in addition, a tusk of ivory or other burdens on their heads. What do you do in their case when they become too weak to carry both child and ivory? Who carries the ivory?’
‘She does! We cannot leave valuable ivory on the road. We spear the child and make her burden lighter. Ivory first, child afterwards!’
Swann raged: ‘Ivory! Always ivory! What a curse the elephant has been to Africans. By himself the slave did not pay to transport but plus ivory he was a paying game.’
The trade was indeed profitable. Stanley calculated that a pound of ivory costing one cent in Manyema was worth 110 cents in Kazeh and 200 cents in Zanzibar. Zanzibar became the richest seaport in tropical Africa from its trade in ivory, slaves and cloves. But it was always ivory that was its most important export. By 1890, Zanzibar was supplying three-quarters of the world’s trade in ivory.
But the toll on eastern Africa’s elephant population was massive. According to estimates based on trading and auction records, some 60,000 elephants were killed each year. After leading a Royal Geographical Expedition to the great lakes in 1879–80, Joseph Thomson reported:
People talk as if the ivory of Africa were inexhaustible. It is commonly supposed that, if European traders could but establish themselves in the interior, fortunes could be made. Nothing could be more absurd. Let me simply mention a fact. In my sojourn of fourteen months, during which I passed over an immense area of the Great Lakes region, I never once saw a single elephant. Twenty years ago they roamed over those countries unmolested, and now they have been almost utterly exterminated. Less than ten years ago Livingstone spoke about the abundance of elephants at the south end of Tanganyika – how they came about his camp or entered the villages with impunity. Not one is now to be found. The ruthless work of destruction has gone on with frightful rapidity.
28
THE PEARL OF AFRICA
Until the nineteenth century, the principal kingdoms of the Great Lakes region of central Africa – Buganda, Bunyoro, Ankole, Karagwe, Rwanda and Burundi – had remained largely isolated from the outside world. They had evolved over the course of three centuries from clan-based societies coalescing into sophisticated monarchies which managed to control both sizeable swathes of territory and dense populations without the aid of money or writing. Each kingdom exhibited a high degree of cohesion. Kings ruled through elaborate hierarchies of court officials and provincial chiefs. Subjects shared common languages and religious traditions. A benign climate, regular rainfall and fertile soils provided the basis for successful agrarian economies. Two kinds of rural system had taken root. In the highland kingdoms of Rwanda, Burundi and Ankole, cattle had become the nerve centre of their economies. The ruling elite in Rwanda and Burundi were Tutsi cattle-owners who governed as a pastoral aristocracy exacting tribute from the main population of Hutu agriculturalists. In the lacustrine kingdoms, on the northern shore of the Nyanza, the key economic and political factor was control of land.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, Buganda had emerged as the most powerful state in the region. Led by kings bearing the title of kabaka, it had expanded through military conquest over a period of two hundred years, pushing forward its frontiers in every direction: westwards in the direction of the Ruwenzori mountains; and northwards towards the Kafu River, taking territory from its main rival, Bunyoro. A network of highways kept the capital in touch with outlying villages extending for 150 miles of the lakeshore and up to 60 miles inland. Conquered populations were absorbed into the Ganda class system.
As well as territorial gains, the kings of Buganda accumulated vast personal power, gradually superseding the role of clan chiefs. They drew booty and tribute from conquered provinces, appointed their agents to run them and acquired increasing control of freehold estates held by hereditary clans. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the kabaka had power of appointment and dismissal over all the major chieftainships in the kingdom and even most village headmen. Land became an instrument of political control.
The kabaka’s court functioned as the centre of administration. In attendance there were a host of dignitaries: the katikiro, the chief ‘minister’; the kibale, the master of ceremonies; the kisekwa, the chief magistrate; the kimbugwe, the political and religious adviser; the sabakaki, the commander of pages; the mujasi, a military adviser; and the seruti, the royal brewer. Also on hand were royal executioners. A strict etiquette was enforced. Everyone was required to be dressed in robes of bark-cloth.
The kabaka’s court was also a place of endless intrigue. Rival factions and personalities competed to gain the kabaka’s favours. The kabaka’s wives too jostled for influence, hoping to advance the prospects of their own royal sons and of the clans to which they belonged. The numbers involved made the business of succession all the more complex. The twenty-ninth kabaka, Suna II, who ruled from 1832 to 1856, possessed 148 recorded wives and fathered more than 200 children. At times of crisis and unrest, kabakas ordered a kiwendo, the mass killing of random individuals in the hope that it would propitiate the gods and restore the kingdom’s well-being.
The prosperity that Buganda enjoyed was based primarily on its banana industry. Banana groves, developed over the course of several hundred years, flourished throughout the kingdom, producing high-yielding harvests. Bananas provided a staple diet and were used as the main ingredient in brewing beer. Once planted, banana groves remained productive for up to fifty years, requiring little attention. A single woman was able to tend a grove large enough to feed four people. The yield from an acre of bananas could amount to as much as five tons. Fronds of the plant served as thatch for huts; stems were used to build fences. The detritus of rotting vegetation was turned into fertiliser, enabling farmers to form permanent communities and avoid shifting cultivation. Ganda society largely revolved around the banana plant. It underpinned the value of land and the viability of the monarchy.
The first foreign visitors to set foot in Buganda were Arab-Swahili traders from the coast. They arrived in 1844 bearing cotton cloth, mirrors and musical instruments as presents, hoping to open up a new route for the supply of ivory and war captives enslaved by Buganda. The kabaka, Suna, was impressed by the goods offered and fascinated even more by their guns. Several more visits followed. The traders were given designated quarters and carefully supervised to ensure that Suna maintained a monopoly on trade and prevented others gaining access to firearms. In 1852, a wealthy ivory merchant, Snay bin Amir, discussed with Suna the possibility of a ‘closer alliance’ with the sultan of Zanzibar. In 1856, however, Suna died from smallpox, a new disease then entering Buganda along the trade routes from the coast.
The king, a good-looking, well-figured, tall young man of twenty-five, was sitting on a red blanket spread upon a square platform of royal grass . . . The hair of his head was cut short, excepting on the top, where it was combed up into a high ridge, running from stem to stem like a cockscomb. On his neck was a very neat ornament – a large ring of beautifully worked small beads, forming elegant patterns by their various colours. On one arm was another bead ornament, prettily devised; and on the other a wooden charm, tied by a string covered with snakeskin. On every finger and toe he had alternate brass and copper rings; and above the ankles, halfway up to the calf, a stocking of very pretty beads. Everything was light, neat, and elegant in its way; not a fault could be found with the taste of his ‘getting up’. For a handkerchief he held a well-folded piece of bark-cloth, and a piece of gold-embroidered silk, which he constantly employed to hide his large mouth when laughing, or to wipe it after a drink of plantain-wine, of which he took constant and copious draughts from neat little gourd-cups, administered by his ladies-in-waiting.
The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour Page 30
