Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

SOME BELGIAN BLUNDERS

When Belgium annexed the Congo, she for many months retained the old Congo State flag; she still retains the sobriquet “Bula Matadi”; she retained, and still retains many of the old Congo officials, and finally she retained her interest in rubber. These indications did not escape the notice of the natives who are never slow to detect circumstantial evidence, to say nothing of the enlightening influence of the old witch doctor! The consequence is that the natives distrust the new “Bula Matadi” as much as they did the old one, for to many of them there is no visible change. Thus Belgium finds herself in possession of a colossal colony whose economic resources are exhausted, whose population has been seriously diminished, and whose native tribes everywhere mistrust her administration.

The foregoing features present Belgium with a problem not to be solved easily by the most experienced and powerful of colonizing Powers. International obligations, too, cannot but make that task more difficult. The Congo must still work out its salvation under the guardian eye of the fourteen signatories to the Berlin Act. It is still the duty of each of these Powers to “watch over the moral and material welfare of the native tribes.” Not only so, but the Congo colony is further restricted by separate treaties with all the Great Powers, which together provide a shoal of difficulties through which it will not be easy to steer the Administration without disaster.

The Congo territories, however, are not without assets, which, in the hands of a bold statesman, are capable of making Central Africa one of the greatest wealth-producing areas of the Continent.

The first asset is in the riverine system of the Congo. The main river has five large tributaries, each of which provides from 500 to 1000 miles of navigable waterway; the Busira, for example, 200 miles from the mouth gives no soundings at a depth of 1000 feet. Each of these in turn possesses numerous smaller, but still navigable tributaries. Altogether this fluvial system renders water transport possible for over 10,000 miles, whilst for large canoes and launches there is more than twice the waterway. I know of no district, no matter how remote from the great fluvial highway, which is removed more than four days’ march from a river bank. In some parts of the main river the width is considerably over five miles, and in others it takes a canoe nearly half a day to thread its way between the network of islands which cover the river between north and south banks. There is, however, the outstanding drawback that as a commercial asset the whole waterway is blocked at the mouth, strictly speaking ninety miles from the ocean. There the cataract region begins which has hitherto defied engineering skill. Between Matadi and Leopoldville, a distance of just over 350 miles, seven such natural impediments prove an insurmountable barrier to water transport. This distance is covered by a railway which connects the lower river with Stanley Pool, the upper river port. The line is undoubtedly a thing of beauty, but travelling on it is certainly not a “joy for ever,” climbing up almost impossible slopes, skirting ravines and lightly circling mountain ranges—a triumph of engineering skill, whose construction, it is estimated, cost a life a sleeper. Its 2 ft. 6 in. gauge and its miniature rolling stock are, however, totally incapable of dealing with the potential transport of a colony more than half as large as Europe.

THE CONGO RAILWAY

At present transport on the Congo railway is in hopeless confusion and the merchant is fortunate indeed whose goods occupy less than a month traversing that 350 miles, for the bulk of goods require six weeks to reach Leopoldville, the port of Stanley Pool, from Matadi on the lower river. When we were at Matadi there was still 1000 tons awaiting transport, a small task for European and American freight trains, but an entirely different matter on a line where we saw a Congo engine with twenty tons only in her trucks make no less than three attempts up an ordinary incline. The Congo railway, at present the only link between the ocean and the Upper Congo, presents to the Belgian Government a two-fold problem. The first question is whether it is possible to turn the whole track into a broad gauge, capable of bearing heavier rolling stock with reasonable safety—an initial problem of doubtful solution, and with it the second is coupled. If this line were practically rebuilt, at immense cost to the Belgian Exchequer, what reasonable guarantee has Belgium that for all time the French Government will refrain from constructing a railway from the seaboard of French Congo to Kwamouth on the confluence of the Kasai with the main Congo? Given such a condition, it is all over with the Belgian Congo railway. We know that many patriotic and far-sighted Frenchmen are seriously considering this proposition. Then, too, the French are great railway engineers, and I am informed that the physical conditions of the country through which such railway would pass are entirely good. If the French line were built, the Upper Congo would be brought at least five days nearer Europe for passengers and mails, while merchandise would probably save three weeks to a month in reaching its destination.

Even if Belgium provided an unchallengeable connecting link between the lower and upper reaches of the two fluvial systems, the Congo river is beset with political potentialities of no mean order. It remains to-day an international highway which presumably any five European Powers may, if they so choose, bring under the control of a five-Power river board of management. As an asset the Congo river is gravely depreciated by the topographical features from Stanley Pool to the mouth which place the whole Congo colony at the mercy of the Power which holds French Congo, and thereby the highway to the ocean.

Given security of control and also of communication, what economic future, actual and potential, is there for Belgian Congo?

VEGETABLE ASSETS