Stairs Expedition to Katanga

The mission became notable when a local chief, (Mwenda Msiri), was killed, and also for the fact that Stairs, the leader of one side, actually held a commission in the army of the other.

On one side of the race was the Congo Free State, Belgian King Leopold II's instrument for private colonisation in Central Africa.

Like the newcomers, he had plenty of cunning and strategic sense, but this time he was the one with the inferior military technology (as well as being totally opposed to the British concept of abolitionism).

[4] The idea of democracy was spreading in Europe all throughout the nineteenth century, and, increasingly, governments were required to take account of public opinion.

This expedition was hampered by an accident when the gunpowder it was bringing for Msiri blew up, killing several men and damaging some of the other gifts being brought to sweeten the deal.

A Belgian officer from the expedition, Legat, stayed behind with a group of askaris at a boma on the Lufoi River about 40 km from Bunkeya to keep an eye on Msiri.

[19] Having taken Katanga they should then await the arrival of a second Free State column, the Bia Expedition led by two Belgian officers, which was coming down from the Congo River in the north to meet them.

Instead they crossed German East Africa from Zanzibar, marching 1050 km during the dry season to Lake Tanganyika through country with potentially hostile tribes and slave traders.

They crossed the lake by boat, then marched 550 km to Bunkeya as extreme heat and humidity indicated the build-up to the rainy season which then brought chilling rain, mosquitoes and unsanitary conditions.

[27] Some accounts say that the Delcommune Expedition, still in the south of Katanga but out of contact with Stairs, was fomenting revolt among Msiri's subject tribes.

[28] Bonchamps noted that as Msiri's main army of 5000 warriors had gone south led by one 'Loukoukou' to put down a rebellion by a subject tribe, he was less belligerent, at least on the surface.

[30][31] Msiri's capital at Bunkeya consisted of a very large boma surrounded by numerous villages spread over an area several kilometres across.

[35] Concern was growing that Thomson might appear at any time, or that the 5000 warriors would return from the south, so Bonchamps proposed capturing Msiri when he went out at night relatively unguarded to see his favourite wife, Maria de Fonseca, and holding him hostage.

He decided instead on an ultimatum: he told Msiri to sign a treaty and hold a ceremony of blood brotherhood with him the next day, and that he would fly the Free State flag without his consent, which he proceeded to do.

[37] At Munema Bodson and Bonchamps found a large guarded stockade surrounding a hundred huts and a maze of narrow alleys, with Msiri somewhere inside.

[41] On the hill to which they retreated, according to Bonchamps but not mentioned by Moloney, the expedition cut off Msiri's head and hoisted it on a palisade in plain view, to show the people their king was dead.

Bonchamps, who had written about the disgust of seeing how Msiri had put heads of his enemies on poles outside his boma, admitted this was barbaric, but claimed it was a necessary lesson aimed at those who had attacked the expedition 'without provocation'.

[44] After the burial, negotiations re-opened and included Maria de Fonseca (later executed by Mukanda-Bantu in horrible fashion for 'betrayal') and her brother, Msiri's Portuguese-Angolan trading partner, Coimbra.

The rainy season brought malaria and dysentery, all four surviving officers fell sick, and floods cut Bunkeya off from the game-rich plains to the north where they might have hunted.

Stairs had severe fevers, and in his delirium he imagined Thomson had arrived, and yelled for his revolver with which to repel the BSAC man; Moloney had wisely taken it from him.

As they left carrying the sick officers in hammocks they experienced some harassment and raids by natives ruled by Lukuku, and the march was exceptionally hard owing to the heavy rains at the end of the wet season (as well as to the continuing illness and weakness of expedition members).

From the north end of Lake Nyasa onwards the route was by steamer, except for a march of about 150 km around the rapids on the Shire River.

Here the route took them past Zomba and Blantyre, headquarters of the British Commissioner for Central Africa, none other than Alfred Sharpe, the BSAC agent whom they had beaten in the race.

[52] On a second steamer down the Zambezi, Stairs, who seemed to have recovered, suddenly took sick again and died on June 3, 1892, of haematuric fever, a severe form of malaria, before they reached Chinde, a river transport base, where he was buried in the European cemetery.

[33] Bonchamps, Moloney and Robinson reached Europe barely two weeks after sailing from Zanzibar, and just over 14 months after having left Paris and London on the expedition.

[54] The expedition had only survived through the strength and endurance of the Zanzibari porters and askaris, as well as the tendency of a loyal core of them, epitomised by Hamadi bin Malum, to come to the rescue when mutiny, treachery, robbery or some other disaster threatened.

Keeping it separate from the rest of the Free State, Leopold delegated the administration of Katanga to another of his companies, which set up on the northern and western shores of Lake Mweru.

The Belgians forcibly moved Mukanda-Bantu and about 10,000 of his people to the Lufoi River where they continued the chieftainship under the title 'Mwami Mwenda' in honour of Msiri.

This divided culturally and ethnically similar people such as the Kazembe-Lunda and created the Congo Pedicle, an example of the arbitrary nature of colonial borders.

In the traditional belief systems of the Garanganze people, as with other Central and Southern African cultures, illness and disease are not caused by pathogens but by magic and supernatural forces.