The Republic of Congo has adopted a five years National Development Plan (NDP) and a Strategic Document for Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction (DSCERP).
One of the strategic pillars of NDP and DSCERP is the Economic diversification through seven economic clusters, including tourism and hospitality.
With the aim to realize this strategic choice, the Government decided to draw up and adopt a "Sustainable Tourism Development Master Plan" to lay the foundations for planned tourism.
The Plan includes a high contribution of the achievement of the economic diversification and the development of the country as stipulated by the PND and the DSCERP.
Beginning in 2013, a consultation framework was implemented by the UNDP Representative Office in the Republic of Congo. The objective was to ensure the efforts for the tourist activity development in the Republic of Congo.
The project "Development of the strategy and of the master plan for the sustainable tourism development" was launched in December 2014 and were made throughout the following year.
The Master Plan will be the tool for the implementation of the Government’s vision for the tourism sector.
The principal interest has been to define the main orientations of the sector and fix the medium and long-term objectives, by describing the programs and projects to be implemented to achieve these objectives in a coordinated, synergistic and coherent way.
The goal is to build a touristic industry, better contribute to the Republic of Congo’s economic and social development.
The success of the master plan implementation is largely dependent on the involvement of other sectors of the economy, the process considered the following aspects:
– The tourism statistics
– The institutional and regulatory aspects of tourism
– Financing and investment in the sector
– The development of tourist sites
– The installation and promotion of the tourist sites
– The transport and infrastructure equipment
– The tourism education.
The country holds a remarkable physical potential and, sometimes exceptional. These assets could contribute to improve the population living conditions, if they are developed and marketed in a sustainable development perspective.
Like other regional economic blocks; CEMAC countries, the Government of Congo is compelled to diversify the economy, particularly in the service industry with a focus on tourism.
A very ambitious objective to ensure this diversification is this sector tends to contribute to the national economy, around 10% of GDP.
The first national tourism conferences in the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville had an objective to provide a privileged moment of exchange and discussion between the main actors, both national and international, interested in the sector with the view to allow the government to put the bases of the implementation of its politics.
Tourism Observer
www.tourismobserver.com
Tourism, Travel, Hospitality, Conservation: News,Stories And Experiences From Allover The World
Showing posts with label Congo Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congo Holidays. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 July 2017
Saturday, 22 July 2017
DR CONGO: River Congo The River Swallowing Rivers
The Congo River is the second longest river in Africa after Nile and the second largest river in the world by discharge volume of water after the Amazon, and the world's deepest river with measured depths in excess of 220 m (720 ft).The Congo-Chambeshi river has an overall length of 4,700 km (2,920 mi), which makes it the ninth-longest river in terms of discharge, the Chambeshi is a tributary of the Lualaba River, Lualaba being the name of the Congo River upstream of the Boyoma Falls, extending for 1,800 km. Measured along the Lualaba, the Congo River has a total length of 4,370 km (2,715 mi). It crosses the equator twice.The Congo Basin has a total area of about 4 million km2, or 13% of the entire African landmass.
The name River Congo originated from the Kingdom of Kongo which was located on the southern bank of the river. The kingdom in turn is named for the Bantu population, in the 17th century reported as "Esikongo".South of the Kongo kingdom proper lay the similarly named Kakongo kingdom, mentioned in 1535. Abraham Ortelius in his world map of 1564 labels as Manicongo the city at the mouth of the river.The tribal names in kongo possibly derive from a word for a public gathering or tribal assembly. The modern name of the Kongo people or Bakongo was introduced in the early 20th century.
The name Zaire is from a Portuguese adaptation of a Kikongo word nzere or river, a truncation of nzadi o nzere meaning river swallowing rivers.The river was known as Zaire during the 16th and 17th centuries; Congo seems to have replaced Zaire gradually in English usage during the 18th century, and Congo is the preferred English name in 19th-century literature, although references to Zahir or Zaire as the name used by the inhabitants remained common.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo are named after it, as was the previous Republic of the Congo which had gained independence in 1960 from the Belgian Congo.
The state of Zaire during 1971–1997 was also named after the river, after its name in French and Portuguese.
The Congo's drainage basin covers 4,014,500 square kilometres (1,550,000 sq mi).The Congo's discharge at its mouth ranges from 23,000 to 75,000 cubic metres per second (810,000 to 2,650,000 cu ft/s), with an average of 41,000 cubic metres per second (1,400,000 cu ft/s).
The river and its tributaries flow through the Congo Rainforest, the second largest rain forest area in the world, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. The river also has the second-largest flow in the world, behind the Amazon; the third-largest drainage basin of any river, behind the Amazon and Plate rivers; and is one of the deepest rivers in the world, at depths greater than 220 m (720 ft).Because its drainage basin includes areas both north and south of the equator, its flow is stable, as there is always at least one part of the river experiencing a rainy season.
The sources of the Congo are in the highlands and mountains of the East African Rift, as well as Lake Tanganyika and Lake Mweru, which feed the Lualaba River, which then becomes the Congo below Boyoma Falls. The Chambeshi River in Zambia is generally taken as the source of the Congo in line with the accepted practice worldwide of using the longest tributary, as with the Nile River.
The Congo flows generally toward the northwest from Kisangani just below the Boyoma falls, then gradually bends southwestwards, passing by Mbandaka, joining with the Ubangi River, and running into the Pool Malebo (Stanley Pool). Kinshasa formerly Léopoldville and Brazzaville are on opposite sides of the river at the Pool, where the river narrows and falls through a number of cataracts in deep canyons collectively known as the Livingstone Falls, running by Matadi and Boma, and into the sea at the small town of Muanda.
The Congo River Basin is one of the distinct physiographic sections of the larger Mid-African province, which in turn is part of the larger African massive physiographic division.
Tributaries To River Congo
Middle Congo
- Kwa-Kassai (left) – 2150 km – 881,900 km2, 9,900 m3/s
- Fimi
- Lukenie
- Kwango
- Sankuru
- Lefini (right)
- Sangha (right) – 1,400 km, 213,400 km2, 750 m3/s
- Kadei
- Ubangi/ (right) – 2,270 km, 772,800 km2, 4,000 m3/s
- Mbomou
- Uele
- Tshuapa River (left) – 1,000 km
- Lomami River (left) – 1,400 km
Upper Congo
Upstream of Boyoma Falls near Kisangani, the river Congo is known as the Lualaba River.
- Luvua
- Luapula
- Chambeshi
Although the Livingstone Falls prevent access from the sea, nearly the entire Congo above them is readily navigable in sections, especially between Kinshasa and Kisangani. Large river steamers worked the river until quite recently. The Congo River still is a lifeline in a land with few roads or railways.
Railways now bypass the three major falls, and much of the trade of Central Africa passes along the river, including copper, palm oil, sugar, coffee, and cotton. The river is also potentially valuable for hydroelectric power, and the Inga Dams below Pool Malebo are first to exploit the Congo river.
The Congo River is the most powerful river in Africa. During the rainy season over 50,000 cubic metres (1,800,000 cu ft) of water per second flow into the Atlantic Ocean. Opportunities for the Congo River and its tributaries to generate hydropower are therefore enormous. Scientists have calculated that the entire Congo Basin accounts for 13 percent of global hydropower potential. This would provide sufficient power for all of sub-Saharan Africa's electricity needs.
Currently there are about forty hydropower plants in the Congo Basin. The largest is the Inga Falls dam, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) southwest of Kinshasa. The project was launched in the early 1970s, when the first dam was completed.The plan as originally conceived called for the construction of five dams that would have had a total generating capacity of 34,500 megawatts. To date only two dams have been built, which are the Inga I and Inga II, with a total of fourteen turbines.
In February 2005, South Africa's state-owned power company, Eskom, announced a proposal to increase the capacity of the Inga dramatically through improvements and the construction of a new hydroelectric dam. The project would bring the maximum output of the facility to 40 gigawatts (54,000,000 hp), twice that of China's Three Gorges Dam.
It is feared that these new hydroelectric dams could lead to the extinction of many of the fish species that are endemic to the river.
The current course of the Congo River formed 1.5–2 million years BP, during the Pleistocene.
The Congo's formation may have led to the allopatric speciation of the bonobo and the common chimpanzee from their most recent common ancestor.The bonobo is endemic to the humid forests in the region, as are other iconic species like the Allen's swamp monkey, dryas monkey, aquatic genet, okapi and Congo peafowl.
In terms of aquatic life, the Congo River Basin has a very high species richness, and among the highest known concentrations of endemics.Until now, almost 700 fish species have been recorded from the Congo River Basin, and large sections remain virtually unstudied.This is by far the highest diversity of any African river system in comparison, the next richest are the Niger, Volta and Nile with about 210, 140 and 130 fish species, respectively.
Due to this and the great ecological differences between the regions in the Congo basin, it is often divided into multiple ecoregions instead of treating it as a single ecoregion. Among these ecoregions, the Lower Congo Rapids alone has more than 300 fish species, including approximately 80 endemics while the southwestern part (Kasai Basin) alone has more than 200 fish species, of which about a quarter are endemic.
The dominant fish families at least in parts of the river are Cyprinidae (carp/cyprinids, such as Labeo simpsoni), Mormyridae (elephantfishes), Alestidae (African tetras), Mochokidae (squeaker catfishes), and Cichlidae (cichlids).Among the natives in the river is the huge, highly carnivorous giant tigerfish. Three of the more unusual endemics are the whitish (non-pigmented) and blind Lamprologus lethops, which is believed to live as deep as 160 metres (520 ft) below the surface.
Heterochromis multidens, which appears to be more closely related to cichlids of the Americas than other African cichlids,and Caecobarbus geertsii, the only known cavefish in Central Africa. There are also numerous endemic frogs and snails. Several hydroelectric dams are planned on the river, and these may lead to the extinction of many of the endemics.
Several species of turtles, and the slender-snouted, Nile and dwarf crocodile are native to the Congo River Basin. African manatees inhabit the lower parts of the river.
The entire Congo basin is populated by Bantu peoples, divided into several hundred ethnic or tribal groups. Bantu expansion is estimated to have reached the Middle Congo by about 500 BC, and the Upper Congo by the first century AD. Remnants of the aboriginal population displaced by the Bantu migration, Pygmies/Abatwa of the Ubangian phylum, remain in the remote forest areas of the Congo basin.
The Kingdom of Kongo was formed around 1400 on the left banks of the lower Congo River. Its territorial control along the river remained limited to what corresponds to the modern Bas-Congo province. European exploration of the Congo begins in 1482, when Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao discovered the river estuary likely in August 1482, which he marked by a Padrao, or stone pillar still existing, but only in fragments, erected on Shark Point. Cao also sailed up the river for a short distance, establishing contact with the Kingdom of Congo. The full course of the river remained unknown throughout the early modern period.
The upper Congo basin runs west of the Albertine Rift.Its connection to the Congo was unknown until 1877. The extreme northeast of the Congo basin was reached by the Nilotic expansion at some point between the 15th and 18th centuries, by the ancestors of the Southern Luo speaking Alur people. Francisco de Lacerda following the Zambezi reached the uppermost part of the Congo basin ,the Kazembe in the upper Luapula basin in 1796.
The upper Congo River, known as the Lualaba was first reached by the Arab slave trade by the 19th century. Nyangwe was founded as a slavers' outpost around 1860. David Livingstone was the first European to reach Nyangwe in March 1871.Livingstone proposed to prove that the Lualaba connected to the Nile, but on 15 July, he witnessed a massacre of about 400 Africans by Arab slavers in Nyangwe, which experience left him too horrified and shattered to continue his mission to find the sources of the Nile, so he turned back to Lake Tanganyika.
The middle reaches of the Congo remained unexplored from either the east or west, until Henry Morton Stanley's expedition of 1876–77. At the time one of the last open questions of the exploration of Africa or indeed of the world whether the Lualaba River fed the Nile, the Congo or even the Niger. Financed in 1874, Stanley's first trans-Africa exploration started in Zanzibar, and reached the Lualaba on October 17, 1876. Overland he reached Nyangwe, the centre of a lawless area containing cannibal tribes at which Tippu Tip based his trade in slaves.
Stanley managed to hire a force from Tippu Tip, to guard him for the next 150 kilometres (90 mi) or so, for 90 days. The party left Nyangwe overland through the dense Matimba forest. On November 19 they reached the Lualaba again. Since the going through the forest was so heavy, Tippu Tip turned around with his party on December 28, leaving Stanley on his own, with 143 people, including 8 children and 16 women. They had 23 canoes. His first encounter with a local tribe was with the cannibal Wenya.
In total Stanley would report 32 unfriendly meetings on the river, some violent, even though he attempted to negotiate a peaceful thoroughfare. But the tribes were wary as their only experience of outsiders was of slave traders.
On January 6, 1877, after 640 kilometres (400 mi), they reached Boyoma Falls, consisting of seven cataracts spanning 100 kilometres (60 mi) which they had to bypass overland. It took them to February 7 to reach the end of the falls. Here Stanley learned that the river was called Ikuta Yacongo, proving to him that he had reached the Congo, and that the Lualaba did not feed the Nile.
From this point, the tribes were no longer cannibals, but possessed firearms, apparently as a result of Portuguese influence. Some four weeks and 1,900 kilometres (1,200 mi) later he reached Stanley Pool now Pool Malebo, the site of the present day cities Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Further downstream were the Livingstone Falls, misnamed as Livingstone had never been on the Congo: a series of 32 falls and rapids with a fall of 270 metres (900 ft) over 350 kilometres (220 mi).
On 15 March they started the descent of the falls, which took five months and cost numerous lives. From the Isangile Falls, five falls from the foot, they beached the canoes and Lady Alice and left the river, aiming for the Portuguese outpost of Boma via land. On August 3 they reached the hamlet Nsada. From there Stanley sent four men with letters forward to Boma, asking for food for his starving people. On August 7 relief came, being sent by representatives from the Liverpool trading firm Hatton & Cookson.
On August 9 they reached Boma, 1,001 days since leaving Zanzibar on November 12, 1874. The party then consisted of 108 people, including three children born during the trip. Most probably, he lost 132 people through disease, hunger, drowning, killing and desertion.
The Congo River is the main transportation source in Central Africa. The river along with all the streams that lead into it provide over nine thousand miles (14,500 kilometers) of navigable shipping routes in Central Africa. A tremendous amount of goods are transported on the river every day.
The Congo River is an extremely powerful river; in fact it is the most powerful river in Africa. On average one million four hundred thousand cubic feet of water (41,000 cubic meters) flows into the Atlantic Ocean every second from the river. There are approximately forty hydropower plants along the river that utilize this power to provide energy for the African continent.
Congo River Important Points
- It is the second longest river in Africa the Nile is the longest.
- It is the ninth longest river in the world.
- The Congo River is the deepest river in the world. It reaches depths of over 750 feet (230 meters).
- The river gets its name from the ancient Kongo Kingdom which existed near the mouth of the river.
- The river runs through the Congo rainforest which is the second largest rain forest in the world.
- It is also called the Zaire River.
- The rivers sources are in the mountains and highlands of the East African Rift, as well as Lake Tanganyika and Lake Mweru.
- The Congo River is so powerful that if has the potential to supply all of sub-Saharan Africa's electricity needs.
- In 1482 Diego Cao was the first European known to sight and enter the Congo River.
- The main tributaries are the Ubangi, Sangha, and Kasai.
- There are more than 4,000 islands in the river; over fifty are at least ten miles long.
- The river crosses the equator twice.
- The river discharges a volume of water that is second only to the Amazon River.
- Numerous cataracts large or high waterfalls, dangerous rapids, and numerous islands make navigation difficult or impossible in certain areas of the river.
- Two countries are named after the river, they are The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
- The amount of water flowing out of the river is fairly constant year round due to the fact that some part of the river is always in a rainy season.
- Approximately seven hundred fish species have been recorded living in the Congo River. The total is probably much larger.
- The Congo River formed approximately 1.5 - 2 million years ago during the Pleistocene period.
Tourism Observer
www.tourismobserver.com
Kinshasa was founded as a trading post by Stanley in 1881 and named Léopoldville in honour of Leopold II of Belgium. The Congo basin was claimed by Belgium as Congo Free State in 1885.
The name River Congo originated from the Kingdom of Kongo which was located on the southern bank of the river. The kingdom in turn is named for the Bantu population, in the 17th century reported as "Esikongo".South of the Kongo kingdom proper lay the similarly named Kakongo kingdom, mentioned in 1535. Abraham Ortelius in his world map of 1564 labels as Manicongo the city at the mouth of the river.The tribal names in kongo possibly derive from a word for a public gathering or tribal assembly. The modern name of the Kongo people or Bakongo was introduced in the early 20th century.
The name Zaire is from a Portuguese adaptation of a Kikongo word nzere or river, a truncation of nzadi o nzere meaning river swallowing rivers.The river was known as Zaire during the 16th and 17th centuries; Congo seems to have replaced Zaire gradually in English usage during the 18th century, and Congo is the preferred English name in 19th-century literature, although references to Zahir or Zaire as the name used by the inhabitants remained common.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo are named after it, as was the previous Republic of the Congo which had gained independence in 1960 from the Belgian Congo.
The state of Zaire during 1971–1997 was also named after the river, after its name in French and Portuguese.
The Congo's drainage basin covers 4,014,500 square kilometres (1,550,000 sq mi).The Congo's discharge at its mouth ranges from 23,000 to 75,000 cubic metres per second (810,000 to 2,650,000 cu ft/s), with an average of 41,000 cubic metres per second (1,400,000 cu ft/s).
The river and its tributaries flow through the Congo Rainforest, the second largest rain forest area in the world, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. The river also has the second-largest flow in the world, behind the Amazon; the third-largest drainage basin of any river, behind the Amazon and Plate rivers; and is one of the deepest rivers in the world, at depths greater than 220 m (720 ft).Because its drainage basin includes areas both north and south of the equator, its flow is stable, as there is always at least one part of the river experiencing a rainy season.
The sources of the Congo are in the highlands and mountains of the East African Rift, as well as Lake Tanganyika and Lake Mweru, which feed the Lualaba River, which then becomes the Congo below Boyoma Falls. The Chambeshi River in Zambia is generally taken as the source of the Congo in line with the accepted practice worldwide of using the longest tributary, as with the Nile River.
The Congo flows generally toward the northwest from Kisangani just below the Boyoma falls, then gradually bends southwestwards, passing by Mbandaka, joining with the Ubangi River, and running into the Pool Malebo (Stanley Pool). Kinshasa formerly Léopoldville and Brazzaville are on opposite sides of the river at the Pool, where the river narrows and falls through a number of cataracts in deep canyons collectively known as the Livingstone Falls, running by Matadi and Boma, and into the sea at the small town of Muanda.
The Congo River Basin is one of the distinct physiographic sections of the larger Mid-African province, which in turn is part of the larger African massive physiographic division.
Tributaries To River Congo
Middle Congo
- Kwa-Kassai (left) – 2150 km – 881,900 km2, 9,900 m3/s
- Fimi
- Lukenie
- Kwango
- Sankuru
- Lefini (right)
- Sangha (right) – 1,400 km, 213,400 km2, 750 m3/s
- Kadei
- Ubangi/ (right) – 2,270 km, 772,800 km2, 4,000 m3/s
- Mbomou
- Uele
- Tshuapa River (left) – 1,000 km
- Lomami River (left) – 1,400 km
Upper Congo
Upstream of Boyoma Falls near Kisangani, the river Congo is known as the Lualaba River.
- Luvua
- Luapula
- Chambeshi
Although the Livingstone Falls prevent access from the sea, nearly the entire Congo above them is readily navigable in sections, especially between Kinshasa and Kisangani. Large river steamers worked the river until quite recently. The Congo River still is a lifeline in a land with few roads or railways.
Railways now bypass the three major falls, and much of the trade of Central Africa passes along the river, including copper, palm oil, sugar, coffee, and cotton. The river is also potentially valuable for hydroelectric power, and the Inga Dams below Pool Malebo are first to exploit the Congo river.
The Congo River is the most powerful river in Africa. During the rainy season over 50,000 cubic metres (1,800,000 cu ft) of water per second flow into the Atlantic Ocean. Opportunities for the Congo River and its tributaries to generate hydropower are therefore enormous. Scientists have calculated that the entire Congo Basin accounts for 13 percent of global hydropower potential. This would provide sufficient power for all of sub-Saharan Africa's electricity needs.
Currently there are about forty hydropower plants in the Congo Basin. The largest is the Inga Falls dam, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) southwest of Kinshasa. The project was launched in the early 1970s, when the first dam was completed.The plan as originally conceived called for the construction of five dams that would have had a total generating capacity of 34,500 megawatts. To date only two dams have been built, which are the Inga I and Inga II, with a total of fourteen turbines.
In February 2005, South Africa's state-owned power company, Eskom, announced a proposal to increase the capacity of the Inga dramatically through improvements and the construction of a new hydroelectric dam. The project would bring the maximum output of the facility to 40 gigawatts (54,000,000 hp), twice that of China's Three Gorges Dam.
It is feared that these new hydroelectric dams could lead to the extinction of many of the fish species that are endemic to the river.
The current course of the Congo River formed 1.5–2 million years BP, during the Pleistocene.
The Congo's formation may have led to the allopatric speciation of the bonobo and the common chimpanzee from their most recent common ancestor.The bonobo is endemic to the humid forests in the region, as are other iconic species like the Allen's swamp monkey, dryas monkey, aquatic genet, okapi and Congo peafowl.
In terms of aquatic life, the Congo River Basin has a very high species richness, and among the highest known concentrations of endemics.Until now, almost 700 fish species have been recorded from the Congo River Basin, and large sections remain virtually unstudied.This is by far the highest diversity of any African river system in comparison, the next richest are the Niger, Volta and Nile with about 210, 140 and 130 fish species, respectively.
Due to this and the great ecological differences between the regions in the Congo basin, it is often divided into multiple ecoregions instead of treating it as a single ecoregion. Among these ecoregions, the Lower Congo Rapids alone has more than 300 fish species, including approximately 80 endemics while the southwestern part (Kasai Basin) alone has more than 200 fish species, of which about a quarter are endemic.
The dominant fish families at least in parts of the river are Cyprinidae (carp/cyprinids, such as Labeo simpsoni), Mormyridae (elephantfishes), Alestidae (African tetras), Mochokidae (squeaker catfishes), and Cichlidae (cichlids).Among the natives in the river is the huge, highly carnivorous giant tigerfish. Three of the more unusual endemics are the whitish (non-pigmented) and blind Lamprologus lethops, which is believed to live as deep as 160 metres (520 ft) below the surface.
Heterochromis multidens, which appears to be more closely related to cichlids of the Americas than other African cichlids,and Caecobarbus geertsii, the only known cavefish in Central Africa. There are also numerous endemic frogs and snails. Several hydroelectric dams are planned on the river, and these may lead to the extinction of many of the endemics.
Several species of turtles, and the slender-snouted, Nile and dwarf crocodile are native to the Congo River Basin. African manatees inhabit the lower parts of the river.
The entire Congo basin is populated by Bantu peoples, divided into several hundred ethnic or tribal groups. Bantu expansion is estimated to have reached the Middle Congo by about 500 BC, and the Upper Congo by the first century AD. Remnants of the aboriginal population displaced by the Bantu migration, Pygmies/Abatwa of the Ubangian phylum, remain in the remote forest areas of the Congo basin.
The Kingdom of Kongo was formed around 1400 on the left banks of the lower Congo River. Its territorial control along the river remained limited to what corresponds to the modern Bas-Congo province. European exploration of the Congo begins in 1482, when Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao discovered the river estuary likely in August 1482, which he marked by a Padrao, or stone pillar still existing, but only in fragments, erected on Shark Point. Cao also sailed up the river for a short distance, establishing contact with the Kingdom of Congo. The full course of the river remained unknown throughout the early modern period.
The upper Congo basin runs west of the Albertine Rift.Its connection to the Congo was unknown until 1877. The extreme northeast of the Congo basin was reached by the Nilotic expansion at some point between the 15th and 18th centuries, by the ancestors of the Southern Luo speaking Alur people. Francisco de Lacerda following the Zambezi reached the uppermost part of the Congo basin ,the Kazembe in the upper Luapula basin in 1796.
The upper Congo River, known as the Lualaba was first reached by the Arab slave trade by the 19th century. Nyangwe was founded as a slavers' outpost around 1860. David Livingstone was the first European to reach Nyangwe in March 1871.Livingstone proposed to prove that the Lualaba connected to the Nile, but on 15 July, he witnessed a massacre of about 400 Africans by Arab slavers in Nyangwe, which experience left him too horrified and shattered to continue his mission to find the sources of the Nile, so he turned back to Lake Tanganyika.
The middle reaches of the Congo remained unexplored from either the east or west, until Henry Morton Stanley's expedition of 1876–77. At the time one of the last open questions of the exploration of Africa or indeed of the world whether the Lualaba River fed the Nile, the Congo or even the Niger. Financed in 1874, Stanley's first trans-Africa exploration started in Zanzibar, and reached the Lualaba on October 17, 1876. Overland he reached Nyangwe, the centre of a lawless area containing cannibal tribes at which Tippu Tip based his trade in slaves.
Stanley managed to hire a force from Tippu Tip, to guard him for the next 150 kilometres (90 mi) or so, for 90 days. The party left Nyangwe overland through the dense Matimba forest. On November 19 they reached the Lualaba again. Since the going through the forest was so heavy, Tippu Tip turned around with his party on December 28, leaving Stanley on his own, with 143 people, including 8 children and 16 women. They had 23 canoes. His first encounter with a local tribe was with the cannibal Wenya.
In total Stanley would report 32 unfriendly meetings on the river, some violent, even though he attempted to negotiate a peaceful thoroughfare. But the tribes were wary as their only experience of outsiders was of slave traders.
On January 6, 1877, after 640 kilometres (400 mi), they reached Boyoma Falls, consisting of seven cataracts spanning 100 kilometres (60 mi) which they had to bypass overland. It took them to February 7 to reach the end of the falls. Here Stanley learned that the river was called Ikuta Yacongo, proving to him that he had reached the Congo, and that the Lualaba did not feed the Nile.
From this point, the tribes were no longer cannibals, but possessed firearms, apparently as a result of Portuguese influence. Some four weeks and 1,900 kilometres (1,200 mi) later he reached Stanley Pool now Pool Malebo, the site of the present day cities Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Further downstream were the Livingstone Falls, misnamed as Livingstone had never been on the Congo: a series of 32 falls and rapids with a fall of 270 metres (900 ft) over 350 kilometres (220 mi).
On 15 March they started the descent of the falls, which took five months and cost numerous lives. From the Isangile Falls, five falls from the foot, they beached the canoes and Lady Alice and left the river, aiming for the Portuguese outpost of Boma via land. On August 3 they reached the hamlet Nsada. From there Stanley sent four men with letters forward to Boma, asking for food for his starving people. On August 7 relief came, being sent by representatives from the Liverpool trading firm Hatton & Cookson.
On August 9 they reached Boma, 1,001 days since leaving Zanzibar on November 12, 1874. The party then consisted of 108 people, including three children born during the trip. Most probably, he lost 132 people through disease, hunger, drowning, killing and desertion.
The Congo River is the main transportation source in Central Africa. The river along with all the streams that lead into it provide over nine thousand miles (14,500 kilometers) of navigable shipping routes in Central Africa. A tremendous amount of goods are transported on the river every day.
The Congo River is an extremely powerful river; in fact it is the most powerful river in Africa. On average one million four hundred thousand cubic feet of water (41,000 cubic meters) flows into the Atlantic Ocean every second from the river. There are approximately forty hydropower plants along the river that utilize this power to provide energy for the African continent.
Congo River Important Points
- It is the second longest river in Africa the Nile is the longest.
- It is the ninth longest river in the world.
- The Congo River is the deepest river in the world. It reaches depths of over 750 feet (230 meters).
- The river gets its name from the ancient Kongo Kingdom which existed near the mouth of the river.
- The river runs through the Congo rainforest which is the second largest rain forest in the world.
- It is also called the Zaire River.
- The rivers sources are in the mountains and highlands of the East African Rift, as well as Lake Tanganyika and Lake Mweru.
- The Congo River is so powerful that if has the potential to supply all of sub-Saharan Africa's electricity needs.
- In 1482 Diego Cao was the first European known to sight and enter the Congo River.
- The main tributaries are the Ubangi, Sangha, and Kasai.
- There are more than 4,000 islands in the river; over fifty are at least ten miles long.
- The river crosses the equator twice.
- The river discharges a volume of water that is second only to the Amazon River.
- Numerous cataracts large or high waterfalls, dangerous rapids, and numerous islands make navigation difficult or impossible in certain areas of the river.
- Two countries are named after the river, they are The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
- The amount of water flowing out of the river is fairly constant year round due to the fact that some part of the river is always in a rainy season.
- Approximately seven hundred fish species have been recorded living in the Congo River. The total is probably much larger.
- The Congo River formed approximately 1.5 - 2 million years ago during the Pleistocene period.
Tourism Observer
www.tourismobserver.com
Kinshasa was founded as a trading post by Stanley in 1881 and named Léopoldville in honour of Leopold II of Belgium. The Congo basin was claimed by Belgium as Congo Free State in 1885.
Wednesday, 5 July 2017
DR CONGO: Luba People Of Katanga, Kasai, Maniema
The Luba people or Baluba are a large Bantu ethnic group from Central Africa, indigenous to the southern-central Democratic Republic of the Congo.They are widely distributed in this country, but are most concentrated in its Katanga, Kasai, and Maniema provinces.
The Luba people consist of many sub-groups with distinct Luba language dialects, of which three are main: the Luba-Kasai, Luba-Katanga, and Swahili languages.
The Luba people founded an ancient culture by about the 5th century, and later a well organized, pre-colonial Kingdom of Luba in the Upemba Depression region of Central Africa.They had developed the knowledge and means to extracts various metals from the rich mineral resources close to them, as well as the skills in wood carving, pottery, sophisticated metal objects, ivory artwork and jewelry.
Their success and wealth grew in relative isolation given their forested mountainous inland location, then attracted traders, raids and wars in second half of the 19th century.The Luba people were a victim of the slave and ivory trade, both to the Atlantic coast by Portuguese slave traders, as well as to the East African coast by Swahili-Arab slave traders particularly in the 19th-century.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Luba people had, by the middle of 5th century AD, settled around the lakes and marshes of the Upemba Depression, in what is now the southeastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The evidence suggesting an advanced Iron Age society by then comes from multiple sites, and these are among the best developed archaeological records in Central Africa. The Kamilambian, Kisalian and Kabambian series of evidence has been dated to be from 5th to 14th-century, suggesting a settled stable Luba culture over many centuries.
Of these, the Kisalian period (8th to 11th century) pottery and utensils found, were crafted with extraordinary excellence. The finds dated to pre-8th century by modern dating methods are iron objects or pottery, thereafter copper objects appear.
The archaeological studies suggest that the Luba people lived in villages, in homes made of reeds and wattle, around the shores of numerous streams and lakes found in the Upemba Depression of Central Africa.This Depression has been historically flooded from the water runoff from southern Shaba highlands for parts of the year, its water bodies filled with papyrus islands and floating vegetation, the region drying out after rains ended.
As a community, the Luba people constructed dams and dikes as high as 6 to 8 feet using mud, papyrus and other vegetation, to improve the marshy soil conditions for agriculture and stock fish during the long dry season.
The Luba people had developed metal extraction techniques, skills to make utilitarians products from them and high degree of craft specialization.The metal working techniques in use by the early Luba people included drawing out thin wires, twisting and laminating them, plaiting them into complex well designed shapes such as necklaces, bracelets and hooks for fishing, needles for sewing and such.
These products attracted interest and demand from far off ethnic groups, creating trade opportunities and traders amongst the Luba people. This trade and all economic activity in the villages of Luba people had a tribute system, where a portion of the hunt, fish or produce was given to the lineage head or the people guarding the borders.
These were natural borders, such as that created by waters of Lake Upemba, where passage across required channels and bridges. The movement into and out of the Luba people lands was thus controlled and taxed.
Around 1500, possibly earlier, the Luba people began to coalesce into a single, unified state which historians now call the Kingdom of Luba or Luba Empire.The kingdom grew and became more sophisticated over time, reaching its peak between 18th to 19th-century.
The demands, raids and violence of the 19th-century slave and ivory trade by the European colonial empires such as Belgium and the Arab-Swahili chiefs such as Tippu Tip and Msiri tore the Empire apart and ended it.
The political sophistication of the Luba Empire was the adoption of two layers of power, one of Balopwe ereditary kingship and another a council of royals or elders. These provided governance stability through mutual balancing, when there were disputes of succession from death or other causes. This idea was adopted by the neighboring Lunda people and other ethnic groups.
The development and evolution of the Luba Empire, and the life of Luba people therein, has been unclear.This is in part because the Luba people were an entirely oral tradition culture where knowledge and records were verbally preserved without a written script.
The orthography for the Luba language, called kiLuba, was invented in the 19th-century, and thus early information about the Luba Empire has been derived from documents written by others usually hostile and only aware of the communities at the Luba Empire's border, or by the Luba people only in the late 19th-century and the 20th-century after the best decades of the Empire were long over.
Luba people had developed sophisticated literary traditions around their concepts of good and evil, and integrated these concepts and their religious ideas into their legends about morality and people with power.For example, one legend relates to two kings, one called the red king Nkongolo Mwamba and other called the black king Ilunga Mbidi Kiluwe. According to the Luba people's oral history,
There are two kings, the Nkongolo Mwamba or red king, and Mbidi Kiluwe or black king. Nkongolo Mwamba is the violent, cruel and drunken despot; Mbidi Kiluwe is the gentle, just and refined one. Nkongolo is one who gets drunk, is ruthless, mocking, raping, robbing other, seen without manners.
Mbidi Kiluwe is the opposite, one obsessed with good manners, thoughtful, who speaks carefully, is compassionate, keeps his distance, one with self control. Mbidi marries the sister of Nkongolo, and they have a son named Kalala. Nkongolo gets jealous and fearful of Kalala, and schemes to murder him. The guardian spirits, knowing the scheme, protect Kalala.
The Luba people were a part of a large state in the 16th and 17th centuries, ruled by a Balopwe through delegation to regional chiefs.According to the oral tradition by inabanza Kataba, the empire expanded over time, with a major consolidation in the 18th century, partly triggered by the desire by rivals to control the salt and iron mines in the south.
The Luba Empire was shielded from Portuguese and other colonial interests by the Lunda Empire, which lay to their southeast. This shielding was noted by David Livingstone in his travel memoirs, and likely blocked the Angolan traders from regular contact with the Luba people.Around the start of the 19th-century, the oral traditions of both the Luba and Kanyok people suggest a major conflict, led by mutual raids.
This conflict helped the Luba Empire grow, as its king Ilunga Sungu entered into new territories and formed marriage alliances.By 1810 when he died, his fame and reverence among the Luba people had peaked and the site of his royal court had become Kitenta (royal sacred village) where his spirit was venerated.
After the death of Ilunga Sungu, Kumwimbe Ngombe came to power leading his warriors to expand southeast with contacts with traders from East Africa. After his victory, in accordance with Luba traditions, the conquered chiefs and rulers had to marry sisters or daughters from the Luba ruling family in order to tie them into a relationship and loyalty with the Luba Empire capital.
The ivory and slave trade had grown to the east of Luba Empire by mid 19th-century, the natural supplies of ivory exhausted while the international demand for it was increasing. The region under Luba people then had abundantly preserved herds of elephants with their tusk. Kanyembo region, states Thomas Reefe, for example had no ivory to sell.
In 1840, after Kumwimbe Ngombe died of old age, king Ilunga Kabale succeeded to rule the Luba people. He expanded the empire further, till 1870 when he died. By then, the region of Luba people and their Empire covered much of what is now southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, extending for hundreds of kilometers from their early 19th-century heartland.
The success and wealth of Luba people grew in relative isolation because they were far from the eastern and western coasts of Africa, living in difficult to reach terrain.The forests and mountains protected them, as did their neighbors who blocked traders from direct and regular contact with distant international traders, in order to monopolize the gains from trade with international operators.
This originally shielded the Luba from the ill effects of the earlier slave trade. Later, however, the Luba people became victims of the slave demand and trading, in some cases selling people from their own lands as slaves.But, by the 1850s, the traders began intruding into the Luba people lands. Despite a ban on slave trading in the Western world, the eastern and northern parts of Africa, led by Arab-Swahili slave and ivory traders entered into the eastern and northeastern regions of the Luba Empire.
These intruders came with guns, experience of running caravans, other tools of raids and wars. The weapons of the Luba people were primitive, such as bows and arrow. David Livingstone in his memoir wrote how amazed the Luba people were with the guns, thought they were tobacco pipes and the gun was the weapon that mowed down large populations of the Luba.
The notorious slave and ivory trader,Tippu Tip for example wrote, translates Thomas Reefe, Luba had no guns, their weapons were bows and arrows; guns they did not know. The guns we have with us, they asked us, Are they pestles? The conquest of the Luba people was swift.
Msiri, a Tanzanian operator supplying ivory and slaves to the Sultan of Zanzibar, raided and took over the southeastern Shaba region of Luba people.Its other side, the southwestern borders were breached by the Ovimbundu ivory and slave hunters for the Portuguese interests.
While slaves could no longer be exported to the Americas, they were used for work and caravan operations within Africa. Breaches from all sides, by better equipped armies, weakened the Luba Empire rapidly between 1860 and 1880s, and accelerated its demise. In parallel, the news of disarray and confusion from many corners of the Luba Empire, led to internal disputes on succession and strategy when the Luba king Ilunga Kabale died in 1870.
By 1868, Said bin Habib el-Afifi had raided Luba operations and with force taken 10,500 pounds of copper.By 1874, another Arab-Swahili trader Juma bin Salum wad Rakad, and a friend of Tippu Tip, had entered into an agreement with one of the Ilunga Kabale's son and established the base of his elephant hunting and ivory trade operations in the heart of the Luba people's lands.
The Arab-Swahili raids, such as those by Tippu Tip, into Luba people's lands were organized with Nyamwezi subordinates and slave armies.These raids and attacks by the outsiders also introduced smallpox into the Luba population.
In 1885 Leopold II, king of Belgium, secured European recognition of his right over the territories that became what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The first Belgian expedition into the Luba people's region arrived in 1891.The king of Belgium, impressed with the accomplishments of Tippu Tip in getting resources from central Africa, appointed him the governor of the region that included the Luba people's territory.
The Luba people were forced to work in the copper mines of the Katanga province during the Belgian rule, causing numerous mining-related deaths. They rebelled in 1895, then again from 1905 to 1917, and these insurrection was crushed militarily.
In 1960 the Belgians, faced with rising demand for independence and an end to colonial rule, granted independence to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That same year Katanga Province, which was home to a considerable number of Luba, attempted to secede under Moise Tshombe as the State of Katanga.
The Luba were divided, with one faction under Ndaye Emanuel supporting the secession, and another under Kisula Ngoye supporting the central government. When Tshombe's breakaway regime collapsed in 1965, Kisula Ngoye became the liaison between the Luba people and the central government.
The traditional religious beliefs of the Luba people included the concept of a Shakapanga or a Universal Creator, a Leza or the Supreme Being, a natural world and a supernatural world.The supernatural world was where Bankambo (ancestral spirits) and Bavidye (other spirits) lived, and what one joined the afterlife if one lived an Mwikadilo Muyampe (ethical life).The Luba religions accepts the possibility of communion between the living and the dead.
The religious life included prayers, community singing, dances, offerings, rites of passage rituals and invocations.These rituals and services had intermediaries for rites such as Nsengha or Kitobo (priests). In addition, for anxiety and ailments, a Nganga or Mfwintshi (healer) were in service who would perform Lubuko (divination).
The religious thought did not limit itself to rituals, but included ideas of a good personhood, good heart, dignity for others and self-respect. The religious code of civil life and goodness affected the Luba social life.
Christianity was introduced to the Luba people by missionaries who came with the Belgium colonial rule. Some of these missionaries, such as William Burton, performed ethnographic research, starting with an aggressive projective research and teaching the Luba people, but ultimately became sympathetic as he learnt and understood their traditional beliefs and cultural richness.
The Luba people tended to cluster in single street villages, with homes with rectangular thatched roofs on both sides of the street whose lineage is usually related.The homes were in the savanna and forests. They hunted, fished in abundant waters near them, gathered food such as fruits from the wild and had mastered agriculture. In contemporary era, they grow cassava, corn, raise livestock. Some Luba carve wood and produce artist handicrafts.
Art was well developed in the Luba culture. Pottery, articles crafted from iron (such as axes, bows and spears), wooden staff and carvings and parts clad in sheets of copper were routinely produced. A notable artform of the Luba people was the Mwadi, where the male ancestors were represent in their female incarnations of the ancestral kings.
Some of the intricate art works of the Luba people were mnemonic devices, a form of symbolic coded script to aid preserving information and recalling the history and knowledge of the Luba.
The Luba people developed one the most complex and brilliant mnemonic systems in Africa for recording royal history, king lists, migrations, initiation esoterica and family genelogies, such as the Lukasa memory board.
These artworks are now found in numerous museums of the world.
Tourism Observer
www.tourismobserver.com
The Luba people consist of many sub-groups with distinct Luba language dialects, of which three are main: the Luba-Kasai, Luba-Katanga, and Swahili languages.
The Luba people founded an ancient culture by about the 5th century, and later a well organized, pre-colonial Kingdom of Luba in the Upemba Depression region of Central Africa.They had developed the knowledge and means to extracts various metals from the rich mineral resources close to them, as well as the skills in wood carving, pottery, sophisticated metal objects, ivory artwork and jewelry.
Their success and wealth grew in relative isolation given their forested mountainous inland location, then attracted traders, raids and wars in second half of the 19th century.The Luba people were a victim of the slave and ivory trade, both to the Atlantic coast by Portuguese slave traders, as well as to the East African coast by Swahili-Arab slave traders particularly in the 19th-century.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Luba people had, by the middle of 5th century AD, settled around the lakes and marshes of the Upemba Depression, in what is now the southeastern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The evidence suggesting an advanced Iron Age society by then comes from multiple sites, and these are among the best developed archaeological records in Central Africa. The Kamilambian, Kisalian and Kabambian series of evidence has been dated to be from 5th to 14th-century, suggesting a settled stable Luba culture over many centuries.
Of these, the Kisalian period (8th to 11th century) pottery and utensils found, were crafted with extraordinary excellence. The finds dated to pre-8th century by modern dating methods are iron objects or pottery, thereafter copper objects appear.
The archaeological studies suggest that the Luba people lived in villages, in homes made of reeds and wattle, around the shores of numerous streams and lakes found in the Upemba Depression of Central Africa.This Depression has been historically flooded from the water runoff from southern Shaba highlands for parts of the year, its water bodies filled with papyrus islands and floating vegetation, the region drying out after rains ended.
As a community, the Luba people constructed dams and dikes as high as 6 to 8 feet using mud, papyrus and other vegetation, to improve the marshy soil conditions for agriculture and stock fish during the long dry season.
The Luba people had developed metal extraction techniques, skills to make utilitarians products from them and high degree of craft specialization.The metal working techniques in use by the early Luba people included drawing out thin wires, twisting and laminating them, plaiting them into complex well designed shapes such as necklaces, bracelets and hooks for fishing, needles for sewing and such.
These products attracted interest and demand from far off ethnic groups, creating trade opportunities and traders amongst the Luba people. This trade and all economic activity in the villages of Luba people had a tribute system, where a portion of the hunt, fish or produce was given to the lineage head or the people guarding the borders.
These were natural borders, such as that created by waters of Lake Upemba, where passage across required channels and bridges. The movement into and out of the Luba people lands was thus controlled and taxed.
Around 1500, possibly earlier, the Luba people began to coalesce into a single, unified state which historians now call the Kingdom of Luba or Luba Empire.The kingdom grew and became more sophisticated over time, reaching its peak between 18th to 19th-century.
The demands, raids and violence of the 19th-century slave and ivory trade by the European colonial empires such as Belgium and the Arab-Swahili chiefs such as Tippu Tip and Msiri tore the Empire apart and ended it.
The political sophistication of the Luba Empire was the adoption of two layers of power, one of Balopwe ereditary kingship and another a council of royals or elders. These provided governance stability through mutual balancing, when there were disputes of succession from death or other causes. This idea was adopted by the neighboring Lunda people and other ethnic groups.
The development and evolution of the Luba Empire, and the life of Luba people therein, has been unclear.This is in part because the Luba people were an entirely oral tradition culture where knowledge and records were verbally preserved without a written script.
The orthography for the Luba language, called kiLuba, was invented in the 19th-century, and thus early information about the Luba Empire has been derived from documents written by others usually hostile and only aware of the communities at the Luba Empire's border, or by the Luba people only in the late 19th-century and the 20th-century after the best decades of the Empire were long over.
Luba people had developed sophisticated literary traditions around their concepts of good and evil, and integrated these concepts and their religious ideas into their legends about morality and people with power.For example, one legend relates to two kings, one called the red king Nkongolo Mwamba and other called the black king Ilunga Mbidi Kiluwe. According to the Luba people's oral history,
There are two kings, the Nkongolo Mwamba or red king, and Mbidi Kiluwe or black king. Nkongolo Mwamba is the violent, cruel and drunken despot; Mbidi Kiluwe is the gentle, just and refined one. Nkongolo is one who gets drunk, is ruthless, mocking, raping, robbing other, seen without manners.
Mbidi Kiluwe is the opposite, one obsessed with good manners, thoughtful, who speaks carefully, is compassionate, keeps his distance, one with self control. Mbidi marries the sister of Nkongolo, and they have a son named Kalala. Nkongolo gets jealous and fearful of Kalala, and schemes to murder him. The guardian spirits, knowing the scheme, protect Kalala.
The Luba people were a part of a large state in the 16th and 17th centuries, ruled by a Balopwe through delegation to regional chiefs.According to the oral tradition by inabanza Kataba, the empire expanded over time, with a major consolidation in the 18th century, partly triggered by the desire by rivals to control the salt and iron mines in the south.
The Luba Empire was shielded from Portuguese and other colonial interests by the Lunda Empire, which lay to their southeast. This shielding was noted by David Livingstone in his travel memoirs, and likely blocked the Angolan traders from regular contact with the Luba people.Around the start of the 19th-century, the oral traditions of both the Luba and Kanyok people suggest a major conflict, led by mutual raids.
This conflict helped the Luba Empire grow, as its king Ilunga Sungu entered into new territories and formed marriage alliances.By 1810 when he died, his fame and reverence among the Luba people had peaked and the site of his royal court had become Kitenta (royal sacred village) where his spirit was venerated.
After the death of Ilunga Sungu, Kumwimbe Ngombe came to power leading his warriors to expand southeast with contacts with traders from East Africa. After his victory, in accordance with Luba traditions, the conquered chiefs and rulers had to marry sisters or daughters from the Luba ruling family in order to tie them into a relationship and loyalty with the Luba Empire capital.
The ivory and slave trade had grown to the east of Luba Empire by mid 19th-century, the natural supplies of ivory exhausted while the international demand for it was increasing. The region under Luba people then had abundantly preserved herds of elephants with their tusk. Kanyembo region, states Thomas Reefe, for example had no ivory to sell.
In 1840, after Kumwimbe Ngombe died of old age, king Ilunga Kabale succeeded to rule the Luba people. He expanded the empire further, till 1870 when he died. By then, the region of Luba people and their Empire covered much of what is now southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, extending for hundreds of kilometers from their early 19th-century heartland.
The success and wealth of Luba people grew in relative isolation because they were far from the eastern and western coasts of Africa, living in difficult to reach terrain.The forests and mountains protected them, as did their neighbors who blocked traders from direct and regular contact with distant international traders, in order to monopolize the gains from trade with international operators.
This originally shielded the Luba from the ill effects of the earlier slave trade. Later, however, the Luba people became victims of the slave demand and trading, in some cases selling people from their own lands as slaves.But, by the 1850s, the traders began intruding into the Luba people lands. Despite a ban on slave trading in the Western world, the eastern and northern parts of Africa, led by Arab-Swahili slave and ivory traders entered into the eastern and northeastern regions of the Luba Empire.
These intruders came with guns, experience of running caravans, other tools of raids and wars. The weapons of the Luba people were primitive, such as bows and arrow. David Livingstone in his memoir wrote how amazed the Luba people were with the guns, thought they were tobacco pipes and the gun was the weapon that mowed down large populations of the Luba.
The notorious slave and ivory trader,Tippu Tip for example wrote, translates Thomas Reefe, Luba had no guns, their weapons were bows and arrows; guns they did not know. The guns we have with us, they asked us, Are they pestles? The conquest of the Luba people was swift.
Msiri, a Tanzanian operator supplying ivory and slaves to the Sultan of Zanzibar, raided and took over the southeastern Shaba region of Luba people.Its other side, the southwestern borders were breached by the Ovimbundu ivory and slave hunters for the Portuguese interests.
While slaves could no longer be exported to the Americas, they were used for work and caravan operations within Africa. Breaches from all sides, by better equipped armies, weakened the Luba Empire rapidly between 1860 and 1880s, and accelerated its demise. In parallel, the news of disarray and confusion from many corners of the Luba Empire, led to internal disputes on succession and strategy when the Luba king Ilunga Kabale died in 1870.
By 1868, Said bin Habib el-Afifi had raided Luba operations and with force taken 10,500 pounds of copper.By 1874, another Arab-Swahili trader Juma bin Salum wad Rakad, and a friend of Tippu Tip, had entered into an agreement with one of the Ilunga Kabale's son and established the base of his elephant hunting and ivory trade operations in the heart of the Luba people's lands.
The Arab-Swahili raids, such as those by Tippu Tip, into Luba people's lands were organized with Nyamwezi subordinates and slave armies.These raids and attacks by the outsiders also introduced smallpox into the Luba population.
In 1885 Leopold II, king of Belgium, secured European recognition of his right over the territories that became what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The first Belgian expedition into the Luba people's region arrived in 1891.The king of Belgium, impressed with the accomplishments of Tippu Tip in getting resources from central Africa, appointed him the governor of the region that included the Luba people's territory.
The Luba people were forced to work in the copper mines of the Katanga province during the Belgian rule, causing numerous mining-related deaths. They rebelled in 1895, then again from 1905 to 1917, and these insurrection was crushed militarily.
In 1960 the Belgians, faced with rising demand for independence and an end to colonial rule, granted independence to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That same year Katanga Province, which was home to a considerable number of Luba, attempted to secede under Moise Tshombe as the State of Katanga.
The Luba were divided, with one faction under Ndaye Emanuel supporting the secession, and another under Kisula Ngoye supporting the central government. When Tshombe's breakaway regime collapsed in 1965, Kisula Ngoye became the liaison between the Luba people and the central government.
The traditional religious beliefs of the Luba people included the concept of a Shakapanga or a Universal Creator, a Leza or the Supreme Being, a natural world and a supernatural world.The supernatural world was where Bankambo (ancestral spirits) and Bavidye (other spirits) lived, and what one joined the afterlife if one lived an Mwikadilo Muyampe (ethical life).The Luba religions accepts the possibility of communion between the living and the dead.
The religious life included prayers, community singing, dances, offerings, rites of passage rituals and invocations.These rituals and services had intermediaries for rites such as Nsengha or Kitobo (priests). In addition, for anxiety and ailments, a Nganga or Mfwintshi (healer) were in service who would perform Lubuko (divination).
The religious thought did not limit itself to rituals, but included ideas of a good personhood, good heart, dignity for others and self-respect. The religious code of civil life and goodness affected the Luba social life.
Christianity was introduced to the Luba people by missionaries who came with the Belgium colonial rule. Some of these missionaries, such as William Burton, performed ethnographic research, starting with an aggressive projective research and teaching the Luba people, but ultimately became sympathetic as he learnt and understood their traditional beliefs and cultural richness.
The Luba people tended to cluster in single street villages, with homes with rectangular thatched roofs on both sides of the street whose lineage is usually related.The homes were in the savanna and forests. They hunted, fished in abundant waters near them, gathered food such as fruits from the wild and had mastered agriculture. In contemporary era, they grow cassava, corn, raise livestock. Some Luba carve wood and produce artist handicrafts.
Art was well developed in the Luba culture. Pottery, articles crafted from iron (such as axes, bows and spears), wooden staff and carvings and parts clad in sheets of copper were routinely produced. A notable artform of the Luba people was the Mwadi, where the male ancestors were represent in their female incarnations of the ancestral kings.
Some of the intricate art works of the Luba people were mnemonic devices, a form of symbolic coded script to aid preserving information and recalling the history and knowledge of the Luba.
The Luba people developed one the most complex and brilliant mnemonic systems in Africa for recording royal history, king lists, migrations, initiation esoterica and family genelogies, such as the Lukasa memory board.
These artworks are now found in numerous museums of the world.
Tourism Observer
www.tourismobserver.com
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