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The Congo Pedicle (at one time referred to as the Zaire Pedicle; in French ', meaning 'Katanga boot') is the southeast salient of the
Katanga Province Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba, ...
of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
, which divides neighbouring
Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...
into two lobes. In area, the pedicle is similar in size to
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 2 ...
or
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. '
Pedicle Pedicle or pedicel may refer to: Human anatomy *Pedicle of vertebral arch, the segment between the transverse process and the vertebral body, and is often used as a radiographic marker and entry point in vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty procedures ...
' is used in the sense of 'a little foot'. 'Congo Pedicle' or 'the Pedicle' is also used to refer to the
Congo Pedicle road The Congo Pedicle road (at one time referred to as the 'Zaire Pedicle road') crosses the Congolese territory of the Congo Pedicle and was constructed by and is maintained by Zambia to connect its Copperbelt and Luapula Provinces. Both the road ...
which crosses it. The Congo Pedicle is an example of the arbitrary boundaries imposed by
European powers A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power inf ...
on
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
in the wake of the
Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, or Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during a short period known as New Imperialism ( ...
, which were set by European interests and usually did not consider pre-existing political or tribal boundaries.


British and Belgian territorial claims

Cecil Rhodes Cecil John Rhodes (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his Bri ...
's
British South Africa Company The British South Africa Company (BSAC or BSACo) was chartered in 1889 following the amalgamation of Cecil Rhodes' Central Search Association and the London-based Exploring Company Ltd, which had originally competed to capitalize on the expecte ...
(BSAC) approached Katanga from the south, the Belgian
King Leopold II * german: link=no, Leopold Ludwig Philipp Maria Viktor , house = Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , father = Leopold I of Belgium , mother = Louise of Orléans , birth_date = , birth_place = Brussels, Belgium , death_date = ...
's
Congo Free State ''(Work and Progress) , national_anthem = Vers l'avenir , capital = Vivi Boma , currency = Congo Free State franc , religion = Catholicism (''de facto'') , leader1 = Leopo ...
(CFS) approached from the northwest. Southeast Katanga was controlled by the Yeke or Garanganze kingdom of
Msiri Msiri (c. 1830 – December 20, 1891) founded and ruled the Yeke Kingdom (also called the Garanganze or Garenganze kingdom) in south-east Katanga (now in DR Congo) from about 1856 to 1891. His name is sometimes spelled 'M'Siri' in articles in Fr ...
based at
Bunkeya Bunkeya is a community in the Lualaba Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is located on a huge plain near the Lufira River. Before the Belgian colonial conquest, Bunkeya was the center of a major trading state under the ruler Msir ...
(see map), and the BSAC and CFS competed to sign treaties with him, while he tried to play one off against the other.David Gordon: ''Decentralized Despots or Contingent Chiefs: Comparing Colonial Chiefs in Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo.'' KwaZulu-Natal History and African Studies Seminar, University of Natal, Durban, 2000. After Msiri's death the CFS was quicker to consolidate their claim to Msiri's territory called 'Garanganza', and later Katanga, west up to the Luapula. Since 1885 they already had claimed land north of the Congo-
Zambezi The Zambezi River (also spelled Zambeze and Zambesi) is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers , slightly less than hal ...
watershed Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...
. The BSAC were left with the land south of the watershed and east of the Luapula. The 1884–85
Berlin Conference The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, also known as the Congo Conference (, ) or West Africa Conference (, ), regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence ...
was organised by Germany to resolve the outcome of the
Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, or Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during a short period known as New Imperialism ( ...
. It did not set the actual boundaries, but agreed areas of influence, including the CFS's control over the Congo. Detailed borders were left to bilateral negotiations.


Negotiating borders

The main problem of both the Belgian and British sides over the southeast Katanga border was the lack of an obvious geographical feature for the border to follow, as the Congo-Zambezi watershed and the Luapula do not meet. There is a gap between them and, separated by a distance of , they run in an arc curving northeast, running almost parallel but gradually getting closer, and would reach the highlands between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa if the
Chambeshi River The Chambeshi (or Chambezi) River of northeastern Zambia is the most remote headstream of the Congo River (in length) and therefore it is considered the source of the Congo River. (However, by volume of water, the Lualaba River provides a greater ...
were accepted as being the same river as the Luapula. From the British point of view, the obvious choice for the border is the base of the salient, a southwest to northeast line from the watershed to the Luapula. Failing agreement on that, a second option would be to continue southwards the line of the Luapula-
Lake Mweru Lake Mweru (also spelled ''Mwelu'', ''Mwero'') is a freshwater lake on the longest arm of Africa's second-longest river, the Congo. Located on the border between Zambia and Democratic Republic of the Congo, it makes up of the total length of th ...
valley (
longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lette ...
28° 35' E) which forms the longest north–south part of the border, until it intersects the Congo-Zambezi watershed. So all of the country immediately east of a north–south line through
Ndola Ndola is the third largest city in Zambia and third in terms of size and population, with a population of 475,194 (''2010 census provisional''), after the capital, Lusaka, and Kitwe, and the second largest in terms of infrastructure development aft ...
would then be in
Northern Rhodesia Northern Rhodesia was a British protectorate in south central Africa, now the independent country of Zambia. It was formed in 1911 by amalgamating the two earlier protectorates of Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesi ...
.http://earth.google.com/ Google Earth accessed 6 February 2007 But the Belgians hoped for access to the rich game areas of the
Bangweulu Wetlands The Bangweulu Wetlands is a wetland ecosystem adjacent to Lake Bangweulu in north-eastern Zambia. The area has been designated as one of the world's most important wetlands by the Ramsar Convention and an "Important Bird Area" by BirdLife Internat ...
and pressed for the borders to stick to the river and watershed. In negotiations for a treaty some 'trading' of territories was involved in northeast Congo,
Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic ...
and
Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The souther ...
. There was also the question of how far east into the Bangweulu swamps and
floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...
the Pedicle should extend. The king of Italy was called in to adjudicate, and he drew a north–south line (a line of longitude) through a point on the map where the Luapula was thought to exit from the Lake Bangweulu swamps, which gave birth to the Pedicle: wide and about long.


Anglo-Belgian Agreement of 12 May 1884

The agreement was incorporated into this larger treaty, which dealt mainly with
Equatoria Equatoria is a region of southern South Sudan, along the upper reaches of the White Nile. Originally a province of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, it also contained most of northern parts of present-day Uganda, including Lake Albert and West Nile. It w ...
.


Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission, 1911–1914

It became apparent as the region was more closely surveyed that on the ground there were a number of problems. The Luapula does not always flow in a single channel; there are islands, swamps, multiple channels; and the main channel may change according to the river height. It is particularly confusing south of Bangweulu, where there is not one single clear channel exiting the swamps but a tangled mass of channels in swamps and floodplains tens of kilometres wide, and the Italian king's line of longitude crossed them at multiple points. An Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission was established in 1911 to survey the boundaries on the ground, resolve the problems and mark the border with posts and timber towers used for
triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle me ...
. The Italian king's ruler was moved west to a point where it did cut a clearly defined channel in one place. Finally, the work was complete in 1914.


Consequences for Northern Rhodesia/Zambia

As a consequence of Katanga attaining the Pedicle, it gained a toehold in the Bangweulu Wetlands and potential mineral resources, although as it turned out, the division of the main copper orebody between the Congo and Northern Rhodesia was determined by the CongoZambezi watershed and would not have been affected by the existence or otherwise of the Pedicle. It was the BSAC's failure to get Msiri to sign up Garanganza as a British protectorate which lost the Congolese Copperbelt to Northern Rhodesia, and some in the BSAC complained that the British missionaries Frederick Stanley Arnot and Charles Swan could have done more to help, although their
Plymouth Brethren The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and non-conformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where they originated from Anglicanism. The group emphasizes ...
mission had a policy of not being involved in politics. Once Msiri was killed by the CFS it was too late to try again, and consequently the leader of CFS expedition responsible, Canadian Captain William Grant Stairs was viewed by some in Northern Rhodesia as a traitor to the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
.


Strategic issues for Zambia

The problems for Zambia did not emerge for another 50 years, with the
Congo Crisis The Congo Crisis (french: Crise congolaise, link=no) was a period of political upheaval and conflict between 1960 and 1965 in the Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The crisis began almost immediately after ...
of 196063. The Pedicle cuts off the
Luapula Province Luapula Province is one of Zambia's ten provinces located in the northern part of the country. Luapula Province is named after the Luapula River and its capital is Mansa. As per the 2010 Zambian census, the Province had a population of 991,9 ...
and the western part of the Northern Province from the country's industrial and commercial hub of the
Copperbelt The Copperbelt () is a natural region in Central Africa which sits on the border region between northern Zambia and the southern Democratic Republic of Congo. It is known for copper mining. Traditionally, the term ''Copperbelt'' includes t ...
. This is exacerbated by the fact that at the Pedicle's toe tip, where the
Luapula River The Luapula River is a section of Africa's second-longest river, the Congo. It is a transnational river forming for nearly all its length part of the border between Zambia and the DR Congo. It joins Lake Bangweulu (wholly in Zambia) to Lake Mw ...
ostensibly flows out of the Bangweulu system, the river swamps are at least wide and the floodplain is wide, making a road impossible with the resources available for most of the 20th century. The most southerly road possible into Luapula keeping to Zambian territory was pushed, by these circumstances, another north, going around Lake Bangweulu. Strategically, the Congo Pedicle is an issue for Zambia, though not for DR Congo. As well as affecting communication for about one-quarter of the country with the centre and west, it potentially exposes a greater part of Zambia, which has generally enjoyed peace for more than 100 years, to conflict in Katanga, which has not. Zambia has witnessed violence in Katanga between armed factions and by the military against civilians which occasionally has spilled over into Zambia, or which has affected Zambians travelling on the Pedicle road. At times, it has been closed to them making the huge detour around the north and east of Bangweulu the only option. Secondly, cross-border crime and arms smuggling has been a problem in the Copperbelt, as has poaching in the Bangweulu Wetlands.http://timesofzambia.com.zm ''Times of Zambia'' website accessed 6 February 2007.


See also

* Alfred Sharpe


References

{{coord, 12, 17, S, 28, 34, E, display=title Geography of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Geography of Zambia History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo History of Zambia Democratic Republic of the Congo–Zambia border Haut-Katanga Province