The Lubefu River is a tributary of the

Sankuru River The Sankuru River is a major river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its approximate length of 1,200 km"Sankuru River" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn., 1992, Vol. 10, p. 278. ...

, which in turn is a tributary of the

Kasai River The Kasai River ( ; called Cassai in Angola) is a tributary (left side) of the Congo River, located in Central Africa. The river begins in central Angola and flows to the east until it reaches the border between Angola and the Democratic Repub ...

in 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 ...

. One of the first Europeans to visit the river was

Alexandre Delcommune Alexandre Delcommune (6 October 1855 – 7 August 1922) was a Belgian officer of the armed '' Force Publique'' of the Congo Free State who undertook extensive explorations of the country during the early colonial period of the Congo Free State. ...

in 1887 during an epic exploration of navigable rivers in the Congo Basin. An account of a journey through the

region in 1908 said there were crocodiles in the river but due to the rapid current there were no hippopotami except where the river joins the Sankuru. The river is fast, narrow and winding, and in places the overhanging trees form a tunnel. From Bena Dibele, a town on the Sankuru just below the point where it is joined by the Lubefu to the government station of Lubefu is about . However, it took 19 days for a whaleboat with experienced paddlers to cover this distance. The Belgian colonial authorities forced the peasants of the area to grow

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

against their will. Direct refusal to plant cotton would have been suicidal given the brutal techniques of the colonialists. One passive resistance technique was to boil the cotton seeds before planting them, so they would not germinate. In 1925 people living in the southern plains of the Lubefu explained to a state agronomist that "the soil is burning the cotton seeds".

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