Stairs Expedition to Katanga

Interpretation
The Stairs Expedition to Katanga of 18911892 led by
Captain William Stairs was the winner in a race between
two imperial powers to seize Katanga, a vast mineral-rich
territory in Central Africa, which it achieved through the
killing of an African king, Mwenda Msiri.
This 'scramble for Katanga' was a prime example of the
colonial Scramble for Africa, and one of the most
dramatic incidents of that period.
Historical background
On one side of the race was the Congo Free State (CFS),
Belgian King Leopold II's instrument for private
colonization in Central Africa. On the other was the
company chartered by the British Government to make
treaties with African chiefs, the British South Africa
Company (BSAC) of Cecil Rhodes, who mixed a ruthless
approach to gaining mineral concessions [Neil Parsons:
"A New History of Southern Africa, Second Edition."
Macmillan, London (1993), pp. 1813] with a vision for
British imperialism spanning the continent.
Caught between them, and attempting to play one off
against the other, was Msiri, warrior-king of Garanganze
or Katanga, a country not yet signed up to colonisation by
a European power, and larger than California. Msiri had
started as a trader, and had used superior weapons

obtained by trading ivory, copper and slaves, to conquer

and subjugate neighbouring tribes. Like those stalking
him, he had plenty of cunning and strategic sense, but this
time he was the one with the inferior military technology.
[Joseph Moloney: "With Captain Stairs to Katanga:
Slavery and Subjugation in the Congo 1891-92". Sampson
Low, Marston & Co, London (1893), Chapter X, pp. 170
81 (reprinted by Jeppestown Press, ISBN 0955393655
ISBN 13: 9780955393655).]
The Berlin Conference
At the 18845 Berlin Conference and related bilateral
negotiations between Britain and Belgium, the land west
and north of the Luapula RiverLake Mweru system
(Katanga) was allocated to the CFS while the land to the
east and south was allocated to Britain and the BSAC.
However the agreements included a Principle of
Effectivity under which each colonial power had to set up
an effective presence in the territory by obtaining
treaties from local traditional rulers, flying their flag, and
setting up an administration and police force to keep order
to confirm the claim. If they did not, a rival could come
in and do so, thereby 'legally' taking over the territory in
European eyes [Moloney (1893), pp. 612. Moloney
agrees the specific point on p 11.] . In 1890 neither
colonial power had treaties or an effective presence in
Katanga, and as reports came of gold and copper being
found in Katanga, the stage was set for a race between the
BSAC and CFS.

Treaties obtained from local chiefs in Africa were not

aimed at convincing them of their subjugation superior
weapons did that but were solely to impress on rival
colonial powers that they had the means to convince their
own populations of the justice of any military action they
might have to take to defend their turf, and to the
imperialists, that was all that mattered.Ren de Pont-Jest:
[http://collin.francois.free.fr/Le_tour_du_monde/ "L'Expdition du
Katanga, d'aprs les notes de voyage du marquis Christian de
Bonchamps"] published 1892 in: Edouard Charton (editor):

"Le Tour du Monde" magazine, website accessed 5 May

2007. Section I:" "D'ailleurs ces lettres de soumission de
ces petits tyrans africains, auxquels on lit quatre longues
pages, dont, le plus souvent, ils ne comprennent pas un
mot, et qu'ils approuvent d'une croix, afin d'avoir la, paix
et des prsents, ne sont srieuses que pour les puissances
europennes, en cas de contestations de territoires. Quant
au souverain noir qui les signe, il ne s'en inquite pas un
seul instant"."] Public opinion in Europe could be a
powerful motivator of colonial actions, as the Fashoda
Incident a few years later demonstrated.
Previous expeditions
First off the mark was Rhodes who sent Alfred Sharpe
from Nyasaland in 1890, backed up by Joseph Thomson
coming from the south, but Sharpe failed to persuade
Msiri, and Thomson didn't make it to Msiri's capital at
Bunkeya. Sharpe's reports were complacently dismissive
about the likelihood of their rivals having any success, and
he said that once the 60-year-old Msiri was gone, Katanga
would be theirs. [http://www.nrzam.org.uk/NRJ/V3N3/V3N3.htm
NRZAM website: Alfred Sharpe's Travels in the Northern Province

and Katanga.]

"The Northern Rhodesia Journal". Vol III,

No.3 (1957) pp. 21019.] In this case it would probably
have become part of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia,
with which it shares strong cultural and ethnic links.
Leopold responded in 1891 by sending two expeditions,
and Sharpe's view seemed to be borne out. The Paul Le
Marinel expedition only managed to obtain a vaguelyworded letter (the Le Marinel letter) from Msiri agreeing
to CFS agents having a presence in Katanga, but nothing
more. 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. (Msiri later accused Legat of
actually having kept the supplies lost in the explosion for
himself).
Le Marinel was followed by the Delcommune Expedition,
which tried to persuade Msiri on the basis of the Le
Marinel letter to accept the CFS flag and Leopold's
sovereignty. It also failed, and moved off to the south to
explore Katanga's mineral resources. [Moloney (1893),
pp. 69.]

Preparations and outward journey

Personnel
Belgium was short of people with tropical experience but
Leopold was adept at recruiting other European
nationalities for his schemes. Central Africa was a wild
frontier attracting mercenaries for hire. At the
recommendation of British-American explorer Henry
Morton Stanley, who had already acted for Leopold in the
Congo, the 27 years old Swahili speaking Ren de Pont
Jest (1892): Section I.] Captain William Stairs was
appointed to lead the expedition, on the basis of his
experience on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition on which
he had become Stanley's second in command. He had a
reputation of someone who would obey orders and get the
job done. [Moloney (1893), p. 13.] That previous
expedition had been marked by violence and brutality
against any Africans who stood in its way as well as
against its own African members. [Daniel Liebowitz and
Charles Pearson: "The Last Expedition Stanley's Mad
Journey Through the Congo." W.W. Norton & Co.; New
York (2005) pp. 10948, 31322.] Canadian born at a
time when it was part of the British Empire, Stairs had
been educated partly in Britain and had joined a British
regiment. He was considered to be and considered himself
English or British. [Moloney (1893), pp. 199, 205.]
Stairs' second-in-command was the only Belgian on the
expedition, Captain Omer Bodson, who had already
served the CFS in the Congo, and had had some contact
with the Emin Pasha Relief expedition's controversial

'rear column'. [Moloney (1893), p. 14.] Third in command

was the Marquis Christian de Bonchamps, a French
adventurer and hunter. There were two other whites:
Joseph Moloney, the expedition doctor and also
something of an adventurer, had previous African
experience as a medical officer in the Boer War, and on
an expedition in Morocco; and Robinson, the carpenter
and fixer. [Moloney (1893), p. 15.]
Unlike Sharpe, Stairs was not at all complacent about
being in a race, and thought it likely that Joseph Thomson
would be sent to negotiate with Msiri for the BSAC before
they could get there. [Moloney (1893), p. 10.]
The expedition hired 400 Africans, consisting of four or
five Zanzibari 'chiefs' or supervisors including Hamadi
bin Malum and Massoudi, about 100 askaris or African
soldiers, a number of cooks and personal servants for the
whites, and the rest, the majority, were porters or 'pagazis'.
Most were from Zanzibar, some were from Mombasa, 40
were hired later in Tabora, Msiri's birthplace. [Moloney
(1893), pp. 2324.] At Bunkeya the expedition also had
use of eight tough Dahomeyan askari stationed at Legat's
boma on the Lufoi who knew Bunkeya well. [Moloney
(1893), p. 167.]
The expedition's askaris were armed with 200 'Fusil Gras'
rifles (a standard French army weapon of the time) while
the officers each had several weapons including
Winchester repeating rifles. Msiri's army had muskets,
and needed gunpowder. [Moloney (1893), p. 191.]

Orders and objectives

Stairs' orders were to take Katanga with or without Msiri's
agreement. If they found a BSAC expedition had beaten
them and had a treaty with Msiri they should await further
orders. If they obtained a treaty and a BSAC expedition
arrived, they should ask it to withdraw and use force to
make them comply if necessary. [Moloney (1893), p. 9.]
Moloney and Stairs were quite prepared for this
eventuality. They were aware that in 1890, Cecil Rhodes
had seized Manicaland in the face of Portuguese claims
by sending an armed unit under Frederick Selous to
occupy the territory and force the Portuguese to withdraw.
[Moloney (1893), pp. 131, 208.]
Having taken Katanga they should then await the arrival
of a second CFS column, the Bia Expedition led by two
Belgian officers, which was coming down from the
Congo River in the north to meet them. [Moloney (1893),
pp. 1112.]
Route and journey
The island of Zanzibar was the expedition's base, as it was
for most ventures into Central Africa. They left Zanzibar
on June 27, 1891. The preferred route was via the
Zambezi and Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) but Harry
Johnston, British Commissioner in Nyasaland who had
acted for Rhodes by sending Sharpe on his failed mission
to Msiri, advised that military action he was taking against
slave traders made that route unsafe. 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 insanitary conditions. [Moloney
(1893), p. 12.]
Averaging 13.3 km per day, it took them 120 days'
marching spread over five months (with rest days and
delays). [Moloney (1893), p. 15. Moloney thought this
was probably a record for expeditions of the type.] The
journey included extremes of thick forest, swamps and
desolate stony plains. (*1) It also included beautiful
landscapes, fertile woodland and game-rich grasslands. In
one afternoon, Bodson shot a dozen antelope; [Moloney
(1893), p. 157.] on another occasion, the men feasted on
hippopotamus until they could not move. [Moloney
(1893), p. 97.]
*1 The pretention that the so called Arab slave traders transported up to
500,000 slaves a year is impossible if one considers the long time and difficulties
for an expedition. Further are these regions only accessible during a short period
of 6 months (dry season). (Victor E. Rosez)

The officers had donkeys to ride on, but these died after
crossing Lake Tanganyika.Ren de Pont-Jest (1892):
Section II.] The expedition was not attacked by hostile
tribes or raiders as were weaker caravans going to Lake
Tanganyika that year. [Moloney (1893), pp. 635.]
As they approached Bunkeya, they found the land
affected by famine and strife, with a number of burnt and

deserted villages. Moloney attributed this to Msiri's

tyranny, [Moloney (1893), pp. 162, 171, 178.] other
accounts suggested that some of the Wasanga chiefs Msiri
had forcibly subjugated were taking advantage of the
arrival of European powers in the land to rebel against his
30-year rule and, at the age of 60, Msiri was perceived as
near the end of his time.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.]
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. [
[http://library.eb.com.au/eb/article-9054100
"Msiri."]
Encyclopdia Britannica, 2007. Online Library Edition.
Accessed 5 May 2007. The two expeditions mentioned are
the Delcommune Expedition encouraging rebellion and
the Stairs Expedition negotiating with Msiri.] 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. [Ren de Pont-Jest (1892): Section III. Moloney
refers to 'Lukuku' as being Msiri's brother, present in
Bunkeya, who harassed the expedition as it left Katanga.
In French the African 'u' is rendered as 'ou', so
'Loukoukou' and 'Lukuku' are the same name. Either there
were two senior Msiri men of this name, or one or the
sources is in error.]

On being told by some local people that there were three

Europeans in Bunkeya, for a time the expedition thought
that Thomson had beaten them. They sent one of their
chiefs ahead to ask Msiri for an audience, and he returned
with a letter from one of the Europeans, Dan Crawford
they were Plymouth Brethren missionaries. Near Bunkeya
they were met by Legat, the officer from the Le Marinel
expedition with his elite Dahomeyan askari. There was no
news of the Bia Expedition. [Moloney (1893):
"missionaries" p. 165.] "Legat" p. 167.]
Msiri
Msiri's capital at Bunkeya consisted of a very large boma
surrounded by numerous villages spread over an area
several kilometres across. The expedition was directed to
set up camp within a few hundred metres of the boma.
Heads and skulls of Msiri's enemies and victims were
mounted on the palisades and on poles at the front.
Moloney and Bonchamps referred to these as examples of
Msiri's barbarity, without the irony which ought to have
been used in view of the fate of Msiri's own head.
[Moloney (1893), p. 177.]
After the traditional three-day wait before one can see an
African king, Msiri received them courteously on 17
December 1891. Gifts were presented and negotiations
started. Both sides feigned the possibility of future
compliance with the other's demands. Msiri wanted
gunpowder and removal of Legat, Stairs wanted to fly the
CFS flag over Bunkeya. Stairs seemed to think that the Le

Marinel letter indicated Msiri's acquiescence, but it was

vague, and Msiri repudiated any such interpretation.
During a stand-off in the negotiations, Msiri used a
technique to spy on Stairs' camp which the latter only
discovered later, shown in the illustration, "Msiri's
spies".Ren de Pont-Jest (1892): Section III.]
Of Msiri's physical presence, Joseph Moloney wrote:" "In
his prime, Msiri, must have looked the ideal of a warriorking; he was by no means contemptible in his decline
there was a sphinx-like impenetrability about his
expression his demeanour was thoroughly regal"."
[Moloney (1893), pp. 1801]
On December 19, Stairs realised that Msiri's intention was
to delay as long as possible and play the CFS and BSAC
off against each other. [Moloney (1893), pp. 179, 1845]
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. Stairs
rejected the idea partly because the three British
missionaries were not under the expedition's protection at
that time, and Stairs felt they were in effect hostages who
would be killed in retaliation. 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 CFS flag without his consent,
which he proceeded to do. [Moloney (1893), pp. 1845.]

Msiri's response was to leave in the night for Munema, a

fortified village outside Bunkeya. The next day,
December 20, finding him gone, Stairs sent Bodson and
Bonchamps with 100 askari to bring Msiri back to him
under arrest. [Moloney (1893), p. 186.]
The killing of Msiri
At Munema Bodson and Bonchamps found a large
guarded stockade surrounding a hundred huts and a maze
of narrow alleys, with Msiri somewhere inside. Despite
Bonchamps' protests about the danger, Bodson decided to
go inside with just ten askari including a Dahomeyan and
Hamadi-bin-Malum to find Msiri, while Bonchamps and
the remaining askari waited outside. Bodson would fire
his revolver if he needed assistance. [Moloney (1893), p.
188]
Bodson found Msiri sitting in front of a large hut with 300
men in the background, many armed with muskets.
Bodson told Msiri he had come to take him to Stairs, and
Msiri did not reply but became angry, rose and put his
hand on his sword (a gift brought by Stairs). Bodson drew
his revolver and shot Msiri three times, and one of Msiri's
men his son Masuka fired his musket hitting Bodson
in the abdomen and spinal column. The Dahomeyan
askari shot and killed Masuka, and in the general firing
Hamadi was hit in the ankle. [Moloney (1893), p. 190,
except for identity of 'Masuka' which comes from
[http://www.kingmsiri.com/eng/kings/king2.htm "Mwami Msiri,
King of Garanganze: Mwami Kalasa Mukanda-Bantu"] According

to some accounts, 'Masuka' was not Msiri's biological son

but a favourite slave.]
Bonchamps and the remaining askari ran to the sound, and
chaos took over. Most of Msiri's men fled, the askaris shot
at anything, and then started looting. It took nearly an hour
for Moloney to arrive with reinforcements. He and
Bonchamps restored order among the askaris and, under
sporadic fire from Msiri's men under the command of his
adopted son Mukanda-Bantu and brothers, Chukako and
Lukuku, retreated with Bodson and the other wounded,
and Msiri's body, to prevent his men pretending to the
populace that he was still alive. They took up a defensive
position on a hill near their camp where Stairs had been
waiting. [Moloney (1893), pp. 1913. Note that Moloney
spells the son's name 'Makanda Vanta.']
This account of the killing was attributed by Moloney to
a verbal report by Hamadi, while Bonchamps wrote that
the injured Bodson gave him the same account before he
died in the night. Stairs wrote a letter to Arnot with the
same details of the attempted arrest at Munema, but also
said that Msiri's men had 'cocked their guns' when Bodson
confronted Msiri. Letter of Willian Stairs to Frederick
Arnot, 29 December, 1891 reproduced in:
[http://www.nrzam.org.uk/NRJ/V3N5/V3N5.htm NRZAM website: R
S Arnot: "F S Arnot and Msidi"] , "Northern Rhodesia Journal",
Vol III, No. 5 pp 42834 (1958).]

A barbaric act
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'. [Ren de Pont-Jest
(1892): Section III, quoting Bonchamps. Moloney says
only that it took eight men to carry Msiri's body back to
the camp, and the dead man's face "seemed to wear a
mocking smile which, somehow, was not easily
forgotten"." Moloney (1893), p. 193. Stairs does not
mention the decapitation in his letter of 29 December to
Arnot.]
Munema was littered with bodies and the expedition's
askaris carried out a general massacre. Dan Crawford
wrote:" "The population completely dispersed. No one
dared walk openly abroad. The paths became lined with
corpses, some of whom had died of starvation and some
of the universal mistrust which keeps spears on the
quiver"." [David Gordon: "Owners of the Land and
Lunda Lords: Colonial Chiefs in the Borderlands of
Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo." "The
International Journal of African Historical Studies", Vol.
34, No. 2 (2001), pp. 31538. The passage is quoted from
G. E. Tilsley: "Dan Crawford: Missionary and Pioneer in
Central Africa". Oliphants, London, 1929.]

Aftermath
The expedition quickly strengthened their defences but
were not attacked in retaliation. Msiri's brothers and
Mukanda-Bantu sent messages the next day asking for the
body to bury, and Stairs agreed to release it. Msiri's head
is not mentioned again by Bonchamps, Garanganze
sources say they buried a body without a head. [
[http://www.kingmsiri.com/eng/kings/king2.htm "Mwami Msiri,
King of Garanganze: Mwami Kalasa Mukanda-Bantu"] . Website
accessed 7 May 2007.] After the burial, negotiations reopened 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. [Moloney (1893), p1979]
The expedition's weaponry and askaris had proved their
superiority over muskets and Msiri's people were more
interested in the succession than revenge. [Moloney
(1893), p200-202] Stairs backed Mukanda-Bantu to
succeed Msiri, but as chief of a reduced territory, and he
restored the Wasanga chiefs overthrown by Msiri 30 years
before. Mukanda-Bantu signed the treaties, and the
restored Wasanga chiefs were very happy to do so too.
Msiri's brothers were unhappy with the sub-chieftainships
they were given and refused to sign up, until threatened
with the same fate as Msiri. [Moloney (1893), p201.] By
early January 1892 the expedition had the papers
sufficient to convince their British rivals that they now
had Katanga. [Moloney (1893), p208, 220]. *
* These expeditions are seen as a part of the war against the Arabo-Swahili slave
traders which is not exact. (Victor E. Rosez)

During that January though, the food ran out and none was
left in the district already affected by famine, the
population took what little there was with them when they
fled. 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. Moloney recovered first and took
charge of the expedition's task of building a more
permanent fort and trying to find food. 76 of the
expedition's askaris and porters died that month of
dysentery and starvation. 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. [Moloney (1893),
p225.]
At the end of the January the new season's crop of maize
was ready for harvest, and this saved the expedition. Then
the delayed Bia Expedition of about 350 men arrived from
the CFS in the north. [Moloney (1893), p15.]
Return journey
As Captain Stairs, the Marquis Bonchamps and Robinson
were still incapacitated, it was agreed that Captain Bia
would take over the consolidation of Congo Free State
control of Katanga, and the Stairs expedition would return
by the originally-planned route via Lake Nyasa and the
Zambezi.
As they left carrying the sick officers in hammocks they
experienced some harassment and raids by Lukuku's

people, 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. Bonchamps had recovered by the time they
reached Lake Tanganyika and was put in charge by Stairs,
who had not fully recovered. This caused some friction
between Bonchamps and Moloney, [Moloney (1893),
p16.] and there are some contradictions between their
accounts.
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. They met but the conversation has not been
recorded. [Moloney (1893), p.271]
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.
[Moloney (1893), p2756.]
The expedition reached Zanzibar a year after their
departure. Of 400 Africans on the expedition to leave
Tabora, only 189 reached Zanzibar, most of the other 211
had died, a few had absconded. 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.
Consequences
On his return to London, Moloney learned that Thomson
had not tried to reach Katanga again. The British
Government, for reasons not revealed, had ordered him
not to go. [Moloney (1893), p10.]
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.
[Moloney (1893), p222-3.]
Leopold and the Belgian Congo
The expedition was regarded by the Belgians as a
complete success. Leopold used his influence and that of
the British directors he had appointed to his companies to
gain acceptance of the treaties signed to place Katanga
securely in Leopold's realm, adding about half a million
square kilometres to it (16 times the area of Belgium).
Keeping it separate from the CFS, Leopold delegated the
administration of Katanga to another of his companies,
which set up on the northern and western shores of Lake
Mweru from where its main achievement was helping to
stamp out the slave trade, but did little in the rest of the
territory until after 1900. Katanga remained affected by

instability and conflict, as various chieftainships struggled

to fill the vacuum left by Msiri's death.
Katanga and the Congo were both taken over by the
Belgian government in 1908 in response to the
international outcry over the brutality of Leopold's CFS,
and were merged in 1910 as the Belgian Congo, but the
legacy of the previous separation was a tendency of
Katanga to secede.
The Belgian Congo administration with its policy of direct
rule did nothing to prepare the country for independence
in 1960 and within a few years "Congo" and "Katanga"
became such bywords for strife and chaos that the corrupt
Mobutu regime, in a futile effort to improve its image,
changed the names to "Zaire" and "Shaba" respectively
(since reverted).Fact|date=May 2008
Rhodes and the BSAC
Cecil Rhodes got over any disappointment at losing the
scramble for Katanga by doing what he did best he
invested in mineral prospecting and mining in Katanga.
When the British in the Rhodesian territories realised in
the 1920s the extent of Katanga's mineral wealth, which
was more than the equal of Northern Rhodesia's own
Copperbelt, the most polite epithet for Captain Stairs was
'mercenary', and some regarded him as a traitor to the
British Empire. [ [http://www.nrzam.org.uk/NRJ/V2N6/V2N6.htm
Mr Justice J B Thomson: "Memories of Abandoned Bomas No. 8:
Chiengi". "Northern Rhodesia Journal" online] at NRZAM.org.

Vol II, No. 6, pp6777 (1954). See p67: "Stairs, the

renegade Englishman... ."]
The Garanganze people
The population in and around Bunkeya numbered 60 to
80,000 but most dispersed in the disorder. 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. They eventually returned to Bunkeya where
today Mwami Mwenda VIII is the reigning chief of about
20,000-Yeke/Garanganze-people.
[http://www.kingmsiri.com/index2.htm "Mwami Msiri, King of
Garanganze"] . Website accessed 5 May 2007.]
Dan Crawford moved to the Luapula-Lake Mweru valley
and set up two missions to which many Garanganze
people gravitated.
The DR Congo-Zambia border
The Stairs Expedition confirmed that the border between
Belgian and British colonies would lie along the ZambeziCongo watershed, the Luapula River, Lake Mweru and an
arbitrary line drawn between Mweru and Lake
Tanganyika. 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.

Msiri's head: a curse and a mystery

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.
[http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/papers/hayes/witch.html
Stephen Hayes: "Christian Responses to Witchcraft and Sorcery"] .
"Missionalia", Vol 23, No 3, Nov 1995. Website accessed
5 May 2007.] The sickness suffered by Stairs and the
expedition members was attributed by them to Msiri's
spirit and his people taking revenge, and a rumour took
hold that Stairs had kept Msiri's head and it cursed and
killed all who carried it.
[http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/lpca/aps/tshibumba1a.html
Johannes
Fabian: The history of Zaire as told and painted by Tshibumba
Kanda Matulu in conversation with Johannes Fabian. ] "Archives

of Popular Swahili", Volume 2, Issue 2 (11 November

1998) ISSN: 1570-0178. Note that a number of the
Katangan oral accounts such as this one differ from the
European accounts, and from other Congolese accounts.
This one contradicts the "Mwami Msiri, King of
Garanganze" website in a number or respects.] The
Mwami Mwenda chieftainships' history says that the
expedition fled with Msiri's head intending to present it to
Leopold, but 'Mukanda-Bantu and his men' caught and
'killed all the Belgians' and the head was buried 'under a
hill of stones' in what is now Zambia.
[http://www.kingmsiri.com/index2.htm "Mwami Msiri, King of
Garanganze"] . Website accessed 5 May 2007. See page on
Mukanda-Bantu.]

Another account says that when Stairs died he had with

him Msiri's head in a can of kerosene,
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.] but there is no mention of it in Moloney's or
Bonchamps' journals. The whereabouts of Msiri's skull
remains a mystery today.
[http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/lpca/aps/tshibumba1a.html Fabian (1998)]
: Tshibumba Kanda Matulu says:" "In all truth, we don't
know where this head went. Is it in Europe, in some
Museum, in the house of Leopold II, or with whom? Up to
this day, we don't know"."

Look at other dictionaries:

William Grant Stairs

History of Katanga This is a history of Katanga
Province and the former independent State of Katanga, as
well as the history of the region prior to colonization.
Earliest residents. Prior to Bantu migration around 500
BCE, the area was probably the site of dwellings
Msiri
Christian de Bonchamps
Harry Johnston
Thomas Heazle Parke
List of Democratic Republic of the Congo-related
articles
Chronology of colonialism