Elisabethville 1910 – The Cape to Cairo railroad arrives

The photos below don’t have much to do with Kinshasa, but I’ve had them for a while and think the time-lapse series is too interesting not to share. They show the arrival of the railway from South Africa at the Etoile Mine in southern Katanga on October 1, 1910. The rails had reached Sakania, on the border with Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and a Belgian company, the Chemin de Fer du Katanga (CFK) created in 1902 to link the Katangan copper mines to the Cape to Cairo line, completed the work. CFK was further charged to extend the railway to the Lualaba River at Bukama, which would connect Katanga to Leopoldville by a series of rail and river links operated by the Chemin de fer des Grands Lacs Africains (CFL), opening up much of the entire colony to mechanized transportation.

The rail bed (Photos, author coll.)

Workers begin delivering rail road ties. The work is all manual.

Flat cars bring up the ties.

The ties are laid under supervision of European foremen.

The train comes up the new line and the process continues.

The arrival of the rail line at Etoile prompted the Belgian authorities to create Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi) as the capital of Katanga. Construction of the line to Bukama continued, reaching Likasi in June 1913, and Tenke, 255 kilometers northwest of Elisabethville in July 1914. Shortages of materials delayed construction during World War I. Tracks and ties were seized by Belgian forces from the railway in German East Africa (Tanzania) (Aug. 3, 2014), and the line finally reached Bukama in May 1918. Ironically, the new transportation line helped spread the Influenza pandemic into eastern Congo from southern Africa later that year (July 13, 2020).

The RN "Mimi" at Fungurume, 20 kilometers from Tenke in late 1915. The Royal Navy shipped two patrol boats to Katanga via South Africa to support the Belgian campaign against the Germans on Lake Tanganika.  From Fungurume, the boats were hauled overland to Bukama, then under their own power down the Lualaba.  At Kabalo, the boats were once again loaded on rail cars and shipped to Albertville (National Geographic, Oct. 1922).

Fungurume railway station in 2012.  The rail was manufactured for CFK by
the Ougree steel mill 100 years previously (Ph. author coll.)

Another company created in 1906 was intended to extend the rail line from Bukama to Port Francqui (Ilebo) on the Kasai River, to provide a more direct route to Leopoldville with fewer transshipments. The grandiose-sounding Compagnie du chemin de fer du Bas-Congo au Katanga (BCK) began work on a bridge spanning the Lualaba at Bukama in 1923 and the railway reached Port Francqui in 1928. King Albert and Queen Elisabeth inaugurated the line during their visit to the colony (Aug. 22, 2018).

The BCK rail bridge at Bukama nearing completion (Ph. author coll.)

The port at Port Francqui (Ph. author coll.)

During World War Two, with Congo cut off from Belgium, many colonials took their holidays in South Africa. The shipping line, Otraco, added a second steamer to the bi-monthly trip to Port Francqui to accommodate the increased demand. On their return, Leopoldville was supplied with butter, cheese, cold cuts and fresh fruit from Katanga and South Africa, which were no longer available from Europe. These fresh items were marketed to retailers by Profrigo and the Maurice Michaux grocery on Ave. du Port. In January 1942, failure to load the contents of a refrigerated wagon on the SS “Luxembourg” at Port Francqui precipitated a butter crisis in Leopoldville.

The "Luxembourg", possibly at Port Francqui (Ph. author coll.)

The "Luxembourg", possibly at Banningville (Bandundu) en route to Port Francqui
(Ph. author coll.)

In 1956, a BCK branch line north from Kamina connected with the CFL rail line at Kabalo, circumventing the river section from Bukama. After Independence, some consideration was given to extending the line Ilebo or Kananga to Kinshasa or Matadi, providing an all rail route from the copperbelt to Congo’s Atlantic port. However, conflict between Mobutu and a British-Japanese consortium led by Lonrho and Nissho Iwai halted the proposed feasibility study. The nationalization of all Zairian rail lines under the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer du Zaire (SNCZ) in 1974 put paid to any further consideration of a unified railway system.