EP 02 - Dr Livingstone, I presume?

Dr Livingstone, I presume?

- Episode 02 -

Smoke that Thunders

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#74 Smoke that Thunders

Thurs 6 October 2022

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Livingstone being attacked by the lion that rendered his left arm useless, from his book Missionary Travels

Livingstone, the lone traveller? Absolutely not!

Until recently [and sometimes even now] Livingstone is imagined as an extraordinary explorer because he travelled alone.

After all he had no financial backing except his small missionary stipend, and at the start of his travels he had no other support except from a few big game hunting friends. And soon he even left them behind.

Somehow, it was always assumed, Livingstone succeeded in walking thousands of miles across the continent with just a few European beads and some rolls of cloth which he used to buy food and the right to pass through African peoples’ lands.

Walima Kalusa, an historian at the University of Zambia, points out that Livingstone never travelled alone. His expeditions were only made possible because the Kololo king (in the Barotse plain in Central Africa) funded them, and sent his men to travel with him.

It was the 17 year-old Sekeletu, king of the Kololo, who put up most of the trade goods that enabled Livingstone to make his two greatest journeys - first to trek West to Loanda on the west coast of Africa and then to go East to Quelimane.

The Kololo dynasty was wiped out before Livingstone died. Its language lives on however among the Lozi people who now occupy their land.

#74 Smoke that Thunders
Ep 2 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'
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The tr ansatlantic slave trade disrupted African societies and prevented them following an independent path of development. Colonial rule and its modern legacy have been a continuation of this disruption. Coloured wood engraving 1859

A bold partnership, quite unlike anything either missionaries or explorers – or indeed Africans - had attempted before

On 23 May 1853 Livingstone arrived in the Kololo capital, Linyanti. He had been treated well by the Kololo people on a previous trip north from South Africa and was counting on their hospitality.

He must have been surprised however by the extent of the welcome committee organised by the new 17 year-old king Sekeletu who had heard about Livingstone from his late father, Sebetwane. For Livingstone was met on the road by a procession of 7000 people and escorted to the kgotla, the town’s central court.

Poems were recited in Livingstone’s honour and Sekeletu offered Livingstone anything he wanted. In September 1853, Sekeletu called a pitso or national meeting, with his indunas or subordinate chiefs. They listened as Livingstone – speaking, of course, in the local language - set out his plan.

The Kololo usually traded slaves for beads, guns and European clothes. In fact most of the people who had accompanied Livingstone that day into Lunkanti had not been Kololo, but Lozi, Nyengo or Subiya and from other neighbouring peoples. They were the Kololo’s slaves.

Livingstone now proposed that instead of trading in slaves, the Kololo could sell beeswax, ivory and ostrich feathers – which they already had – along with coffee, tobacco, cotton and sugar, which he would show them how to grow. There would be no more need for slaves – or the endless wars that were necessary to capture them.

Livingstone then explained that what he needed to do was to establish a route to carry the Kololo's new trade to the coast. And he requested Sekeletu the king to fund his journeys to Loanda in the West and then to Quelimane in the east.

Livingstone's dream of commerce for Africans depended on finding a river to export goods grown in the interior to the coast

Area occupied by the Kololo people, on the Barotse plain. Now occupied by the Lozi tribe although the Kololo language still survives

You couldn't make coffee or cotton walk to the coast - you needed a river

The Kololo indunas, - the subordinate chiefs - were bitterly opposed to Livingstone’s proposal they abandon trading in slaves. No wonder - they were making a handsome living from it. But the teenage King, Sekeletu, backed Livingstone – for reasons of his own which we explore with the help of Zambian academic and historian Walima Kalusa.

In Nov 1853 Sekeletu equipped Livingstone with a royal canoe, ivory to pay the various African peoples along the way, four oxen to carry their goods and then to eat, and 27 young men, including two of his best young Kololo chiefs, who would act as guides.

Two years later Livingstone and the 27 Kololo men returned from Loanda on the Angolan coast with coffee and other seeds to start Kololo plantations. Just as Livingstone had planned.

However he told them that the plantations would have to wait. The problem was this. Slaves had always been forced to walk to the coast. But, cotton or coffee would somehow have to be carried in bulk, and in practice that meant that Livingstone would have to find a navigable river to carry them.

Livingstone’s epic journey westwards had turned up no river that could take any significant trade. So before it was worth planting anything in the Kololo’s lands, he would have to try to find a river route going east.

Stamp showing Victoria Falls on 100th anniversary of Livingstone's official recording of the natural wonder, Smoke that Thunders (Zimbabwe & Malawi)

The two Kololo chiefs who’d acted as guides on Livingstone's journey westwards would come along again, as he travelled 800 or so miles to the east coast of Africa. This time they were accompanied by 114 Kololo porters. One of them, Sekwebu, had already travelled extensively in that direction.

This time the king, Sekeletu himself, came along for the first part. They picked up the enormous Zambezi River and followed it downstream as far as the spectacular Masio-atunya [which means ‘Smoke that Thunders’], a spectacular waterfall.

Livingstone, the first European to officially record his visit there, renamed it Victoria Falls, after his queen.

Now, although 100 metres of plummeting water across the entire kilometre of the Zambezi’s width, would most certainly put a stop to trade boats navigating any further inland, Livingstone calculated that they were already hundreds of miles inland.

Just being able to bring a ship this far would be well worth the effort. Now he just had to hope that there was nothing else like these immense falls before the Zambezi reached the sea.

#Livingstone #VictoriaFalls #HenryMortonStanley #WalimaKalusa #ThomasFowellBuxton #exploration #slavetrade #MissionaryTravels #LondonMissionarySociety #royalgeographicalsociety

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