Ghosts in the bush

From Great North Road

Ghosts in the bush

Northern Rhodesia was so malarias’ early in the last century that very few of the pioneers who traveled hopefully up the Great North Road remain to tell the tale.

It was a cruel land for the few white children, one in three died, compared with one adult in ten. Blackwater fever was the great killer of those days, though elephants trampled some and others were murdered.

Some places gained evil reputations, like Chiengi, the ‘haunted boma’ on Lake Mweru. One man after another died at the boma, not only from natural causes but sometimes mysteriously. As a result it was closed down before WW1. It was reopened again 10 years after the war and again Chiengi began claiming victims again. One official had a nervous breakdown, the next died from undiagnosed condition. They closed Chiengi for good after that.

I have seen a list of missionaries of various religions, Jesuit priests, White fathers, and the police troopers and explorers, surveyors and traders, who entered Northern Rhodesia before the end of the South African War. Prospectors and miners were there. Traders arrived in search of concessions or cattle, ivory or rubber. Mariners and engineers were sent by the African Lakes Corporation to launch steamers on the lakes. British South Africa Company officials fought the slave traders, while the police of the same company pursued white outlaws with more or less success. Hunters discovered a new paradise. Farmers settled in the wilderness, mainly round about Fort Jameson.

Inevitably there were characters that gained local fame and nicknames. ‘Captain Kettle’ built a lake steamer. ‘Zambezi Browne’ traded in Barotseland. ‘One Eye’ McGregor was an Australian cattle-trader.

The discovery of the Broken Hill and other mines made the country known to the outside world, and the railway was built to serve the mines. Fifty years before there were only 1000 white men living along the railway line between Livingstone and the Congo Border.

Copper moved the capital from Livingstone to Lusaka. Copper transformed Ndola from a wayside station with a boma and a few corrugated iron trading shacks to a modern town at the junction for Roan Antelope and Nkana and Mufulira.

Millions know the Roan Antelope by name. How many realise that a chance shot, a dead buck on a copper outcrop, led to this vast enterprise? Mr. W.C. Colliers, the man who fired that dramatic shot was also the founder of Bwana M’Kubwa.

Bill Collier had a partner named O’Donoghue and they trekked up into the unmapped country beyond the Zambezi, looking for minerals.

All they took with them for illness was Epsom salts, quinine, iodine and a lot of will-power. Fourteen donkeys and three Matabele carried their kit as far as the tsetse country when the donkeys were swapped for hired carriers.

For months, these two prospectors followed the trail that became the Great North Road and lived on the country. Game, meal, fowls and sweet potatoes were their staple diet for most of the journey. They eventually came upon the village of Chief Kapopo, and found their hospitable native commissioner named Jones, know to the admiring tribesmen as Bwana M’Kubwa, the ‘Great Master’.

Because of the way Jones had treated Colliers and O’Donoghue, Colliers had promised if they had any luck the discovery would be named after him. Because of the vastness of the country, Colliers and his partner decided to separate. Not far from Kapopo’s place Colliers found natives using low-grade copper as medicine, dusting it on their wounds. Colliers was told by one of natives who acted as a guide to’ Follow the river and you will find what you are seeking’. Then in June 1902, Colliers saw a Roan and shot it. It fell on the outcrop, which became the Roan Antelope Mine.

Colliers did not at first realize the importance of his discovery and carried on searching. He came across a chief Chiwala who had settled in the vicinity of the present day Ndola. Colliers spoke to Chiwala but learnt nothing of value.

Three weeks after the Roan Antelope discovery Colliers came upon the huge open pit used by Chiwala. This was the rich copper mine, which Colliers named Bwana M’Kubwe in honour of Jones.

The next Copper Belt pioneer of the area was the man who founded Ndola, Mr. J.E. Stephenson, the famous Chirapula Stephenson of the Great North Road, first magistrate ever appointed in this territory.

EXTRACT TAKEN FROM: GREAT NORTH ROAD BY LAWRENCE G.GREEN

Contributed by Keith Johnston

October 2002