Congo Pedicle road

Development of the Copperbelt from the late 1920s had a big impact on overland routes. Copperbelt towns including Élisabethville (now 'Lubumbashi') in the province of Katanga in the Belgian Congo became the markets and chief source of supplies and employment for the Luapula-Mweru-Bangweulu region, and in turn their large fisheries (the largest in Northern Rhodesia) supplied the growing Copperbelt labour force.[2]

However, it was Élisabethville and Katanga which benefited initially, via a road to the Congolese port of Kasenga on the Luapula, and another to a ferry at Shiniama across the Luapula near Matanda and on to Fort Rosebery (now known as Mansa). There was migration from Luapula Province to Katanga, and some of Mwata Kazembe's people looked to Élisabethville for employment and advancement rather than Mufulira, Kitwe and Ndola. The Northern Rhodesian authorities and mines were slower to catch on, and when dried fish was bought for their workforce from Katanga, it may well have been caught in the Northern Rhodesian waters of Lake Mweru, Lake Mweru Wantipa, south-west Lake Tanganyika or even Lake Bangweulu.[2] There was a road from Ndola across the border to Sakania in the Belgian Congo, and a dirt road to a small ferry over the Luapula at Kapalala, but it was not a direct route, took at least a day to travel, and was not suitable for the heavier vehicles. Eventually, in the late 1940s, the Government of Northern Rhodesia realised the need for a larger, direct road from the Copperbelt to Fort Rosebery with a higher-capacity ferry over the Luapula.

Apart from the Luapula occasionally bursting its banks at Chembe in the rainy season and halting the Chembe Ferry for a few days, this happy state of affairs continued until the Congo Crisis of 1961 when travel on the pedicle stopped for security reasons and had to be routed by air or via Kasama. Although the interruption did not last long, it highlighted the vulnerability of the route.

The Belgian Congo became independent in June 1960 as the Republic of the Congo and changed its name to Zaire in 1971, and Northern Rhodesia became independent in October 1964, as Zambia. Any thought that two African neighbours with shared tribal, cultural and historical origins could cooperate even better than neighbouring colonial powers was dispelled not long after. The colonial experience had broken down those connections which might have smoothed travel by Zambians through Zaire and replaced them with a bureaucracy and leadership whose allegiances had greatly changed and who saw how to exploit regulations and authority for their own gains.[3]

Under Mobutu, governance deteriorated and corruption flourished in Zaire, and he saw Katanga only as a cash cow and punished it for its separatist tendencies by neglecting its development. Zairean border officials and police went for months without being paid and turned to petty corruption to survive.[1] At first small bribes were taken from Zambians whose identity cards were not in order, but this escalated to arbitrary fines,[4] for example, a driver might be fined for wearing a hat while his passenger was fined for not wearing a hat.

The Pedicle became the major gripe for the people of Luapula Province and they assailed their leaders and officials when they toured the province,[4] such as in a meeting of civil servants in Mansa in 1975 with President Kenneth Kaunda, when most of the questions were about harassment at the Pedicle.

The situation became more severe when any of Mobutu's security forces were in the Pedicle,[1] with robberies, violence and occasionally the complete disappearance of travellers and their vehicles.[5]

The route by-passing the Pedicle is made longer by Lake Bangweulu and its swamps which extend from its north-east tip for 200 km (120 mi) to the north, and the only route had to go east then north of this system. A route south of the lake was hampered by the fact that the Luapula and its swamps there are at least 6 km (3.7 mi) wide, and the floodplain is 60 km (37 mi) wide.[6] However the complaints about the Pedicle were so many that the tarred 300 km (190 mi) Samfya-Serenje road and Luapula Bridge, which is 2.5 km (1.6 mi) long with nearly 20 km (12 mi) of causeway, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country, were constructed and opened in 1983. The Mufulira-Mansa distance by this route is 718 km (446 mi), still much longer than the Pedicle route but saving 448 km (278 mi) on the Kasama route. From Lusaka and southern Zambia to Mansa the route is very much more attractive.