by Guy Arnold
In any case, while the countries of Southern Africa faced the normal difficulties associated with being landlocked, these were greatly exacerbated by the racial confrontations and developing liberation wars that characterized the region throughout the 1970s, especially as South Africa and Rhodesia controlled, and had determined to continue controlling, the most accessible routes to the sea. Much of the history of the landlocked territories of Southern Africa, both as colonies and subsequently, has been concerned with finding the most economical transit routes to the sea for their products and, in times of turmoil, alternative routes.
Central African Republic, as the name implies, is near enough to being the geographic centre of the continent. It has to reckon on a transit time of two months for bulk goods: these travel from Bangui, the capital, down the Ubangui River to its confluence with the Congo, then down to Kinshasa where they may either remain on the river until Boma, alternating between river and rail, and only at Boma will they be transshipped to ocean-going ships for onward passage to Europe. Alternately, such goods can be transshipped at Kinshasa to travel by rail to Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo for transshipment to ocean-going vessels. The three giant landlocked Sahel countries – Mali, Niger and Chad – suffer from lack of development as a consequence of their remoteness, huge size and sparse populations, and the fact that they do not possess sufficiently abundant or valuable resources to attract the finances required to construct modern highways, whether road or rail. Mali and Niger both have direct access to the River Niger and a route to the sea through Nigeria but here again progress can be slow since large river vessels cannot use the river during the dry season when the waters are low. During the 1960s and 1970s when France intervened in the civil war in Chad the best route of access was through Central African Republic.
The three landlocked countries of East Africa – Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda – depend upon routes through Kenya to Mombasa or, in the case of Burundi, through Tanzania to Dar es Salaam as well. Transit countries, such as Kenya, welcome their roles since they earn substantial fees from handling the traffic of their neighbours, while under international law they are obliged to provide two-way access for neighbouring landlocked states. In Southern Africa much of the post-independence history of Malawi and Zambia, and of Rhodesia during the UDI years, was taken up with the problem of access to the sea and such problems were greatly complicated by the politics of the region: the opposition of the front-line states to apartheid in South Africa meant they needed to find routes that did not pass through the Republic. This persuaded Zambia to go ahead with the construction of the TANZAM Railway. On the other hand, South Africa exerted a number of pressures upon its landlocked neighbours to the north to compel them to use trade routes that passed through its territory. South Africa did not wish to lose their valuable transit fees; furthermore, as long as they had to use routes through South Africa it would be that much easier for Pretoria to exert upon them political pressures to damp down their ideological opposition to its apartheid policies. Finally, Lesotho is the only country within a country in the world and, as such, is entirely at the mercy of South Africa.
THE TRANS-AFRICAN HIGHWAY
At the beginning of the 1970s considerable attention was focused upon the possibility of constructing a trans-African highway that would link Mombasa on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast to Lagos on Nigeria’s Atlantic coast. The projected highway would pass through Kenya, Uganda, Zaïre, Central African Republic, Cameroon and Nigeria. It was assumed, though with little supporting data, that linking oil-rich Nigeria with its booming economy and huge population with Kenya, the economic hub of the East African Common Market, would lead to a substantial increase in cross-continental traffic that would benefit the countries lying between the two poles of the highway. In 1969 Japan expressed an interest in helping construct such a highway but since at the time Japan’s total aid to Africa only amounted to US$1.1 million the African reaction to this offer was one of suspicion as to that country’s intentions. The first difficulty confronting the highway enthusiasts was the fact that the countries though which it was to pass had little in common with each other. The two pole countries, Kenya and Nigeria, were both members of Anglophone Africa though with very different histories. Kenya, moreover, was to be sufficiently engrossed with the problems facing the East African Community throughout the 1970s, especially with the assumption of power in Uganda of Idi Amin, to have much interest in forwarding a highway whose first stretch outside Kenya would come under Ugandan control. The huge northern region of Zaïre through which nearly 1,000 miles of the highway would have to pass was sparsely populated and, for political reasons, neglected by the Mobutu government, which was not anxious to see it become economically strong. Central African Republic and Cameroon were Francophone countries and the regions through which the highway would pass were extremely remote and underdeveloped. Despite the planners, led by the Ghanaian Robert Gardiner who was the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the difficulties appeared greater than the attractions. Uganda under Amin could not be relied upon, though that was not at once apparent; Central African Republic was so poor that though it would benefit from the highway, its own contribution in trade movements was likely to be minimal. Mobutu at best was lukewarm towards the idea of such a highway as he saw it detaching the northern region from Kinshasa’s control.
Nonetheless, at a time when development was at the forefront of African thinking, the formal idea of such a highway was seized upon by the ECA after a Japanese economic mission to Africa had formulated the idea, which was conveyed to the Kenya government in 1970 by the Japanese ambassador.1 Japanese enthusiasm to build the highway – there was an active lobby in support of the idea in Japan, Mitsubishi was prepared to construct the road and the Japanese government offered substantial aid for the project – led to the African suspicions of Japanese intentions, especially as up to that time it had shown little or no interest in African affairs. For Japan, however, the trans-African highway meant increased influence and trade on a continent where it sought ever greater quantities of raw materials for its expanding industries. Nonetheless, the proposal to construct a trans-African highway was formally tabled in 1971 by the Executive Committee of the ECA on behalf of the six countries. Robert Gardiner was an enthusiast for the idea and on 1 July 1971 he set up a Trans-African Highway Bureau. The highway was to be 4,400 miles in length and would form part of the existing road network of the six countries through which it passed. On 9 October 1971 nine industrial countries offered help and on 25 October Britain’s Overseas Development Administration (ODA) put out a press release to announce that a contract for a pre-feasibility study had been awarded to the London-based firm T. P. O’Sullivan and Partners. Progress thereafter was very slow and little had been achieved by 1974 although Gardiner had hoped to have the road completed by 1976. At that stage it was hoped it might be completed by 1978. The final proposal was for a 4,000-mile highway: Kenya 570 miles, Uganda 410, Zaïre 980, Central African Republic 810, Cameroon 680 and Nigeria 550. The least-developed, most inaccessible stretches would be those passing through Zaïre, Central African Republic and Cameroon. Costs were estimated at between £200 million and £300 million and these had to be scaled down in the light of the aid offers that were forthcoming. The OAU accused the World Bank of a ‘negative attitude’ and urged it to make a contribution towards the costs while also telling the six countries the road would pass through ‘to mobilize all their human and material resources for the execution of the project’.2
Unlike the TANZAM Railway, which the West did not wish to promote, the trans-African highway was not controversial from the viewpoint of Western interests and it might well pass through regions where new mineral deposits were to be found. But the problems were formidable. There seemed little prospect that the most economically backward regions of Central African Republic and Zaïre would change and the argument that the road would lead to development in these regions appeared to be based less
on evidence than hope. No studies had been carried out to show whether there would be an increased demand in either Central African Republic or Zaïre for goods from Kenya or Nigeria once the road came into operation. Moreover, the political differences between the six countries led inevitably to a consideration of political practicalities: would a quarrel between two of the countries lead to a border closure that would disrupt use of the highway by the others? As Robert Gardiner had said in the early planning stage: ‘When you have a road crossing different countries, there may be periods of misunderstanding, and a decision not to allow vehicles to pass from one of the member states.’3 On the other hand, overcoming political differences was a justification for the highway, which would lead to greater trade, greater movement of people leading to greater unity and understanding; more economic growth along the length of the road; and a greater sense of African strength and oneness. The enthusiasts for the highway were defeated. In 1976 stretches of the existing highways in Zaïre and Cameroon registered an average of only one vehicle in 24 hours and elsewhere of one to 10 vehicles. At the Lagos end 10,000 vehicles a day used the road and at the Mombasa end 6,000, but in between the fall-off in use was huge. By the mid-1970s the project was being abandoned since none of the six countries was sufficiently interested to give the highway the necessary priority. By that time Nigeria was busy promoting the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and was more interested in the Trans-Sahara Highway. Kenya was coming to terms with the collapse of the East African Common Market; Mobutu was uninterested in developing northern Zaïre; while both Central African Republic and Cameroon needed the trans-African highway to demonstrate its worth before they would take action to promote it. Despite the enthusiasm of its original promoters and the belief that such a highway would promote economic growth, the road was not seen as essential by any of the six countries and lacked the urgency that led to the construction of the TANZAM Railway which was completed in 1976. In the end the dream of a trans-African highway collapsed in the face of political realities.
THE ZAMBEZI FRONTIER
By the 1970s the Zambezi River had become the front line, dividing independent black Africa to the north from white-controlled Southern Africa. Zambia at this time was the most exposed of the front-line states and Kaunda’s opposition to UDI in Rhodesia and apartheid in South Africa meant that his country’s traditional transit routes southwards were always at risk. Malawi under Hastings Banda had chosen a different path and come to an accommodation with the white South. Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere was the chairman of the front-line states and together with Kaunda spearheaded African opposition to white rule in the South. In 1970 in the two Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique the African guerrilla movements were engaged in liberation wars against the Portuguese though this would change dramatically halfway through the decade, following the 25 April Revolution in Lisbon. South of the Zambezi, Rhodesia under Ian Smith would soon be engaged in a full-scale guerrilla war against ZANU forces in the north-east of the country and ZAPU forces in the west and would be obliged to call for help from South Africa. There were four captive territories south of the Zambezi: Namibia which, according to the United Nations, was illegally occupied by South Africa; and the three High Commission Territories of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland that were constantly subjected to pressures from Pretoria. South Africa itself was the regional superpower whose white rulers were determined to hold the line against African nationalism. The railway system for the whole region had been developed at the end of the nineteenth century and was designed to bring the countries to the north of South Africa into its economic and political orbit so that a captive state like Botswana that was totally opposed to apartheid, nonetheless, was dependent upon trade routes through the Republic, while Zambia to the north of the Zambezi found that its transit routes all went south.
Under the terms of the Anglo-German Treaty of 1890 Britain had ceded to Germany a slice of northern Bechuanaland (Botswana) to become part of Germany’s colony of South West Africa and this was named the Caprivi Strip after the German Chancellor Count Caprivi. The Germans wanted access to the Zambezi under the mistaken notion that this would give them a route to the Indian Ocean. Earlier, in the prelude to the Scramble for Africa, David Livingstone on his second great expedition to Africa had hoped to penetrate deep into the interior up the Zambezi from its mouth on the Indian Ocean but was stopped by the Cabora Bassa gorge and so turned northwards up the Shire River into Nyasaland (later Malawi). These early European expectations of using the Zambezi as a major highway had to be abandoned. Instead, it became a major source of power for Zambia, Rhodesia and Mozambique as the Victoria Falls, Kariba and Cabora Bassa were developed, and a dividing line between the independent black North and white-controlled South from the early 1960s onwards. By the 1970s it was heavily patrolled on the Rhodesian side to prevent incursions by the various Rhodesian, Namibian and South African guerrilla groups based in Zambia and witnessed an increasing number of military incidents.
The River rises in the north-eastern highlands of Angola and sweeps in a great arc into western Zambia, passing through Barotseland before forming the boundary between Zambia and the Caprivi Strip for 100 miles. Kazungula, on the Zambian side of the river, marks the meeting point of the Caprivi Strip, Zambia, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Botswana – the only point in the world at which four countries meet – where there was a ferry linking Botswana to Zambia and the independent black north. Thereafter, the river formed the frontier between Zambia and Rhodesia: at the Victoria Falls a bridge carries the Zambian railway across into Rhodesia and points south; further east the Kariba Dam (the pride of the Central African Federation) created the huge lake of the same name that forms part of the border; then at Feira the river passes into Mozambique’s Tete province where at this time an international consortium was constructing the huge Cabora Bassa Dam to provide power for South Africa and give it a stake in Portugal’s continuing hold on Mozambique. Until 1974, when the drain of the African wars and consequent disillusionment of the military led to the revolution in Portugal that presaged the collapse of their African empire, the Portuguese had seen the Zambezi, which divides Mozambique in half, as the last line of defence should the FRELIMO forces succeed in fighting their way that far south. The Zambezi, then, had become a strategic and symbolic barrier of the utmost importance and formed the front line between the black North and the white South.
MOZAMBIQUE AS A TRANSIT COUNTRY
Mozambique’s location on the eastern flank of Southern Africa gives it a position of unique importance; of all Africa’s ‘outlet’ countries it is the most strategically placed: because of the length of its coastline, the quality and size of its harbours and the number of countries whose outlets to the sea it controls. The Indian Ocean coastline is 1,560 miles long, making Mozambique the natural maritime outlet for Malawi, Zambia, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), the Transvaal of South Africa and Swaziland. The railways and roads from those countries to Mozambique’s ports are vital to its economy because of the transit revenues they earn. This position as a transit country meant that throughout the 30 years from 1964 when the FRELIMO war began, during the UDI years in Rhodesia and Zambia’s embattled position as a front-line state, and through the shifting fortunes of war and politics in the region, Mozambique offered essential transit routes to its neighbours. The Lourenco Marques (Maputo)–Transvaal railway reached the Rand in 1894 and by the 1960s was still the shortest and most important transit route for the Johannesburg area, which is the most heavily industrialized in South Africa. Second came the Beira to Salisbury (Harare) railway and the Beira to Blantyre line, each essential respectively to Rhodesia and Malawi. Another line from Lourenco Marques to Gwelo (Gweru) in Rhodesia was completed in 1954. Finally, in the north of Mozambique, the huge natural harbour and port of Nacala was developed as the outlet for the northern provinces of Mozambique and for Malawi. Between them these lines added up to 2,200 miles of track and their strategic importance was enormou
sly enhanced during the years of confrontation that began with UDI in Rhodesia. In addition, major roads were developed from Maputo and Beira to the Transvaal and Rhodesia.
Africa’s huge coastline has relatively few good harbours and Mozambique is lucky to have two excellent ones in Maputo and Nacala, though Beira is more problematical since it regularly becomes silted up; between them they serve the countries of the interior and for Zambia, Rhodesia, Malawi, Swaziland and the Transvaal provide the most economic outlets. Beira acted as the sea gateway for Malawi and Zambia (almost entirely prior to UDI in Rhodesia and still thereafter until Smith closed the border with Zambia in 1973). Nacala in the north was the last of Mozambique’s ports to be developed; it possesses one of the largest and best natural harbours in Africa and the railway inland was linked to Malawi in 1970.