SNAPSHOT IN HISTORY – THE NORTHERN RHODESIAN BUSINESSMAN
By Eugene Makai
While the Susman brothers, the Limbadas and other businessmen from minority communities in Northern Rhodesia have had their business journeys and successes widely profiled and acknowledged, not much attention has been given to indigenous Northern Rhodesia business people.
From Fort Jameson to Fort Rosebery, Broken Hill to Abercon, Mankoya to Balovale, Feira to Old Fife and Batoka to Bancroft, few African businessmen if not none, have been profiled into the collective memory of Zambians from the 1920s to 1960s.
My paternal Grandfather Kalwizhi Paul Makai was a successful businessman reputed to be the first African from Mankoya (Kaoma) to own a Land Rover in the 1950s.
His journey from caravan treks to Mulobezi to order goods and supplies for his shop, to his established relations with the Limbadas in Lusaka, is typical of the success of African businessmen of Northern Rhodesia.
The environment that prevailed in which capital starved African businesses required linkages with European, Indian or Jewish traders to thrive, is an important aspect of the history of the African business experience in Northern Rhodesia.
However, my paternal Grandfather is not the subject matter here, but a useful and practical example of the business relationships that forged business successes for Africans.
My attention here, is rather the journey of the Mwenso Brothers of Johnston Falls (Mambilima) in Chief Mulundu’s area of the then Northern Province (now in Luapula Province) of Northern Rhodesia, and other Luapula African traders.
It has to be noted that the economy of the Mweru-Luapula area was heavily tied to Katanga in the Belgian Congo and particularly Elisabethville (Lubumbashi) because of the mining activities of the Belgian miner Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK). This was especially so after 1918 when the Belgians built a road from Elisabethville to Kasenga on the banks of the Luapula River.
The commerçant (European Trader), like Greek traders who operated out of Kasenga had large charcoal driven boats that could reach remote fishing villages on the shores of Lake Mweru from where they bought smoked and dried fish for onward sale in Elisabethville.
Some of these Greek fish traders like Nissim Soriano a Sephardic Jew who fled Facism and Anti-semitism in 1938 from the Italian occupiers of his native Rhodes Island in Greece, settled in Kashobwe in Katanga where his sister was already living and then married a local woman from Luapula.
Soriano is the father of Congolese politician and businessman Moïse Katumbi Chapwe Soriano and his elder half-brother Raphaël Soriano Katebe Katoto.
Jameson Mwenso the foremost of the Mwenso business clan started his business in the 1920s after completing his primary with two Shillings (2/–) given to him by his mother. The first line of business an African would usually take given the social-economic situation of the Mweru-Luapula area was fishery related.
And so, Jameson Mwenso bought fish from the two Shillings, got on a bicycle and headed to Elisabethville on the road from Kasenga.
With the proceeds of his fish sales in Elisabethville, he bought second-hand clothes (Kombo) and traded or sold them to well to do fishermen along the Luapula River. From this repeated exercise, he made enough to buy five (5) bicycles and have family members join him on his trips to Elisabethville where they returned with clothes, soap and other goods.
These were the beginnings of the family business that by the 1960s was an institution in Luapula.
By 1947 the Mwenso Brothers had diversified and established themselves in the passenger and goods transport business with Johnston Falls, Kawambwa and Fort Rosebery being major their routes. In 1948, their operating licence had expanded to include Ndola (via Kapalala or Mokambo), Mufulira, Nkana, Luanshya, Mporokoso and Kafulwe.
The fish trade with the Copperbelt further boosted the businesses of Luapula based transporters such as the Mwenso Brothers such that by 1949 the Luapulan economy was fuelled by trade from within Northern Rhodesia.
The commerçant-African Trader relationship within Northern Rhodesia was important because access to formal credit for African businessmen was not easy to come by. The informal credit (Nkongole) system mostly by way of merchandise meant that the European, Indian or Jewish trader became an indispensable part of the African business experience.
Luapula African traders who benefited from the commerçant relationships include Benjamin Chabalala Kapapula who through acting as a buyer for Greek traders in the fish trade. Others like the Nkomba Brothers of whom Nkomba Kakoka was the pioneer trader, also dealt with the commerçants, graduating into sales of second-hand clothes (Kombo) then into luxury goods and food essentials.
Like the Mwenso Brothers, more Luapula traders like Luka Mumba and Jim Kapesha graduated from fishermen to transporters affording Dodge vans and Bedford trucks.
Aroon Ngwashi from humble beginnings managed to set up shops along the Luapula valley and gave good competition to the Congolese commerçants.
Biston Katongola and Jim Kapesha like their cousins the Mwenso Brothers also started trading in the 1920s. Katongola who first worked as a cook in Elisabethville returned to his village in Chief Mulundu’s area with enough savings from his job as a cook in Congo with which he started buying fish to sell to the Greeks.
As the tried and tested Luapula African business formula worked, Katongola went into the second-hand clothes business as well. By the 1960s he, Kapesha and their sons became some of the largest traders in the Luapula Valley.
The Mwenso Brothers were members of the Luapula Transport Cooperative Society and their standing had become so good that they were able to get new buses on hire-purchase basis to ply their assigned routes.
Photo 📸 : Mr. Mwenso receiving documents for a new bus.