Belgians occupy Ujiji

At the turn of July and August 1916 Belgian colonial troops occupied Ujiji and neighbouring Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in the western part of German East Africa, without a fight. Kigoma was a port and the terminus of the Central Railway, which ran from here through Tabora to Dar es Salaam, and a few kilometres further south lay Ujiji, the oldest town on the lake. The dates given in the sources differ by a few days. The British chronology of the war records the occupation of Ujiji under 3 August. The British official history (Hordern), drawing on the Belgian official history, writes that Belgian patrols hoisted the flag over Ujiji as early as the evening of 27 July, and that Kigoma was occupied the next morning. Some more recent studies give 29 July for Kigoma and 2 August for Ujiji. They agree on one thing: the Germans had left before the Belgians arrived.

The march of the Southern Brigade

In the spring of 1916 the Force Publique, the colonial army of the Belgian Congo, under General Charles Tombeur, struck at the north-western extremities of the German colony. The Northern Brigade of Colonel Philippe Molitor occupied Ruanda and reached Lake Victoria, where the British shortly afterwards took Mwanza. The Southern Brigade of Colonel Frederik-Valdemar Olsen, a Dane in Belgian service, occupied Urundi in June, with Usumbura, now Bujumbura, and Kitega. The next objective was the section of the Central Railway on Lake Tanganyika, and then Tabora.

On 8 July Olsen’s brigade set out south from Kitega in two columns, each of three battalions with a battery. The 2nd Regiment of Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas marched south-west along the lakeshore and reached Nyanza on 15 July. It was supported by the Belgian steamer Netta, which sailed along the coast. The 1st Regiment of Major Muller, with brigade headquarters, marched south-east through swamps and rivers. On 16 July Olsen received orders from Tombeur to march on Ujiji, from where he was then to move east to help the Northern Brigade advancing on Tabora. The two columns were to meet at Kasulu, but on the morning of 24 July Thomas’s leading battalion took this post on its own. The small German garrison fled after a short fight.

Kigoma without defenders

The Germans did not intend to defend Kigoma. As early as 18 July Lettow-Vorbeck advised the commander of the troops in the west, General Kurt Wahle, that if the railway east of the port were threatened he should withdraw his troops and mobile guns, covering the retreat only with a gun from the cruiser Königsberg and the guns of the armed steamers. On 20 July Wahle reported the evacuation of Kigoma. Belgian seaplanes had been bombing the port for several weeks, and on 19 July they dropped leaflets in Swahili over Ujiji, preparing the inhabitants for the arrival of the Allies. The largest German vessel on the lake, Graf von Götzen, which had not once gone into action against the British flotilla, was scuttled by the Germans themselves near Kigoma.

On 27 July Thomas’s IV Battalion routed a weak German detachment by the railway line near Lwiche. There the Belgians learned that Ujiji and Kigoma had been abandoned. According to Hordern, the last German train had passed through Lwiche only two hours before they arrived. On 28 July Netta surprised the small German boat Wami on the lake, a few kilometres south of Ujiji, and her crew scuttled her. In the port the Belgians found the remains of a gun from Königsberg, and on a slipway on the shore the unfinished steamer Adjutant, brought in parts from Dar es Salaam. Hordern notes that had the Germans assembled her earlier, she could have seriously affected the situation on the lake. The rolling stock had been taken away, and whatever could not be removed had been destroyed. On 30 July Muller’s column reached the railway near Ruchugi, about 80 kilometres east of Kigoma, and found a carefully demolished bridge there.

Livingstone’s town

Ujiji was an old centre of Arab and Swahili trade, including the slave trade, at the end of the caravan route from the ocean coast. In 1858 Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke reached the shore of Tanganyika here as the first Europeans. On 10 November 1871 Henry Morton Stanley found David Livingstone here, who was believed lost in Europe. When at the beginning of the 20th century the Germans brought the railway to nearby Kigoma, it was Kigoma that took over the role of the port.

By the end of July the Belgians were masters of the western section of the Central Railway and of the whole eastern shore of the lake north of Kigoma. They could also move troops freely across Tanganyika: on 7 August a detachment of Lieutenant-Colonel Moulaert, commander of the Belgian forces on the lake, occupied Karema and Utinta on the eastern shore without resistance. Olsen’s troops halted briefly in Kigoma and Ujiji, and in the second week of August set off east along the line towards Tabora. Under later British–Belgian arrangements the Ujiji district was to remain under Belgian administration. Brussels, which in the spring had sought guarantees for the Congo, thus gained a strong argument for future peace negotiations.