Portuguese occupy Kionga

A month after Germany declared war on Portugal, the Portuguese forces in Mozambique took their first step in this war. A detachment under Major Portugal da Silveira entered Kionga, the main settlement of a small triangle of land on the southern bank of the Rovuma river, at its mouth on the Indian Ocean. The Germans offered no resistance. The British chronology of the war records the occupation of Kionga under 11 April 1916. According to a Portuguese account published in 1934 in the collective work Portugal na Grande Guerra, the Portuguese entered the settlement on 10 April, and the British official history of the East African campaign (Hordern) states that by 10 April they had occupied the whole triangle. The news soon reached the world press: on 12 April the New York Times reported that the Portuguese commander at Porto Amélia (today Pemba) had announced the occupation of Kionga.

The disputed triangle

The Kionga Triangle covered, depending on the source, from about 400 to 450 square kilometres and was the only scrap of German East Africa south of the Rovuma, which otherwise formed the border with Portuguese East Africa, that is Mozambique. Palm groves and rice grew there, but above all whoever held the triangle controlled the mouth of the border river. According to the British official history, the Portuguese had seized the area by force in 1887, taking it from the Sultan of Zanzibar. In 1894, after years of disputes over the course of the border at the mouth of the Rovuma, the Germans raised their flag at Kionga Bay. Lisbon had to give way to force, but did not forget Kionga. Tension was fuelled by minor border incidents, mainly connected with smuggling. In August 1914, although the two states were formally at peace, a German detachment attacked the Portuguese post of Maziua on the Rovuma. So when war broke out in March 1916, recovering Kionga became the first and most obvious objective of the colonial forces.

Major da Silveira’s expedition

The Portuguese then had in Mozambique, according to Hordern, about 1,500 European and 2,800 African soldiers. The African infantry was scattered in small posts along a border more than 600 kilometres long, and many of the Europeans, young recruits sent out from home in 1915, were in hospital. Lisbon decided to send reinforcements, but no one waited for them. The Governor-General of Mozambique, Álvaro de Castro, had been urging the military command to act from the first days of the war. At the end of March a small mixed detachment was assembled at Porto Amélia: a company of European infantry, a mountain artillery battery and a cavalry platoon. It was to occupy Kionga and then reconnoitre towards the German ports of Mikindani and Lindi. At the beginning of April the small steamer Luabo carried the soldiers to Palma, where African companies joined them. The whole force numbered about 400 men.

From Palma to Kionga the detachment marched about 12 kilometres along a sandy road, through country freshly flooded by rain. On the German side the triangle was guarded by only a few border guards. According to the Portuguese account, the Germans abandoned Kionga the day before the Portuguese arrived and crossed to the northern bank of the Rovuma, leaving their trenches behind. The Portuguese occupied the settlement, which had three trading houses and about a hundred huts, and in the following days set up a line of posts along the southern bank of the river over a stretch of about 50 kilometres from the sea inland.

An easy victory and its price

The prize proved costly. Kionga, surrounded by palm groves, had a deadly climate. According to the same Portuguese account almost all the soldiers ended up in hospital, and at the end of July 545 sick men, declared unfit for service, were evacuated from the triangle by ship. The Germans on the other bank did not let themselves be forgotten either. At Easter, on 23 April, they raked the post of Namoto with machine-gun fire, and its garrison hastily withdrew; later they crossed the shallow estuary again and again. At the end of May the Portuguese, supported by the cruiser Adamastor and the gunboat Chaimite, tried to cross to the German bank, but the landing at Mwambo on 27 May was repulsed.

Kionga remained in Portuguese hands until the end of the war. At the end of May 1916 the post office even issued its own stamps overprinted “KIONGA”. The Treaty of Versailles awarded the triangle to Portugal, and it was the only territorial gain the country took away from its part in the war. Today the area belongs to the Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.