Physical geography.
Mweru is mainly fed by the Luapula River, which comes in
through swamps from the south, and the Kalungwishi River from the east. At its
north end the lake is drained by the Luvua River, which flows in a
northwesterly direction to join the Lualaba River and thence to the Congo. It
is the second-largest lake in the Congo's drainage basin and is located 150 km
west of the southern end of the largest, Lake Tanganyika.
The Luapula forms a swampy delta almost as wide as the southern
end of the lake. In a number of respects the lower river and lake can be
treated as one entity. For a lake in a region with pronounced wet and dry
seasons, Mweru does not change much in level and area. The annual fluctuation
in level is 1.7m, with seasonal highs in May and lows in January. This is
partly because the Luapula drains out of the Bangweulu Swamps and floodplain
which tend to regulate the water flow, absorbing the annual flood and releasing
it slowly, and partly because Mweru's outlet, the Luvua, drops quickly and
flows swiftly, without vegetation to block it. A rise in Mweru is quickly
offset by a faster flow down the Luvua.
Mweru's average length is 118 km and its average width is 45
km, with its long axis oriented northeast-southwest. Its elevation is 917 m,
quite a bit higher than Tanganyika 763 m. It is a rift valley lake lying in the
Lake Mweru-Luapula graben, which is a branch of the East African Rift. The
western shore of the lake in DR Congo exhibits the steep escarpment typical of
a rift valley lake, rising to the Kundelungu Mountains beyond, but the rift
valley escarpment is less pronounced on the eastern shore.
Mweru is shallow in the south and deeper in the north, with
two depressions in the north-eastern section with maximum depths of 20 m and 27
m.
A smaller very marshy lake called Mweru Wantipa also known
as the Mweru Marshes lies about 50 km to
its east, and north of the Kalungwishi. It is mostly endorheic and actually
takes water from the Kalungwishi through a dambo most of the time, but in times
of high flood it may overflow into the Kalungwishi and Lake Mweru.
Human geography.
Exploration
The lake was known to Arab and Swahili traders of ivory, copper and slaves who used Kilwa Island on the lake as a base
at one time. They used trade routes from Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean to Ujiji
on Lake Tanganyika to Mweru and then to the Lunda, Luba, Yeke or Kazembe
kingdoms, the last being on the southern shores of Mweru. Western trade routes
went from those kingdoms to the Atlantic, so Mweru lay on a transcontinental
trade route.
Between 1796 and 1831 Portuguese traders/explorers Pereira,
Francisco de Lacerda and others visited Kazembe from Mozambique to get treaties
to use the trade route between their territories of Mozambique and Angola. The
Portuguese must have known of the lake, and the visitors only had to walk to
higher ground about 5 km north of Kazembe's Kanyembo capital to see the lake 10
km distant. However they were more interested in trade routes than discovery,
they had approached from the south and their movements were restricted by Mwata
Kazembe, and they did not provide an account of it. Explorer and missionary David Livingstone,
who referred to it as 'Moero', is credited with its discovery during his
travels of 1867-'8.
Livingstone witnessed the devastation and suffering caused
by the slave trade in the area to the north and east of Mweru, and his accounts
did help rally opposition to it. The last of the slave trading in the area was
as late as the 1890s, however. Meanwhile between 1870 and 1891, skirmishes and
wars between the Yeke king Msiri and neighbouring chiefs and traders unsettled
the area. Few Europeans had visited Mweru since Livingstone, until Alfred
Sharpe in 1890–1 and the Stairs Expedition in 1892 both passed by on their way
to seek treaties with Msiri. The Stairs Expedition killed Msiri and took
Katanga for the King Leopold II of Belgium. Sharpe left one of his officers to
set up the first colonial outpost in the Luapula-Mweru valley, the British boma
at Chiengi in 1891.
Historical development.
Lake Mweru and its main inlets, the lower Luapula River and
its swamps, and the Kalungwishi. Also shown is Mweru's outlet, the Luvua River
going on north to the Lualaba and Congo rivers. Water shows up as black in this
false-colour NASA satellite image. The extent of the swamps is shown by the
solid blue line, and the extent of floodplain is shown as a dotted line. The
towns are, in Zambia: 1 Chiengi, 2 Kashikishi, 3 Nchelenge, 4 Mwansabombwe, 5
Mwense; in DR Congo: 6 Pweto, 7 Kilwa, 8 Kasenga. Other features: 9: Chisenga
Island, 10 the largest swamp island in DR Congo, 11 the main floodplain. Image
credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC.
The western shore of Luapula-Mweru became part of the
Belgian Congo and the eastern shore part of Northern Rhodesia, a British
protectorate. Although Kilwa Island is closer to the western shore, it was
allocated to Northern Rhodesia, and consequently Zambia has 58% of the lake
waters, and DR Congo 42%.
The first Belgian outposts on the lake were set up at
Lukonzolwa and Pweto which were at various times the headquarters of their
administration of Katanga. They stamped out the slave trade going north-east
around the lake. The first mission station on the lake was established in 1892
by Scottish missionary Dan Crawford of the Plymouth Brethren at Luanza on the
Belgian side of the lake.
The British moved their boma from Chiengi to the
Kalungwishi, with one or two British officers such as Blair Watson, and a force
of African police. In conjunction with operations around Abercorn further down
the trade route, this was enough to end the slave trade going east from Mweru,
but not enough to bring Mwata Kazembe under British rule, and a military
expedition had to be sent in 1899 from British Central Africa Nyasaland to do
that job see the article on Alfred Sharpe for more details.
The move of the boma from Chiengi to Kalungwishi had the
effect of leaving the Belgian boma at Pweto a free rein at the northern end of
the lake, leading a hundred years later to about 33 km² of Zambian territory
next to Pweto being ceded to the DR Congo then Zaire. See the Luapula Province
border dispute for further details and references.
After 1900, the Belgian Congo province of Katanga on the
western shores of the lake developed faster than the Northern Rhodesian side,
the Luapula Province and the town of Kasenga a few hours by boat up the Luapula
River became the most developed in the Luapula-Mweru valley, and until the
1960s was the main commercial centre with better services and infrastructure
than elsewhere. The Elizabethville mines started up more quickly than those of
the Copperbelt, and Kasenga supplied its workforce with fish. Since 1960,
political crises, government neglect and wars on the Congolese side have
produced a deterioration in infrastructure, while peace on the Zambian side has
produced an increase in population and services, causing the balance to change
.
Centres of population on the lake.
Many fishing villages dot Mweru's shores. A number are
seasonal camps. The main towns on the Zambian side are Nchelenge, Kashikishi
and Chiengi, and on the DR Congo side, Kilwa the town opposite the island,
Lukonzolwa and Pweto.
Besides Kilwa Island, there are two other inhabited islands
in the lake: Zambia's Isokwe Island of 3 km², and a 2 km² Congolese island next
to the mouth of the Luapula. Two other islands in the Luapula swamps have
shores on the lake.
The Congolese side of the lake was affected by the Second
Congo War of 1999-2003, from which it is still recovering. Many refugees
entered Zambia at Pweto and were accommodated in camps in Mporokoso and
Kawambwa districtsa
Coordinates: 3°35′N 36°7′E
