British Buses for Congo City
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Harold Champion pays a flying visit to Belgian territory in Africa and finds sophistication, savagery and a hard-worked
passenger transport fleet
AANON-STOP flight of 71 hours in a Boeing 707 takes you from -LBrussels to Leopoldville, capital of the Belgian Congo. Another two hours' flying over what seems to be trackless jungle (where, I was assured, i3 some of the richest and most varied fame in all Africa) and you are in the rich copper-mining country of the province of Katanga, industrial dominion of the Union Miniere dc Haut Katanga.
Such was my experience at the beginning of the year when Sabena, the Belgian national airline, took me on their inaugural Boeing flight linking Brussels with the Congo. There is a feeder service from London. I gathered that the Belgians have made themselves extremely comfortable in their vast colony.
No doubt the jungle-covered hinterland is still savage. One local Belgian resident in Elisabethville told me that when he first went there in 1923 the journey I made in 91 hours took him three months. But Leopoldville and Eiisabethville are sophisticated cities, well laid-out and with every modern amenity.
No Colour Bar
True, the macadam highways tend to degenerate into dirt roads, which themselves become tracks obliterated during the seasonal rains, but transport in the towns is easy and comfortable. There is no official colour bar in the Congo. Africans may travel on the same public transport as Europeans.
" May " is the operative word for, in fact, the two races do not mingle on buses because every European owns a car—usually of American make—or shares one. A car is a necessity. The hot, humid climate precludes long walks, and even short ones were ruled out for an unacclimatized visitor from the London winter. So the buses in Elisabethville carry Africans only, and I believe the same is true of Leopoldville.
Of the 139,000 people of Elisabethvine, 125,000 are African. The local transport concern, Cominiere, S.A., serve this mass of humanity with 12 buses. The company are, as their title indicates, part of the big Katanga
mining organization. The buses are Henschel H.S.160 U.S.L. oil-engined single-deckers and all two years old. Each has a capacity of 130, 30 sitting and 100 standing.
The company will be taking delivery this year of new Leyland buses with automatic gearboxes and Brossel bodies to take 30 seated and 50 standing passengers. The Henschels will be replaced by these British chassis.
Each bus has an African driver and conductor, who work an eight-hour day for which they are paid 55-60 Congo francs, about 8s. There is a unit-fare system. A single ticket costs 3 Congo francs, about 5d., and a 10trip ticket is 20 Congo francs, approximately 2s. 10d.
The vehicles aggregate nearly 1,200 miles a day. Six are employed all day, whilst the others work at peak periods during the early morning, midday and evening. Factories and other places of work open at about 7 a.m., close at -midday for an afternoon siesta and reopen in the evening. A few vehicles go into service at 10 p.m. to cope with night shifts.
Maintenance of these busy buses is a difficult problem. So far, all foremen have been Europeans and mechanics African. Under the pressure of events, the company are aiming to train Africans as foremen. Africans make good drivers, but it takes a long time for them to be trained in engineering.
They are put on one small job for three or four months at a time, repeated to what, to a European, would be a heartbreaking monotonous extent. At the end of this period the student has usually grasped the pro
cess thoroughly and can pass to something else. After a long time they are given more complicated jobs, but further training is still necessary "
Strict supervision has still to, be given during the final stages of instrtiction, and if all is well at the end of it they are regarded as qualified to work under only limited supervision.
I was able to observe for' myself that the Africans make good drivers. I had a drive of 1-1 hours to Jadotville in a Thames 12-seater driven by a polite French speaking African, Kasongo Michel. The vehicle was on hire to the Haut Katanga concern by a private company named Messrs. Y. Ergas—but I suspect that Ergas too were part of the Union Miniere.
Although I felt-happy. with Michel's driving, I must state that we saw no more than half a dozen other vehicles on the journey. The road from Elisabethville to Jadotville is like an English secondary road, except that it goes dead straight through scrub and jungle. Native villages have been set up along the route, although they are screened from the highway by trees.
The road would not exist were it not for the great ore smelter at Jadotville. Nearly 2,500 people come from all over the world each year -to see the copper works, and this road is the only link with Elisabethville airport and railhead. They can, however, travel by through train to Cape Town, a journey which takes five days.