a recent review of brownlie on bwnazmzw
including not only the 10 pages & 5 theses he devotes to what he calls the
quadripoint issue
but also his separate chapters on bwna bwzw nazm & zmzw
has led me back to the drawing board
but it warrants an interim report
first & i think most importantly
he confirms the nazm boundary was legally shifted in 1933
off of the living thalweg principle & onto an officially commissioned 1931
map that permanently defines the position of the zambezi thalweg at that
time
down to its junction with the chobe thalweg at that time
this was for some reason deliberately done in preference to continuing to
allow the boundary to move about on the living thalweg
as is the legal regime along the bwna chobe convergent to this day
it isnt clear tho whether geodetic points can be discerned on this map
but it does seem clear that if they can be discerned
then they legally trump the living thalweg
the map is evidently in vol 136 of british & foreign state papers p520
& south african treaty series number 1 of 1933
in case anyone can help me to either of these sources
as i wouldnt even know where to apply for an application
but it seems an awfully good place to start because this map could prove
nazm to be the most reliable vector of the 4
& just getting anything at all to stand still in this maelstrom would be a
great triumph & breakthrough toward an eventual solution
second
bwzw
the previous best hope for reliability
has old problems but a great new hope
not only is there some question as to which road is meant by the so called
hunters or pandamatenka road which the boundary was pinned to by a gbza
agreement in 1898
but another possible source of difficulty is the divergence of this old
track & the boundary as marked by beacons on the ground in both 1907 & 1959
or in other words
assuming you can even find the old track
do you then follow the projection of its centerline or of the nearby beacon
alignment into the zambezi
toward quadrihood
my guess would be that the monumentation
especially having been reconfirmed after 52 years
& then allowed to stand another 44 years
trumps the delineation described in the original document
happily the recent bwzw negotiation should sort this much out tho
as soon as the results are reported
so with any luck we may soon have 2 constant vectors pinned down
& we will then only need to determine experimentally where the living bwna
chobe thalweg strikes either the frozen nazm upper zambezi thalweg or the
newly agreed bwzw projection
or even conceivably the also living zmzw lower zambezi midline aka medium
filum
yet another distinct principle of river distribution there btw
oddly enough
all 3 conjunction outcomes are geographically & geometrically possible
& might alternate over time with the constantly changing river conditions as
the points of conjunction wander about
yet only if all 3 occur at the same point at the same time do we ever get a
quadripoint
however fleetingly
moreover
there is a possible if negligible loose end that could screw everything up
further
if nazm does indeed stop abrubtly owing to its exact map delineation
terminating not necessarily on the present chobe thalweg at all
but only at a former location of the chobe zambezi thalweg junction
it is possible that neither the bwna chobe thalweg nor the zmzw midline ever
strikes this nazm line
hahahaha
but that these latter 2 meet each other instead & are joined by bwzw as well
somewhere to the south of nazm
leaving a gap & a question of whether to simply project an extra stitch of
nazm beyond its extant terminal point into whichever of the others it
finally strikes first
or to adopt some other less obvious solution for final closure
but there is half a chance of this extra messiness not happening too
so lets not worry about it yet
_________________________________________________________________
Get 10MB of e-mail storage! Sign up for Hotmail Extra Storage.
http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es