Marine disasters giving us a bad name

Mobhare Matinyi, Washington DC.  The Citizen, Thursday, 19 July 2012 20:04.This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Once again, Tanzania’s name is in the limelight for a terrible reason: the demise of an unknown number of innocent citizens and unsuspecting tourists who trusted our maritime transport with their lives. It is another sad day that some of us saw coming, but as usual somebody somewhere didn’t sniff it.

On Wednesday, the world was shocked to hear the news of a ferry tragedy that sank off the East African coast in the Zanzibar archipelago near the island of Chumbe killing a yet unknown number of passengers. The ill-fated ferry, MV Skagit/Kalama, was sailing from mainland Tanzania to Zanzibar at around midday local time when it capsized with more than 280 people on board.

As has been the case in almost all maritime accidents in Tanzania, nobody will

ever know how many people actually boarded that sunken vessel. This is the second major maritime tragedy to hit Tanzania in less than a year, and one among many in recent years.

The last one happened on September 10, 2011, when MV Spice Islander sank in the middle of the night with a few thousand people on board while sailing to Pemba from Unguja. Tanzanians thought that the authorities would quickly do whatever it takes to avert another accident, but sadly, before anything serious could have been done MV Skagit has surprised the nation again and proved to the world how irresponsible our society is.

To further demonstrate how reckless we are, an American daily, the Seattle Times, on February 18, 2011, published a story reporting that in the state of Washington, far in the northwest border of the United States and Canada, a broker had successfully managed to dump two ferries by the name MV Skagit and MV Kalama to what the paper characterized as “the African nation of Tanzania,” perhaps implying that only an African nation could commit such a blunder.

Let me quote the introductory sentence of that story: “The state finally has sold two of its discarded passenger-only ferries, the Kalama and the Skagit, to the African nation of Tanzania.” Certainly, this was not only a news story, but also a warning that a tragedy was on the way.

Theoretically, we were foolishly being set up for a tragedy of our own accord. Now it is too late to blame the Americans. Why would a Tanzanian operator buy ferry boats that had been decommissioned by order from a state legislature since September 2009, and then acquire a permit to operate the boats in Tanzanian waters under Zanzibar registration? Yes, there were reasons the Washington legislature ordered its government to get rid of the two passenger-only ferry boats back in 2006.

One broker from Port Coquitlam in British Columbia, Canada, somehow got hold of one businessman and sold him the boats at a throw-away price, something that should have been a red flag. Their final price was $400,000 for both of them, down from the original asking price of $900,000 which the state claimed they were worth in December 2009.

Prior to that deal, the two boats were put on eBay for $600,000 combined with no success. This was a clear sign that something was wrong with the boats but someone didn’t sense that.

After the last tragedy, apparently the worst in Africa’s maritime history if the final report of the death toll compiled by Zanzibar local leaders is correct, in this very column I commented as follows: “Most Tanzanians believed that the MV Bukoba accident (May 1996) had taught us a lesson and that nothing like this would ever happen again, but we were wrong!” I then noted with sorrow:” … Zanzibar has become Africa’s capital of maritime accidents.”

A number of Tanzanians from Zanzibar ridiculed me through e-mails and a letter to the editor arguing that I was not fair to Zanzibar, forgetting the fact that I was warning Zanzibar specifically and Tanzania in general of the impending danger which I am still cautioning over. Anyway, that was another opportunity to remind myself that our leaders and civil servants are a reflection of who we are as we all cannot learn from a tragedy; we just can’t.

As usual, our leaders will send condolences, corporate Tanzania will dish out money, our poor people will stand amazed, then sobering funerals will follow, and finally politicians will assemble a group of bureaucrats to form an investigative commission. Within no time life will return to normal and more people will be put to the mercy of more dangers.

When a country reaches the stage at which those with responsibilities leave everything to God and foreign donors hoping that they will do some magic to avert tragedies, then we are doomed. This accident was in the making for at least three years and somebody should have seen it coming well before last year’s tragedy but they didn’t. It is disheartening.