On a May morning in 1996, the ferry MV Bukoba was 30 nautical miles from Mwanza on the southern shore of Lake Victoria when the crew started throwing sacks of bananas over the side.
There were perhaps 1,000 people aboard (it had space for half that number). Burdened with humans and deck cargo that included two unsecured vehicles, the vessel was, said one survivor, “tottering like a drunk” when it capsized.
Most of its passengers were trapped in the hull. Many of the 114 survivors waited all day to be rescued, clinging to floating banana plants. At least 800 died, though the final toll will never be known because there was no manifest.
The ship was built by a long-failed Belgian shipyard in 1979 under circumstances that can only be described as murky. Only the shipyard got to tender to build the ship, which was assembled by three Belgian engineers on the lakeshore and then handed over to, and run badly by, the Tanzania Rail Corp.
Every country has a way of doing their stuff. It’s not always tidy
— William Ruto
Danish consultants contracted later to assess Bukoba’s many problems insisted that the viciously unstable vessel must never set sail without water in its ballast tanks … which were empty when it rolled off Mwanza.
Unstable, badly managed and questionable deal-making. A metaphor, then, for the Tanzanian government, whose president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was re-elected on October 29 with 97.66% of the vote. Of her two main opponents, one had been disqualified on a “technicality” from taking part in the ballot, while the other was sitting in jail on treason charges.
Cue Gen Z protests that have led to a harsh crackdown in which hundreds of people, including two journalists, are said to have been killed and others “disappeared”.
Even Kenyan President William Ruto, himself grappling with widespread unhappiness at home, struggled to validate the result.
“Every country has a way of doing their stuff,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s not always tidy.”
Tidy. Just like the MV Bukoba was. On paper.
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