Africanews
As the Tanzanian people comes to grip with the ferry tragedy in which more than 500 perished, a debate has sprung up on what caused the accident. The tragedy which is mainly blamed on the inefficiency on the part of the Tanzania Railways Corporation, the owners of the ferry, has also been described by others as the "will of God". |
On May 21,1996 the Lake Victoria ferry M.V. Bukoba capsized and sank near the northern Tanzanian town of Mwanza It was owned by the parastatal Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC). By official - and many claim rather conservative- count, more than 500 people perished in the disaster. Many of the dead were students.
At the funeral of some of thee victims in Mwanza town, one of the speakers is reported to have described the ferry tragedy as "the will of God." The President of the Republic, Mr. Benjamin Mkapa, was at the funeral representing the grieving nation, and presumably heard the remark. This characterization of the event, it seems, is widespread not only on the streets of the nation's towns, but also among many civil and religious leaders. Some among them ought to bear responsibility for the disaster.
This is what has led Fr. Aloys Magabe of the Catholic Diocese of Musoma to address an open letter to President Mkapa vigorously protesting against this interpretation of the event. He calls it "a gross distortion of the facts," "a pious attempt not to own moral responsibility," and actually "a sacrilege against God." Fr. Magabe currently works in a small rural parish of the Diocese called Nyegina, He ran for but was not elected to Parliament in the 1995 Tanzanian general elections.
In the letter, Fr. Magabe wonders why even religious leaders, who should know these things better than others, are so quick to explain disasters, such as that of the ferry Bukoba, as God's will? Why do they practically never characterize happy, life-generating events as such, he asks? As he sees it, the ferry tragedy cannot, and must not, correctly be perceived as an "act of God." This would be to absolve "criminal elements" of responsibility and deserved punishment, he asserts. In his view, it is greed, the insatiable desire for "more and more money'; that is the root cause of the ferry disaster. It is also the root cause of many other tragedies on the nation's roads and other transport systems.
If there is one lesson that must be learned from the recent tragedy, Fr. Magabe points out, it is that the culture of acquiring wealth at any cost has recently rapidly grown to overshadow the nation's heritage since independence of placing the value of human life before everything else.
That the Bukoba was loaded with passengers beyond its legal capacity has now been established. That is most probably why it capsized. To blame God for something like that, says Fr. Magabe, is nothing short of blasphemy. The only warrantable analysis and explanation here, he states, point to gross negligence, greed, dereliction of responsibility and lack of respect for human life on the part of the various relevant officials of the TRC. He therefore urges the President to continue the path of promoting the "culture of life," which is the true "will of God" as shown in all religious traditions. No"culture of death" can be equated with God's will, he writes.
Fr. Magabe's letter is significant in that it presents a powerful protest by a member of the lower clergy in the country against a widespread misinterpretation of a tragic event of clearly human urgency on escapist theological grounds. This should ideally have been done very soon after the event by the members of the higher clergy in their capacity as official teachers in the Church. To my knowledge, none of them has so far come out publicly with a statement as strong as Fr. Magabe's letter.
The letter is copied to a number of prominent persons in the nation, among whom retired President Julius K. Nyerere and Bishop Justic Samba of Musoma, the current Chairman of the Tanzania Episcopal Conference. It has also been submitted to several newspapers in the country for publication.
| CONTENTS | AFRICANEWS HOMEPAGE |
AFRICANEWS - Koinonia Media Centre, P.O. Box 8034, Nairobi, Kenya
tel/fax: 254.2.560385 - e-mail: [email protected]
AFRICANEWS on line is by Enrico Marcandalli