LAKE VICTORIA BOAT TRAGEDY A WAKE-UP CALL

PICTURE a lake three times the size of Gauteng, with the average depth of 41m on a Saturday afternoon. Then launch a boat with possible mechanical problems, no safety drills and full of not so sober passengers. Add to that a slow response time by emergency rescue services. There is no worse formula for a catastrophe.

It took me a flight from Nairobi to Accra to appreciate the sheer size of Lake Victoria. At almost cruising speed, the plane must have taken about 30 minutes to move from its east to west shore. That is not the place you allow a boat dominated by inebriated merrymakers to roam.

That is what happened in a case of African lives being too cheap to fuss about.

We all know better than to start pointing fingers when more than 30 people died, but when is the right time to learn from our mistakes?

Lake Victoria and the East Coast of Africa have had too many rickety boats killing too many people for us to keep on looking the other way.

Ugandan businessman John Fredrick Kiyimba threw his annual monster party on November 24 to close the year. Sadly, his prudence went only as far as catering and entertainment. He had an odd “feeling that the boat was in a bad mechanical condition but somehow believed the words of the owners that it would make it to the island”.

That brought back memories of my trip to Bulago Island on Uganda Lake Victoria in 2013.

Most of the boats that ferry people instil little confidence. On the way to Bulago Island, there were scores of fishermen hustling to provide for their families. Strangely, our captain told us that most of them could not swim. It was not surprising, therefore, that most of the party-goers on Kiyimba’s cruise – many of them possibly under the influence of alcohol – perished on the lake.

One of the 27 survivors, 44-year old Alex Niyonzima, related his story to AFP. He recalled the engine of MV K-palm screeching at the start, near Mutima south of Kampala. He assumed things would be better once they were in motion, but the boat stalled again twice.

Many of the revellers ignored a warning by the police officer to wear life jackets. In the age of social media, looks are more vital than safety. That is why even after the boat had stalled the third time, some of them were taking selfies and updating their social media.

After the third stalling, when water started flooding the boat, the crew had no pump but relied on jerry cans to empty it. Pleas by the owner of the boat, Templar Bisasse, to them to help steady the vessel level were met with jokes about the Titanic. When it flipped over seconds later, not everyone was in possession of their faculties like Niyonzima to swim 200m to safety.

It all reads like a horror story.

Lake Victoria – Africa’s largest and world’s second largest – should be among East Africa’s most exciting tourist economies. It offers the three countries that share it, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, 7 142km of a shoreline that could support not just fishing but tourism and more.

Unfortunately, its potential – as with greater Africa – is hampered by a weak regulatory and institutional infrastructure. Let this disaster remind us that we can and must surely do better.

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