As had been widely expected, the Zanzibar government has said it will leave no stone unturned in its efforts to ensure that the Spice Islander incident does not happen again.
Apparently leaving no stone unturned has become a standard response by officials from the powers that be whenever tragedies strike either part of the United Republic of Tanzania.
It would be recalled that the Union government said the same thing when over 800 people drowned in Lake Victoria after the MV Bukoba capsized in May 1996.
However, going through a well documented article (published by The Citizen) on isles’ marine accidents by a seasoned BBC Correspondent, Ally Saleh, one comes up with one impression, and that is, like the Union government, the Zanzibar government learns nothing from such mishaps!
The same thing could be more or less said about the MV Bukoba accident. Many people have continued to perish on the lake although in a smaller scale, reflecting the Union government’s failure to learn from the past accident that drew the attention of the international community.
A day after the Spice Islander incident, the isles government sought assistance in the form of divers from South Africa and Kenya, the same thing that the Union government did as the MV Bukoba accident lasted!
Fifteen years after the MV Bukoba accident, Tanzanian governments continue to seek divers from Kenya and South Africa, once again reflecting their failure to learn from past tragedies!
After the MV Bukoba accident, one would have hoped that the Union government would have ensured that its navy, which is a Union matter, would have by now had hard-nosed divers.
Unfortunately it has not done that, and the result is that the two countries continue to depend on divers from Kenya and South Africa!
Perhaps a question that ought to be directed to both governments is does it really make sense for a country as big as Tanzania and with 1424 kilometers (885miles) of coastline to have a navy that does not have trained divers?
According to the local media, when the South African divers arrived in the country a few days ago, they could not be deployed to the ill-fated ship as it had sank further down where it is alleged that the area was out of bound for divers due to its depth that is said to be over 300 metres.
The point is, had we had divers from our own navy, they could have immediately worked on the ship before it sank further down, hence getting to the surface bodies of those who had been trapped inside the ship.
But since we did not have local divers, we once again sought assistance from abroad, and that took time, hence our failure to get what we wanted!
Therefore the same problem that the nation found itself in, namely procrastination coupled with the absence of local divers during the MV Bukoba accident, revisited Zanzibar when the Spice Islander sank.
But a critical analysis of our navy shows that our problem does not only revolve around lack of divers, but we also lack requisite vessels (frigates) for policing our territorial waters.
This explains why whenever our territorial waters in the Indian Ocean is confronted with problems of foreign fishing vessels and Somali pirates, the Tanzania always seeks assistance from South African navy.
However, if one asked the government why it was not buying a frigate both for defending its territorial waters and saving hundreds of Tanzanians who perish every year in the Indian Ocean in the course of fishing, the government is certain to tell you that it does not have money!
Yet this is nothing but a question of how one balances priorities.
Indeed, even governments like South Africa which own fleets of warships, apparently some of their frigates are not new, they bought them as used for the same reason, lack of funds for buying new vessels.
My assertions are not based on hearsay, but facts I obtained when a South African frigate accompanied with a couple of supply ships made a courtesy call at the Dar es Salaam port in the late 1990s.
I spoke to the naval commander who told me that they had bought their frigate in his words, “for a very good price from Russia”, and that it was not new… but it was still in very good conditions.
The commander explained that after political problems in the then Soviet Union, the super power had numerous such ships that she was now selling to needy countries and for good prices.
After talking to the South African frigate commander, I had tried to interview the Tanzanian naval commander with the objective of selling him the idea I had just learnt from the South African, but the Tanzanian commander shut me out!
If a journalist can get such important information, then one would have expected the hosts, in this case the Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces, TPDF, would be in a better position not only to get better information, but also to help their government in getting such vessels for policing our territorial waters in the Indian Ocean.
For it is only by increasing the TPDF’s capacity to defend and protect its coastline that can at the end of the day not only reduce Tanzania’s dependency on South African naval force, but also increase its rapid response to marine accidents such as the one that happened in Nungwi a few days ago.
It is important for both governments to bear in mind that when we talk of the country’s success or otherwise as we are about to mark 50 years of Tanganyika’s independence, such success also include our ability to protect lives!
Unfortunately for us, the Nungwi marine accident shows that despite the MV Bukoba accident in which over 800 lives were lost, to date the nation appears to have not learnt anything from the macabre incident!
And there are all signs, according to the Civic United Front, CUF, that the Nungwi marine accident may have lost over 1000 lives!
Perhaps what is more unfortunate is that like the Mbagala and Gongolamboto bomb blasts, no one has taken political responsibility for the Nungwi marine accident!
By Attilio Tagalile
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