On Tuesday, May 21, 2024, Professor Rwekaza Sympho Mukandala asserted that the original sin behind the MV Bukoba tragedy was the violation of procurement process during the selection of the shipbuilding contractor.
Mukandala a renowned scholar in the country said this during his Professorial Inaugural Lecture at the Nkurumah Hall in the University of Dar es Salaam, Mukandala’s remarks coincided with the anniversary of the MV Bukoba disaster, which occurred twenty-eight years prior on May 21, 1996.
During his lecture, Prof. Mukandala delved into the historical context, noting that Tanzania’s need for a vessel stemmed from the dissolution of the East Africa Community. With most of the community’s ships remaining on the Kenyan side, Tanzania had to acquire a new ship for Lake Victoria.
Constrained by limited financial resources, Tanzania secured a 500 million franc loan from the Belgian government. However, this financial arrangement came with conditions regarding the procurement of the ship.
“The original sin in the MV Bukoba tragedy was failing to adhere to the basic procurement processes. The process was noncompetitive, the tender was not floated to invite different companies,” argued Mukandala
He added: “The loan came with shackles; it had very stringent conditions. The ship and its anchors had to be purchased from Belgium. Moreover, there was no competition even in Belgium. The Belgian government appointed the company to build the ship, leaving the Tanzanian government with no say in the arrangement.”
During his lecture, Professor Mukandala described the MV Bukoba’s history as a ‘tortured life’, highlighting that the ship was put into service without proper testing and had significant flaws, particularly in its stability. He emphasized that even when it was launched by President Julius Nyerere in 1979, it exhibited instability issues, ‘moving like a drunkard even in calm waters’.
One crucial takeaway emphasized by Professor Mukandala was the importance for the country to steer clear of loans with strict conditions and exploitative contracts when dealing with vital suppliers. He stressed the need for Tanzania to always prioritize competition, a cornerstone principle of a free market economy.
2 Responses
After all that happened on that fateful day of 21.May. 201996, we do not seem to have learnt any lesson to prevent such tragedy from ever happening again under such reckless circumstances. Case in point is another incident of a similar strategy of a passenger boat sailing to Zanzibar that sunk in the Indian Ocean killing a multitude of innocent people.
There have been a number of major boat accidents with many drowned in addition to the MV Bukoba tragedy described by Professor Mukandala. On 20 September 2018, the MV Nyerere capsized in Lake Victoria with the loss of 228 lives. A Commission of Enquiry to investigate the cause of the accident was appointed on September 23rd, but no report was ever published. The immediate cause of the disaster was poor navigation; the underlying cause was overloading. The key question is: why should the government run transport services on Tanzanian Lakes when private investors would gladly take up the challenge, using their own finance?