Source: Decomposing bodies, rising death toll after Zimbabwe ferry boat disaster – CAJ News Africa
from MARCUS MUSHONGA in Harare, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Bureau
HARARE, (CAJ News) – THE death toll is rising rapidly, several victims remain missing and lifeless bodies are decomposing a week after Zimbabwe’s worst maritime disaster.The tragedy is unfolding in Lake Kariba, the world’s largest artificial lake and reservoir by volume, after an overloaded, aged ferry boat capsized.
As of Sunday evening, the death toll had risen to 84, as reported by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), after four bodies were recovered from the lake that afternoon.
Among those deceased are 18 children.
“The police confirm that search efforts are still under way in a bid to recover victims identified as missing,” Commissioner Paul Nyathi, ZRP spokesperson, stated.
Divers are battling darkness, cold water, and depths of over 90 metres to recover victims of the catastrophe in the area northeast of Zimbabwe, towards the border with Zambia.
This is one of the worst accidents suffered by the Southern African country post-independence and likely to exceed the death toll of 89 people in a bus crash in 1991, also in August, when 89 people perished as a bus carrying students and teachers in the eastern town of Nyanga, Manicaland province overturned.
The worst remains the 427 fatalities in the Wankie coal mine disaster in the then Rhodesia on June 6, 1972.
Kariba is 565 kilometres northeast of the town now known as Hwange and 356km northwest of the capital, Harare.
Politicians were in rural Kariba this past weekend to express solidarity with families of the victims, but controversy marred the visit.
Legislator Mutsa Murombedzi, member of the Health as well as Environment, Climate and Tourism Parliamentary Committees, painted a grim picture of the situation.
She lamented how the journey of transporting the deceased is a long, punishing road from Kariba urban to Mola, where most of the victims are from.
“Along the way, bodies of loved ones are decomposing after days in the water. Some may be forced to bury loved ones in urban Kariba,” the parliamentarian said.
She said families must be given every chance to bury their loved ones in their rural homes so that the wound of this tragedy was not deepened.
Murombedzi said failure to bury loved ones back at their homes stripped communities of cultural dignity, severed them from ancestral land and compounded grief with displacement.
“We call on the state to urgently provide helicopters so victims can be transported and laid to rest where they belong with respect, tradition and dignity,” she appealed.
Citizens and social media commentators were angry after government officials arrived at memorial services and inspections in luxury fleets and fancy clothes rather than addressing long-standing local pleas for proper transport infrastructure or enforcing safety compliance beforehand.
Government has further infuriated citizens after it reportedly offered a meagre US$100 in cash assistance to each individual affected by the Kariba disaster.
Rodwell Mtetwa, the Kariba District Development Coordinator and chairperson of the district’s Civil Protection Unit, announced the assistance this past weekend.
The payout is distributed to both survivors and the next of kin of the deceased victims.
Jacob Ngarivhume, leader of the smaller opposition Transform Zimbabwe, which is Christian-based, condemned the government’s handling of the compensation.
“While any assistance is welcome, US$100 against the millions being paid out to socialites, pastors and other well-connected individuals is a joke and an insult to grieving families,” he said.
He was referring to the ongoing spree by controversial businessman Wicknell Chivhayo, linked to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), who since 2024 has donated luxury vehicles to opposition politicians, church leaders, musicians, state security, celebrities and community members sympathetic to the governing party.
Ngarivhume also criticised President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Chivhayo after images on Sunday circulated of the pair being jovial at a conference of the Masowe church, a prominent African-initiated, white-garment apostolic religious movement.
Mnangagwa later left for neighbouring South Africa to attend the ongoing Ordinary Summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Heads of State and Government.
A spokesperson for Mnangagwa has been quoted as describing critics as “a cacophony of pseudo-experts with their unsolicited expertise.”
“Tragedies should unite us in compassion and responsibility rather than divide us through political blame and speculation,” he said.
Mnangagwa last week declared a state of disaster to accelerate the funding of ongoing recovery and rescue logistics, covering survivors’ hospital bills and funding temporary accommodation for families awaiting body identification at the local hospital.
Jameson Timba, former cabinet minister and member of the main opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), also criticised the government’s stance.
He noted the Mbuya Nehanda ferry, named after a woman who led a major anti-colonial uprising in the 1800s, which suffered the disaster, had reportedly been quoted at US$40,000 for rehabilitation but the work was never done.
“That is less than the cost of a single Toyota Fortuner publicly given to an MP as a bribe for a CAB3 vote,” Timba said.
CAB3 is an acronym for the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No.3) Act, a major and controversial law passed by Parliament and signed into force by Mnangagwa in July to abolish direct popular public elections for the president and to extend the terms of office for the president, MPs and local authorities from five years to seven years.
Allegations of bribery, vote-buying and financial inducements rocked both the ruling party and the opposition after legislators allowed the passage of the legal instrument.
Timba believes a relatively modest investment could have rehabilitated a ferry relied upon by ordinary families in Mola, Chalala and surrounding communities.
“Instead, we are now mourning lives lost on Lake Kariba,” he said.
“Perhaps lives could have been saved if public safety and essential infrastructure had been prioritised over political patronage. We needed a rehabilitated ferry, not more Fortuners for politicians.”
Only last month, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport debated how inland water infrastructure was underfunded, receiving only 3 percent of the ministry’s budget, yet the waterways are lifelines for rural families, connecting them to schools, clinics and markets.
Based on survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts and official reports, strong evidence indicates that the disaster was largely avoidable.
Besides the Rural Infrastructure Development Agency (RIDA)-operated vessel lacking service after operating since 1985, five years after independence, several critical factors point to human error and management failures that contributed to it capsizing.
While the ferry had a designated maximum capacity of 90 people, it has emerged that as many as 120 to 153 people — including children — crammed onto the vessel.
The youngest victims were aged one year and the eldest 61.
“The smallest coffins are the heaviest to carry,” Murombedzi said at the burial of a local councillor’s four-year-old child.
“Everywhere you turn in this community there is a funeral. Everywhere you turn you are meeting a hearse. The grief here is so heavy.”
From the councillor’s household, two other family members who were travelling with the child had not yet been found.
Heavy winds, which the captain ignored, cut short the 45km journey that was meant to last about five hours.
The ferry was the only direct and viable mode of transport connecting the isolated rural lakeside communities to urban Kariba.
Mola only received cellphone coverage earlier this year.
Lake Kariba, measuring over 223 kilometres long and up to 40 kilometres wide, was filled between 1958 and 1963.
The colonial government’s plan to construct the facility displaced more than 57 000 people.
– CAJ News
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