Tendai Ruben Mbofana
When a government passenger ferry capsizes in the treacherous waters of Lake Kariba, taking with it dozens of precious human lives, the nation expects a response that reflects the crushing weight of the tragedy.
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Instead, President Emmerson Mnangagwa issued a statement describing the horrific event as a “mishap.”
To reduce a devastating disaster to a minor inconvenience or an unlucky misstep is not only deeply insensitive to the grieving families of the 44 confirmed dead and the scores missing; it is a profound attempt to evade state accountability.
Calling this a mishap sanitizes a crisis that was built on systemic negligence, regulatory collapse, and institutional failure.
A mishap is losing a pair of keys, missing a bus, or spilling a cup of coffee.
It is an unintended, trivial incident with minor consequences.
What happened on Lake Kariba on Monday was none of those things.
It was a preventable catastrophe engineered by a state apparatus that repeatedly ignores safety warnings, fails to enforce basic laws, and treats public infrastructure as an afterthought.
The vessel involved, the RIDA Mbuya Nehanda, belonged to the Rural Infrastructure Development Agency—a state organ.
Reports indicate that a boat rated for a maximum capacity of 90 passengers departed with over 150 souls on board, including unmanifested children whose presence makes the true death toll almost impossible to pin down.
Video footage taken shortly before departure shows lookers-on expressing visible alarm over the choppy waters and ominous weather.
Yet, despite clear overcapacity and dangerous lake conditions, the vessel was permitted to untie its ropes and head straight into peril.
Where were the maritime safety officers?
Where were the inspectors whose sole responsibility is to ensure that no boat leaves the harbor overloaded, unseaworthy, or lacking basic life-saving equipment like functioning life jackets?
Their absence or indifference in that crucial moment was not an isolated error; it was the natural outcome of a regulatory environment crippled by corruption, incompetence, and lack of oversight.
When state agencies routinely turn a blind eye to obvious safety violations, disaster ceases to be a possibility and becomes an absolute certainty.
For the head of state to declare a National Disaster while simultaneously labeling the event a “mishap” is a study in political contradiction.
One cannot claim to grasp the monumental grief of a nation while using language that actively shrinks the magnitude of the disaster.
By framing the capsizing as a mere stroke of bad luck, the administration attempts to distance itself from the structural breakdown that caused it.
It shifts the narrative from institutional liability to an act of unpredictable nature, absolving the responsible authorities of their complicity.
Ordering maritime safety agencies to “overhaul and fix deficiencies” after dozens of citizens have already drowned is a tragic pattern in Zimbabwean governance.
Time and again, safety protocols are invoked only after families are left to identify the bodies of their loved ones.
A government’s primary duty is the protection of its citizens’ lives.
When people board a state-operated transport service, they are entrusting their survival to the government.
When that boat sinks because safety rules were ignored, the state has failed in its most fundamental duty.
The tragedy at Lake Kariba must be named for what it truly is: a grave and fatal manifestation of state neglect.
The families waiting on the shores for news of their missing relatives do not need sanitized euphemisms or empty political rhetoric.
They deserve an honest admission of failure, total transparency, and uncompromising accountability for every official whose negligence allowed that overcrowded ferry to sail into the storm.
Until the leadership stops dismissing preventable disasters as harmless mishaps, nothing will change.
The ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe will continue to pay for state incompetence with their lives.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com