Zimbabwe High Court: Kariba Residents Sue Government Over Ferry Safety

HARARE – Barely six weeks after 97 people drowned when the Mbuya Nehanda ferry capsized in Lake Kariba, two residents have dragged the government before the High Court, arguing that its answer to the disaster is one sleek private boat for tens of thousands of people. In an urgent application filed at the High Court in Chinhoyi, fisherman Tonderai Ndevani, 39, of Batonga, and Chilumbo Mudenda, from Chief Sinakatenge’s area in Binga, want the minister of transport and infrastructural development, the Rural Infrastructure Development Agency (RIDA) and the minister of local government and public works ordered to put enough safe, affordable ferries on the water to replace the lost vessel. The August 11 sinking left communities in mourning. The applicants say it also left them stranded, cut off from the only affordable and practical link between Kariba town, Kariba’s rural areas and parts of Binga. They say the state has done nothing to fill the gap. What arrived instead, on September 18, was the MV Silverstone, a privately owned vessel run by Most High Ferries on the Kariba-Chalala route. The applicants have little time for it. “The MV Silverstone Ferry is not a passenger ferry but a luxury ferry,” they say in their court papers. The numbers are the heart of the case. The Silverstone carries 60 passengers and four crew, with an 18-tonne limit on people and cargo combined. The Mbuya Nehanda had a stated capacity of 90, and the applicants say it was carrying far more when it sank. Their papers give differing figures for the number aboard, but they insist the vessel was badly overcrowded, which they say shows how great the demand is. They point to the 2022 census, which counted 45,774 people in 12 wards in Kariba Rural Constituency, and call one 60-seater for that population “woefully inadequate.” They also warn that scarcity breeds risk. “There is a reasonable likelihood that the crews and operators and desperate travellers including the applicants may be tempted to overload the ferry,” they say, a fear that echoes the conditions they say preceded August’s disaster. For Ndevani the case is personal. His parents and two siblings live in Mola, under Chief Mola, and before the disaster he crossed to see them at least once a week. His affidavit says the Mbuya Nehanda made the trip in two to three hours for US$10 to US$15. By road, the journey runs through Karoi and Siakobvu and takes about 10 hours, at US$40 to US$45 one way. Public transport between Siakobvu and Mola is patchy, and travellers sometimes wait for private vehicles or climb onto trucks. “I cannot afford the US$40 to US$45 fare to travel to Mola by road,” he says in his affidavit, adding that the ferry took “a fraction of the time at a fraction of the price.” The applicants say the ferry connecting Kariba and Chalala is the only affordable route linking rural Kariba, Binga and Kariba town. The residents cast their case as a constitutional challenge. They say the failure to provide adequate, safe ferries violates the right to freedom of movement under section 66(2)(a) of the constitution and the right to dignity under section 51. Freedom of movement, they argue, means little to communities divided by open water if the state does not provide a safe and affordable way across. They also object to the state leaning on a private operator. Private players may complement government efforts, they say, but the state cannot hand off its obligations. They add that the Silverstone’s owners could pull it from the route whenever it stops paying, “thus leaving us stranded.” As an interim measure, the applicants want the court to order the government to provide enough ferries, compliant with the Inland Waters Shipping Act, until permanent replacements for the Mbuya Nehanda are procured. They also want monthly reports to the court on progress towards buying or otherwise securing those vessels. On the final order, they want a declaration that the failure to provide adequate ferries breaches th