ZIGUINCHOR, Senegal, Oct 3 (AFP) - Hundreds of grieving families on
Thursday attended a memorial service for nearly 1,000 people who died last
week when a Senegalese ferry capsized off the coast of west Africa.
Among the mourners in the southern Senagalese town of Ziguinchor, where
the ferry's fateful journey began on September 26, were many who still
agonized over their powerlessness on the day of the disaster.
Electrician Joachim Badiane was at the port when the ship set off. "I
must have seen the Joola leave more than 20 times," he said. "But this time
I was worried. The ship was listing badly".
"If I'd had the power to stop it leaving, this disaster would never have
happened," said carpenter Seydou Diop. "You didn't have to be psychic to
see the ship was going to get into trouble". Like Badiane, he had lost
relatives on the Joola.
No-one seems to have found an adequate response to the disaster, least
of all the the west African country's armed forces and transport ministers,
who resigned on Tuesday. "It's the doctor arriving after the patient has
died," said one Zinguinchor resident.
The nation has more questions than answers: "Who are we and where are we
going?" asked an editorial in the Dakar newspaper Le Soleil on Wednesday.
On Tuesday President Abdoulaye Wade said in a televised address:
"Senegalese from all walks of life must look each other in the eye,
understand and ask why this has happened. This examination of our
consciences... may save
us from similar catastrophes in the future."
With ample evidence of incompetence and negligence, the president did
not wait for a full investigation report before sacking the two ministers
on Tuesday and he said more disciplinary measures were to come.
Words such as laissez-faire, laxness, greed and graft dotted the pages
of the Senegalese press this week as people in the street shook their
heads. "You see the way we travel, the way we are treated as people," one
said.
Less than 400 corpses, most unidentifiable, have been recovered and
almost all the others are thought to have gone down with the vessel, in
which the bodies remain trapped.
Many are to be buried in unmarked graves, to the deep disquiet of
relatives who by tradition wish to lay them to rest in their birthplaces.
"We need to shed light on this affair. Victims' families should sue the
state" said a doctor who could find no excuses for the Joola's military
crew nor the office at Ziuinchor that had sold too many tickets.
The Joola, built for 550 passengers, had more than a thousand on board,
plus fifty crew. Only 64 people were saved.
The true death toll may never be known. Witnesses said they knew of
people who had bought tickets but were not on the passenger list, raising
suspicions of illicit ticket sales.
Despite being technically unsuitable for ocean voyages, the Joola was
seen as not just the cheapest but the safest means of transport between the
southern Casamance region and Senegal's capital Dakkar.
Roads in the region, sandwiched between Guinea-Bissau and the enclave of
Gambia, are notoriously perilous. Casamance has long the target of a
separatist rebellion and armed rebels frequently stop cars, robbing or
killing the passengers.
On Wednesday three people were killed when their car was stopped on the
main road linking Casamance and Dakar via Gambia.
The Joola's return to service on September 10 after more than a year of
repairs had been a cause for celebration for the people of Casamance.
When it left Ziguinchor two weeks later, it was carrying, as well as the
usual merchants taking goods to the capital, children and students
returning to Dakar for the start of the school year, among them pupils at
the capital's two football schools.
The unidentified remains of 76 victims were this week driven from Gambia
to Casamance and buried on Wednesday near the towns of Kafountine and
Ziguinchor.
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