As Bujumbura burns, MV Liemba is making another disgraceful voyage into Kigoma

Refugees fleeing political violence in Burundi are arriving in Tanzania aboard a century-old German-warship-turned-ferry that inspired the book and film The African Queen.

The UN refugee agency has hired the MV Liemba, built in Germany in 1913, to carry fearful Burundian refugees along Lake Tanganyika to safety in neighbouring Tanzania.

“The MV Liemba is being used right now as the only boat to ferry people to Tanzania,” said Joyce Mends-Cole, UNHCR’s representative in Tanzania.

The vessel was once a feared gunboat defending the African lake for Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, but today it is a lifeline for refugees.

Official figures say that 23,000 refugees have arrived in Tanzania — with 33,000 more going to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo — but Mends-Cole said “numbers are rising fast”.

The MV Liemba can carry 600 refugees at a time from the Burundi-Tanzania border town of Kagunga, to the port of Kigoma. Each three-hour voyage costs UNHCR $10,500 (Sh1 million), or roughly $17.50 (Sh1,600) per person.

TIMES OF CRISES

In happier times the MV Liemba carries fare-paying customers for whom the ferry is the only mode of transport up and down the lake, but it is as critical in times of crisis, helping refugees find safety from violence and a way home when peace is restored.

The 67-metre former steamer has carried refugees before, in 1997 and again in 2007 when it transported former refugees home to Burundi and Congo.

“It’s very sad and disheartening that once again we’re using this boat, that has been used to repatriate people in the past, to help them escape regional insecurity,” said Mends-Cole. “Some of those we are picking up are the same ones we repatriated before.”

The tale of the warship and its role in the battle for Lake Tanganyika inspired British novelist Cecil Scott Forester to write his 1935 novel The African Queen, later adapted by Hollywood in the 1951 movie of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.

Defending the waters

The MV Liemba began its life in a shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, in 1913 where it was named the Graf von Goetzen, after German East Africa’s former governor. Before ever setting sail, the steamer was dismantled, packed into 5,000 numbered crates, and shipped to Dar es Salaam. It was then taken by railway and porter to the shore of Lake Tanganyika where it was reassembled in 1915, armed with cannon, and put to work defending the waters against Belgian and British soldiers.

For nearly a year the Graf von Goetzen dominated the lake, dwarfing all other ships. But when the outnumbered German land forces retreated, the warship was filled with cement and scuttled.

It was dredged up by the Belgians but sank in a storm soon after. In 1921 Churchill ordered it recovered and renamed MV Liemba, after the local name for the lake. It was put into service as a cargo and passenger ferry in 1927. The original steam engines were only replaced with diesel ones in the mid-1970s.

Thousands are fleeing Burundi amid political tensions following a bid by President Pierre Nkurunziza to stay in power for a third term, which opposition and rights activists insisted was unconstitutional.

There are fears the crisis, which has left more than 20 dead in clashes in the capital Bujumbura, could plunge the small central African nation back into civil war.

INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE

On Wednesday, East African leaders gathered in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam for a crisis summit meeting, hoping to broker a deal to end the weeks of deadly violence.

Nkurunzinza had barely left for Dar when an army general announced his ouster, plunging the country into an even darker chapter of its young life.

Foreign ministers from the five-nation East African Community (EAC) — made up of Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda as well as Burundi — met in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said, ahead of the presidential summit later Wednesday.

Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader from the Hutu majority who had been in power since 2005, had come under international pressure to withdraw from next month’s election and stand down.

The clashes between security forces and demonstrators have raised fears of a return to violence in the central African state, which is still recovering from a brutal 13-year civil war that ended in 2006. Over 50,000 Burundians have fled into neighbouring nations since the unrest began.

On Tuesday police in Bujumbura opened fire on protesters in an apparent attempt to scatter crowds who wanted to attack the house of a police officer.

Protesters were on the streets again early Wednesday in Bujumbura, blocking roads and chanting anti-government slogans.

The European Union and United States on Monday called for elections to be delayed, as has Nkurunziza’s main challenger.

African Union Commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma last week warned the time was not right for elections, and that it was “clear that there shouldn’t be a third term.”

While the police have ripped down barricades on main roads, side streets in key opposition areas remain blocked, guarded by angry demonstrators.

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WAHAT OTHERS SAY 

“The greatest responsibility at this point lies with the President to do the right thing and observe the terms of both the Arusha Agreement and the 2005 Constitution.

To do otherwise would be to risk the lives of more Burundians and to push the country even closer to the brink of renewed civil conflict.

The President would do very well, in this regard, to heed the wise counsel of outgoing Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who in his concession speech following his loss in elections in that country, observed that ‘nobody’s ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian’.

In following this counsel, President Nkurunziza would also live up to the letter and spirit of Article 95 of the Burundi Constitution, which establishes a very high burden upon the Head of State in terms of maintaining national unity, peace and stability.

The President of the Republic incarnates national unity, sees to the respect for the Constitution and assures, by his arbitration, the continuity of the State and the regular functioning of the institutions.

He is the guarantor of the national independence, of the integrity of the territory and of the respect for the international treaties and agreements.

It is my most sincere hope that President Nkurunziza, and other well-meaning Burundians, will find it in themselves to remember the long journey and effort that has led up to the relative peace that now prevails in Burundi, and that by their present action, will secure the future of peace, progress and stability envisaged under the 2005 Constitution.” 

Dr Busingye Kabumba teaches Constitutional History, Constitutional Law and Comparative Constitutional Law at Makerere University in Uganda. His views were first published by Africa Review (www.africareview.com)

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When President Pierre Nkurunzinza left for a regional leaders’ summit in Dar es Salaam to discuss the situation in Bujumbura on Wednesday, he probably planned to play tough to his colleagues and insist he was not going to let go of his third-term ambitions.

But as the plane carrying him took off from Bujumbura, an army general decided he had had enough of the leader. “President Pierre Nkurunziza is removed from office, the government is dissolved,” General Godefroid Niyombare said in a radio broadcast.

“All people are asked to respect the lives and property of others,” he added. The broadcast by Niyombare — a highly respected figure who was sacked from his position as the central African nation’s powerful chief of intelligence in February — caught the heads of states meeting in Dar by surprise, but the man who was even more surprised was Nkurunzinza, who had suddenly become powerless and rudderless.