German boat where youngsters capsize on Lake Kivu: five dead

The German owner of a small pleasure boat was arrested on Monday in Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo after the death of five people on Saturday evening in the sinking of his boat, on which young people were partying.

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Shipwrecks are common on Lake Kivu and other Congolese lakes and rivers, but this is of a special kind. It was not a pirogue overloaded with poor merchants with their goods that ran aground in the middle of the night, but a small pleasure motor boat on which some twenty young people from good families from Bukavu listened to music, drank alcohol, or plunged into the waters of Lake Kivu.

This is what photos and a video taken just before the tragedy, Saturday evening, show on this boat with the Congolese and German flags, show on social networks.

The death toll is five, said Sunday’s mayor of Ibanda, one of Bukavu’s three communes, Evariste Namegabe Ntaintuda. The owner of the boat was arrested on Monday.

“He didn’t make arrangements for the capacity of his little boat. (…) And then all these young people did not have lifelines, “said provincial Minister of Transport Claude Swedi Basila. He is also accused of having embarked about twenty people despite the rules of social distancing put in place against the coronavirus. “The person in charge of the small boat is a German subject,” the mayor of the municipality of Ibanda told an AFP correspondent.

The passengers “come from wealthy families” in Bukavu, said neighborhood chief Nyalukemba Deo Kurasa. “The solar powered boat started capsizing around 7pm when the batteries were discharged. The passengers jumped into the water under the influence of alcohol when they could not swim, “he said.

A shipwreck, under more usual circumstances, has been reported on the rapids of the Congo River in the province of Tanganyika. The death toll is still impossible to establish, said the administrator of the territory of Kongolo, Ramazani Kyange. As is often the case, the boat had far more passengers than officially declared. “There are 39 survivors,” he said, while the “manifesto” (passenger list) only announced 20 people. Research continues.

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