By Mkumbwa Ally
Last Tuesday, I attended a requiem mass for one of our own, the late Charles Hillary, who passed on two days earlier. Early reports had suggested he died at Mloganzila branch of Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) in Ubungo, where he was admitted. But his daughter, Faith, revealed in a family statement that her father was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
What a relief for Mloganzila, just a short distance from where I live. The hospital has long battled a reputation—fair or not—that it struggles with patient outcomes.
I asked a doctor friend about that belief, and he explained that some deaths are simply confirmed on arrival, like that of the media legend, while many inpatients are brought in critical condition when it’s too late to save them. Anyway, let Mloganzila be a story for another day.
I have to say I was highly impressed by the sermon at Charles’s requiem mass at St. Batholomew Anglican Church in Ubungo. It emerged that Hillary had been one of the church elders. The ceremony, led by Right Reverend Jackson Sosthenes, Bishop of the Dar es Salaam Anglican Diocese, was also attended by Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner (RC), Mr Albert Chalamila, who launched an impromptu fundraiser and collected about 10 million shillings to finance finishing work on the church building.
Bishop Sosthenes knew Charles and his wife Sarah very well and was full of praise for the couple and their family, which he said was God-fearing and generous to donors to the church.
Then the Bishop turned to the disturbing state of public safety—particularly abduction, maiming and wanton killing of people. While the government and police should be held accountable, every human being must decide: “What are we doing? Must good people die?” he asked the congregation.
To which he responded that only God Almighty has the mandate to take a human life. But he lamented that certain humans had usurped that power of God and were terminating other people’s lives. He warned those abducting and killing people of dire consequences, reminding them that they were themselves mortals, waiting to die by God’s will.
Bishop Sosthenes was adding his voice to those of many evangelists and human rights activists who have demanded action from the government and police to end abduction, torture and wanton killings of defenceless people.
There has been suspicion as to who is (are) the perpetrator(s) of the crimes against humanity, but nobody—not the police, who are squarely responsible for our safety and that of our properties; nor the government, which is the overall guarantor of public peace and security—has identified or exposed the culprits.
At least it can be concluded that in all incidents, perpetrators act with impunity and claim to be policemen. For the first time, they broke into the victim’s house in Mbeya recently, but the classic memory of barbaric piracy was when they intercepted a Tanga-bound bus in broad daylight, yanked a man out and killed him later that night, dousing his face with acid.
The lingering question is: What is the offence of the victims of these cowardly attacks? The answer, it appears, is blowing in the wind!
The writer is a Media and Communication Consultant.
📧 amkumbwa@gmail.com
