An Oscar-nominated documentary highlighting links between fish from Lake Victoria and the arms trade has drawn a furious reaction from Tanzania’s president and led to harassment of people involved in the film.
President Jakaya Kikwete said Darwin’s Nightmare, a film by Austrian director Hubert Sauper, had hurt the country’s image and caused a slump in exports of Nile perch. His comments triggered angry protests against the film in the western town of Mwanza, where it was shot. Richard Mgamba, a local journalist interviewed in the film, was detained by police and threatened with deportation. Other people who talked on camera have also been intimidated, according to Sauper.
”I don’t think that the president has even seen the film,” he said. ”The very last thing you want as a film-maker is for the people left behind to be in danger.”
Darwin’s Nightmare examines the history of Nile perch in Lake Victoria. Introduced in the 1950s, the fast-growing predator nearly wiped out several other fish species.
The perch’s fleshy white fillets proved popular on European dinner tables, however, and spawned an industry worth millions of dollars a month.
The film shows a still darker side to what Sauper calls ”the hidden half of globalisation”: Russian pilots interviewed on camera admit the planes that flew fish to Europe returned laden with weapons.
Kikwete has set up a special parliamentary committee to investigate the film’s effect on the fishing industry. — Â