Save the cows for another occasion

Kenya's government plans to ban bride-price payments, legalise polygamy, and consider couples co-habiting for more than six months to be legally married. The controversial proposals were approved by the cabinet, but will not become law until passed by parliament. The cabinet said the bill aimed to offer legal protection to all forms of marriages in the country, be they Christian, Islamic, Hindu, civil, or traditional. But enough about that because authorities in Ghana have detained a municipal works official accused of allowing the construction of the multi-storey building which collapsed yesterday, killing at least 18 people. Carl Henry Clerk is accused of allowing the construction of the building to take place even though he had been alerted that it had no permit and had not passed a safety inspection. Police are also searching for the architect and the engineer of the building, which collapsed just nine months after it had been constructed. Even though this may be a tragedy for the people of Ghana, the solution does not need to involve a general witch-hunt. The engineer may have had something to do with said building being structurally unsound, but the architect only designed the building and generally doesn't have anything to do with what safety features, if any, were incorporated into the final structure. This is just like those Italian scientists who were jailed for not reliably predicting an earthquake. Earthquakes are not caused by, nor can they be predicted by, man.