The president who denied COVID in Tanzania died this week, prompting an opposition leader to call his pandemic death “poetic justice.”
President John Magufuli was 61 years old.
“Our beloved president has moved on,” East African vice president Samia Suluhu Hassan told national television late Wednesday, announcing that the flags would be thrown at half-staff for 14 days.
Suluhu insisted the leader died of heart failure, saying “the president has had this disease for the past 10 years.”
Even before Magufuli’s death was announced, the authoritarian leader’s administration insisted he was not ill – even though he had not been seen in public since late February.
Even before his death, rival politicians had insisted that the president had COVID-19, a disease that Magufuli claimed to eradicate through three days of national prayer.
“It simply came to our notice then. It is a crown, “said opposition leader Tundu Lissu for the Kenyan television network in Belgium, where he has been in exile since 2017, when he was shot 16 times in an attack that blamed government agents.
“It’s poetic justice,” Lissu said of the death, adding, “President Magufuli defied the world in the fight against COVID-19.”
“It simply came to our notice then. He refused to take the basic precautions that people around the world are being told to take in the fight against COVID-19, ”he said.
“He put his faith in the healers of faith and in herbal preparations of dubious medical value … And what happened? He came down with COVID-19 “, Lissu insisted.
Magufuli, the son of a farmer, was first elected to the presidency in 2015 and was serving a second five-year term won in the 2020 elections that the opposition and some rights groups have said are neither free nor fair.
When COVID-19 first struck Tanzania in March 2020, Magufuli urged people to go to churches and mosques to pray, saying that because “the coronavirus is a devil,” “it cannot stand in the body of Christ.”
He spoke out against social distance and masks, and questioned vaccines – promoting herbs and exercise as remedies.
Magufuli then announced in June that COVID-19 had been eradicated from Tanzania through three days of national prayer.
In April 2020, the nation did not report to African health authorities the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus and deaths, with authorities saying the victims are buried at night to hide the number of deaths.
Health officials who reported problems with COVID-19 were fired, the Associated Press said.
Tanzania’s constitution requires the vice president to succeed a dying president, making Hassan the nation’s first female president.
However, as of Thursday afternoon, officials have not yet announced plans to swear in Hassan, Reuters said.
With Post threads