Opposition politicians are questioning the health of Tanzania’s COVID-19 denying President John Magufuli, as he has not been seen in public for more than a week and at least one official close to him has recently died.
Magufuli was last seen in public on February 27 at the inauguration ceremony of the country’s foreign minister at the State House office in Dar es Salaam, the East African country’s largest city.
Magufuli’s absence is unusual because he is known for frequent public speeches and appearances on state television several times a week. Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu in exile questioned Magufulis was in a series of tweets.
Another politician, who insisted on anonymity for fear of a backlash from Tanzania’s repressive regime, said he had spoken to people close to the president who said he was seriously ill and in hospital. Kenya’s leading newspaper, The Nation, reported on Wednesday that an African leader had been admitted to a hospital in Nairobi, citing anonymous government sources.
Party members control the temperature and clean their hands as a precaution against COVID-19 at the national congress of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party in Dodoma, Tanzania, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo)
The Kenyan government spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about the report. A Tanzanian government spokesman has not responded to questions from the Associated Press about Magufuli’s health and whereabouts.
The populist leader announced in June last year that Tanzania had defeated COVID-19 through a three-day prayer. The country, one of Africa’s most populous with 60 million people, in April stopped providing statistics on the number of people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 or deaths due to the disease to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The government fired some officials who questioned Magufuli’s claim that no people became ill with coronavirus in the country. The government promoted trade and international tourism, eager to avoid the economic pain of neighbors who introduced lockdowns and curfews.
It did not ban public gatherings or promote the wearing of masks, and Magufuli promoted herbal remedies for those who became ill with “breathing problems.” But people leaving Tanzania reported that hospital intensive care units were filled with people with serious respiratory illnesses, others said funerals were held at night to hide the number of deaths.
People use a hand washing station installed for the public entering a market in Dodoma, Tanzania, May 18, 2020. (AP Photo)
Migrants from Tanzania were found to have COVID-19. Recently, some senior officials have died and at least one was reported to have died of COVID-19. The expelled opposition leader Lissu speculated on Twitter that Magufuli had COVID-19 and had been flown to Kenya for treatment.
“It’s a sad comment on his stewardship of our country that it has come to this: that he himself had to get COVID-19 and fly out to Kenya to prove that prayers, steam breathing and other unproven herbal compounds he fights are no protection against coronavirus, Lissu says in a tweet.
Until recently, Magufuli had claimed that there was no COVID-19 in the country and he said that vaccines can be dangerous. On February 10, however, the US embassy warned of a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Tanzania since January.
Days later, the president’s official office, State House, announced the death of John Kijazi, the president’s secretary general. On February 17, the first vice president of the semi-autonomous archipelago in Zanzibar, Seif Sharif Hamad, died after his party, the Alliance for Change and Transparency, announced that he was ill with COVID-19.
On February 21, Magufuli acknowledged that Tanzania had a coronavirus problem, his first public acknowledgment of a problem since declaring COVID-19 eradicated in June last year.
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