Officially, Tanzania’s President John Maguful has died of heart problems. This was announced by the Vice President on television on Wednesday, March 17, after more than two weeks of unresolved absence from the head of state.
“Easily re-elected in October last year for another term with 84% of the vote, John Magufuli, 61, appeared for the last time in public on February 27 and points to World Africa, there were persistent rumors about his state of health. Of course, he had been suffering from heart problems for ten years, the vice president said. “But” a week ago, the opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, in exile in Belgium, like others, began to question the president’s absence, saying he was suffering from a serious form of Covid-19, exacerbated by health problems. “
Du Covid-19?
Other sources claim that the Tanzanian president was ill with Covid-19, points The young Africa. “British academic Nic Cheeseman, founder of the website Democracy in Africa, recently said from two different sources that John Magufuli was ‘seriously ill and had been hospitalized in Nairobi, Kenya,'” the Pan-African Week said. “Do not trust the Tanzanian government to confirm this information,” he said. “
The virus in free circulation
In fact, Jeune Afrique continues, officially, there is no Covid-19 in Tanzania. “The country has not introduced either containment or quarantine. Tourists are always welcome there without special precautions. Markets and restaurants remain open, and in the big cities we meet few mask bearers. […]The official version of the story of Covid-19 in Tanzania takes two lines, pointing to the weekly. The first case of pollution in the country will be officially registered on 16 March 2020. The figures will increase modestly in the following weeks, after which the progression will abruptly stop. In late April, John Magufuli declares that Tanzania has conquered the virus and stops publishing the number of sick and dead. So much so that a year later the country officially claims 509 infected people and 21 victims when neighboring Kenya for a comparable population regrets 106,000 and 18,000 respectively. “And” vaccines? The president simply does not want to hear about it, and Tanzania is one of the few African countries that has not joined the international Covax system, which aims to reserve part of the doses produced by the major world laboratories for developing countries. . “
Kenya worried
“Beyond the borders, this control of the pandemic is worrying,” continues Jeune Afrique. Fearing an explosion of cases and the creation of new local variants, Kenya – which assures Tanzanian patients seeking treatment – has flocked to hospitals in Mombasa – and Zambia have closed their borders with Tanzania. The United Kingdom placed the country on its red list and denies any traveler coming from Dar es Salaam entry into its territory. With regard to France and Belgium, they warn their nationals against the “absence of local preventive measures” and “strictly” advise against traveling to Tanzania. “
“Prayer was not enough”
So “the irony of fate, note Ledjely in Guinea, it is because President Magufuli probably died of a disease of existence, of which he expressed serious doubts. […]Like Jair Bolsonaro from Brazil and to a lesser extent Donald Trump, the avid Catholic Tanzanian president had distinguished himself by his curious views of the coronavirus. Instead of masks and other medicines, he had thus limited himself to inviting his countrymen to pray to get rid of pain. […] In the end, prayer was not enough … ”
For its part Africa Point says that “many Tanzanian officials have died in recent weeks, often without specifying the cause of their death. Among them the first vice-president of the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, Seif Sharif Hamad, who died in mid-February, whose party said he had signed a contract with Covid-19. A sign that the country is completely interrupted, Tanzania has not published data on Covid since April last year, which has asked the WHO, the World Health Organization, to urge the country to publish data on coronavirus and to strengthen public health measures. ”
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