[ad_1]
Addis Ababa, March 18, 2021 (Walta) –Tanzanian President John Magufuli has died at age 61, the country’s vice president announced..
He died of heart complications on Wednesday at a Dar es Salaam hospital, Samia Suluhu Hassan said in a speech on state television.
Magufuli had not been seen in public for more than two weeks and rumors about his health have circulated.
Opposition politicians said last week that he had contracted Covid-19, but this has not been confirmed.
Magufuli was one of the most prominent skeptics of the coronavirus in Africa, calling for prayers and herbal-infused steam therapy to counter the virus.
“It is with deep regret that I inform you that today … we lost our brave leader, the President of the Republic of Tanzania, John Pombe Magufuli,” Vice President Hassan said in the announcement.
Under Tanzania’s constitution, Hassan will be sworn in as the new president and should serve the rest of Magufuli’s five-year team, which began last year.
Magufuli was last seen in public on February 27, but Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa insisted last week that the president was “healthy and working hard.”
He blamed the rumors about the president’s poor health on “obnoxious” Tanzanians living abroad.
But opposition leader Tundu Lissu told the BBC that his sources had told him that Magufuli was being treated at a hospital for coronavirus in Kenya.
Magufuli declared Tanzania “Covid-19 free” last June. He mocked the effectiveness of the masks, expressed doubts about the tests and mocked neighboring countries that imposed sanitary measures to curb the virus.
Tanzania has not released details of its coronavirus cases since May, and the government has refused to buy vaccines, according to the BBC.
On Monday, police said they had arrested four people on suspicion of spreading rumors on social media that the president was ill.
“Spreading rumors that he is ill smells of hatred,” Majaliwa said at the time.
