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Senior officials, including new President Samia Suluhu Hassan, and supporters of the ruling party attend the service at Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam.
Mourners in Tanzania have lined the streets of the country’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, to pay their respects to President John Magufuli, days after the government announced his death after nearly three weeks missing from view of the public.
People on Saturday wept and threw flower petals as the coffin, towed in a gun carriage by a military vehicle and draped in the Tanzanian flag, was moved from a church to Uhuru Stadium, where religious leaders recited prayers at a service. attended by senior officials and supporters of Magufuli.
“Before I saw the coffin, I didn’t think our president was really dead,” said flower seller Pauline Attony after watching the caravan go by.
Among the mourners was Magufuli’s successor as president, the country’s former vice president, Samia Suluhu Hassan.
Tanzania’s new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, center, arrives at Uhuru Stadium to pay her respects [AP Photo]
Hassan, who was sworn in on Friday to become the country’s first female president, led a government procession that passed by the coffin and offered his condolences to Magufuli’s wife.
“It is too early for you to go, father. You touched our lives and we still needed you, ”said one of the mourners, Beatrice Edward. “We lost our defender,” said another, Suleiman Mbonde, a merchant.
Many wore black, or the green and yellow colors of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, but few inside the stadium or among the packed crowd outside wore masks.
Military carry Magufuli’s coffin [AP Photo]Skeptical coronavirus
Hassan announced Wednesday that Magufuli, 61, had died of a heart condition. His inexplicable absence – the government had denied he was ill and several people were arrested for spreading rumors about his health – fueled speculation that he was being treated for coronavirus abroad.
Tundu Lissu, Tanzania’s main opposition leader, who lives in exile in Belgium, insists his sources said Magufuli had died a week before from the illness he had long played down.
The service at the Uhuru Stadium was attended by senior officials and supporters of Magufuli. [Emmanuel Herman/Reuters]
Magufuli had long denied that COVID-19 was a problem in Tanzania.
He had declared that prayer had rid the country of disease, rejected face masks or lockdown measures, stopped the publication of case statistics, and defended alternative medicine, denouncing vaccines as “dangerous.”
But by February, the cases had skyrocketed.
After the death of several important figures, officially from respiratory problems and pneumonia, the president popularly known as the “Bulldozer” had to admit that the virus was still circulating and that, in fact, it was a danger.
Personnel from the Tanzania People’s Defense Force (TPDF) place the national flag on the coffin of the fifth president of Tanzania, John Magufuli, during the national funeral [STR/AFP]
While Hassan says he will take office where Magufuli left off, many hope it will usher in a change in leadership style from his predecessor, under whose rule there was heavy crackdown on the opposition, the media and civil society. .
All eyes will be on his handling of the pandemic.
On Saturday, the new president called an extraordinary meeting of the CCM but concluded without news of the appointment of a new deputy.
Under the constitution, the 61-year-old will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which doesn’t expire until 2025.
He has announced a 21-day mourning period. The late president will remain in the state at various locations in Tanzania before his burial next Friday in his hometown of Chato.
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