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Arusha, Tanzania – Omari *, a motorcycle taxi driver, stopped in front of a house in the city of Arusha, a tourist center in northern Tanzania, and pointed to a large gray door.
“A person here died of COVID a few days ago,” he said, before starting his engine again and continuing on bumpy dirt roads.
He slowed down in another house and muttered loudly through his blue protective mask: “The father here drives the bus between Arusha and Dar es Salaam. He picked up COVID in Dar and died a week ago.
“This is becoming very serious,” he added. “This disease is killing a lot of people.”
No one knows for sure if these claimed deaths are rumored to be the result of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that has so far infected more than four million people worldwide and killed nearly 300,000, or if in fact they are coronavirus-related deaths that have not been included in the official death toll in Tanzania.
According to government records, so far 509 people in Tanzania have contracted the virus and 21 died. But the official numbers, which are provided in increasingly rare updates, are viewed with great suspicion.
Various Opposition leaders and activists in recent weeks have accused the government of failing to inform the public about the extent of the disease outbreak and covering up the true number of deaths.
The government has denied the allegations but Many Tanzanians also told Al Jazeera, privately and behind closed-door security, that they did not trust government data.
Videos of night burials in Tanzanian cemeteries and corpses wrapped in plastic body bags brought home by men in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suits are widely shared by WhatsApp groups and social media, raising fears about the true scope of the crisis.
“The government is hiding the number of deaths, this is 100 percent proven. How many [they’re hiding] It’s harder to say, “Zitto Kabwe, the leader of the opposition ACT-Wazalendo party and a member of parliament, told Al Jazeera.
“The country’s health system is completely overwhelmed. The situation is not very good and the government has completely controlled the data, so we have not been able to access independent information about what is really happening.”
‘Many deaths’
Zakia Mshare was placed in a government quarantine center for suspected COVID-19 patients in the Njiro suburb of Arusha when she became ill after returning from a trip last month to the coastal city of Dar es Salaam.
One day after arriving at the facility, the 64-year-old man went into a coma and died. two days later. Mshare was tested for COVID-19 but the family was told that the results were inconclusive. Still, authorities said his body would be handled and buried by the government.
The family arrived at the Njiro cemetery at 10 a.m. (0: 700 GMT) on April 27 and began digging the grave to prepare for the remains of Mshare. They waited there until 8:45 p.m. (5:45 p.m. GMT) when her body, along with 14 other suspects or confirmed to have been killed by COVID-19, arrived in a government convoy, according to Nasri Mshare, the woman’s son.
“There were four government workers in personal protective suits who unloaded the bodies and put them in the graves one by one,” Nasri Mshare said, adding that he had seen a label affixed to his mother’s body detailing her name and the cause. of death. “suspect”.
They put her in the grave with the body bag still wrapped around her. Family members were able to take short videos and blurry photos before being told that they were not allowed to take any recordings.
Godbless Lema, deputy from the Arusha city constituency for Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chadema, told Al Jazeera that he had also witnessed the government’s nightly burials at the Njiro cemetery. According to Lema, two bodies were buried there on April 13, one on April 14 and 13 more on April 18.
“A lot of people are dying [of COVID-19] in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Dodoma and many other places in Tanzania, “said Al Jazeera Freeman Mbowe, President of Chadema.
“We are not sure of the number of daily deaths, but there are many,” Mbowe said, estimating that the number of daily deaths in Dar es Salaam was “not less than 30 or 40.” The figure could not be independently verified, but Mbowe said the estimate was based on testimonies from citizens sent to Chadema and attempts to count the number of bodies buried by the government.
Hassan Abbas, the chief spokesman for the Tanzanian government, told Al Jazeera that any government accusation covering up the COVID-19 deaths was a “pointless argument based on [the] politicization of everything. “
“If someone argues that we have more deaths than the 16 reported [then] Where are the relatives of those unreported deaths? Bring the names and all the details, “he wrote in a WhatsApp message.
“For us, it’s crazy to hear such an argument.”
Despite the pandemic, not much seems to have changed in daily life in Tanzania [Ericky Boniphace/AFP]
The government has closed schools, including universities, across the country as part of efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Passenger flights have also been suspended and the Ministry of Health has promoted the rules for physical distancing. But in addition to the hand-washing stations installed outside the stores and more Tanzanians with face masks, not much has changed in the daily life of the country.
Meanwhile, President John Magufuli has encouraged Tanzanians to continue meeting in places of worship and to trust God to protect the country from the virus, while urging people to continue working.
Magufuli also ordered the suspension of subsidies for politicians who refuse to attend parliament after opposition lawmakers stopped attending sessions after the death of three MPs within 11 days, and many suspect that COVID-19 is the cause.
‘Burying body after body’
Mussa Kwikima, a retired superior court judge, passed away on April 27 at Kairuki Hospital in Dar es Salaam. The 81-year-old patient was screened for COVID-19 after his death and two days later the family was notified by phone that the results had been positive.
However, his death certificate, which was seen by Al Jazeera and dated May 4, has “natural” cause according to his son, Hussein Kwikima.
Hussein Kwikima said that when he visited the Ilala municipal council health department on April 30 to discuss the burial, he saw the worker on duty open a book titled Mazishi and COVID-19-Swahili for “COVID-19 burials” – and that her father was the name 256 of the book.
Around 11pm (20:00 GMT) that night, the remains of Mussa Kwikima were taken to the Kisutu cemetery, along with two other bodies. According to Hussein Kwikima, the workers said they had been delivering bodies to cemeteries since morning, and 16 bodies had been buried in the Ilala district that night, all suspected or positive cases of COVID-19.
“I felt bad for those government officials who were carrying the bodies,” Hussein said. Kwikima. “You can see how difficult it is for them. They were just burying body after body all day. They seemed completely exhausted. You can see from their faces that they are being exhausted by this work.”
People watch the newspapers without adhering to the patterns of physical distancing in Dar es Salaam [Ericky Boniphace/AFP]
Mbowe, the president of Chadema, argued that the disease “got out of control” and blamed the lack of government preparations for it. Magufuli, he alleged, had not taken the pandemic seriously from the start and has not yet submitted a supplemental budget to Parliament that allocates resources to combat the spread of the virus.
“So now they are trying to hide the truth. They don’t want the world to know what’s going on here,” added Mbowe.
Last month Amnesty International called on the government to end the crackdown on journalists, citing examples of reporters and the media whose licenses were suspended for reporting on COVID-19. Meanwhile, the Tanzanian media reported on April 29 that a prominent lawyer in Arusha had been arrested for comments he made about the coronavirus situation, hours after a local official ordered police to arrest anyone who shared information about the coronavirus that conflicts with government data.
Amid reports of new arrests, Baruani Mshale, Mshare’s nephew, also said his family was concerned about making his experience public. “Tanzanians are too scared to talk about their experiences. Although I’m only describing the facts of what happened, people still warn me to be careful when talking about it,” he said.
“It’s scary, but it’s important,” added Mshale. “We [Tanzanians] we need to share our stories, communicate them and continue documenting them. “
Fatma Karume, a leading lawyer and government critic, told Al Jazeera that the crackdown on the public exchange of information on COVID-19 was a continuation of Magufuli’s policies since his electoral victory in 2015.
Human rights groups have accused the Magufuli administration over the years of using increasingly repressive laws to stifle freedom of expression, media freedoms and access to information, including the manipulation of statistics and denial to citizens of independently verified alternative sources of data.
During an event last week in Chato, the Magufuli village in northwestern Tanzania, where he has been residing for the past few weeks, the President questioned the accuracy of the Tanzania COVID-19 test kits and the credibility of the technicians in the country’s national health laboratory after secretly sending non-human samples for coronavirus testing.
He said that a sample taken from a goat and a papaya had tested positive for COVID-19, suggesting that the kits were unreliable and that some of those who tested positive were not actually infected with the virus.
The next day, Nyambura Moremi, the head of the laboratory, the only facility in Tanzania with the capacity to analyze COVID-19, was suspended from her post when Magufuli launched an investigation into what she called “foul play” in the laboratory. .
Eliminating Moremi is “ensuring that we don’t get a different narrative than the particular narrative that Magufuli wants us to have,” Karume said, former president of the Tanganyika Law Society.
“It is not just about keeping your mouth shut, preventing newspapers from writing about it, or even preventing Tanzanians from talking about it; to the point of not allowing scientists to investigate it,” he added, accusing the government of “lying. “on the spread of the disease.
“We need to know the real numbers,” he said. “We need to know to what extent this disease is affecting this country.”
* Name changed to protect the identity of the person
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