[ad_1]
Samia Suluhu Hassan said Magufuli was receiving treatment at a Tanzanian hospital when he died on Wednesday night.
However, opposition leaders insist that Magufuli died of Covid-19 at least a week earlier.
Tundu Lissu of the opposition Chadema party said Thursday in an interview with a Kenyan broadcaster that Magufuli had died from Covid in early March.
“I received the news of the death of President Magufuli without any surprise,” he added.
“I had waited for it all the time, from the first day I tweeted on March 7 … when I asked the question ‘Where is President Magufuli and what is his health?’ He had information from very credible sources in the government that the president was seriously ill with Covid-19 and his situation was really very bad, “Lissu said from his base in Belgium. CNN has contacted Lissu for further comment.
CNN has not been able to independently verify his claims. The Tanzanian authorities also did not respond to requests for comment on Lissu’s claims.
The secrecy and mystery surrounding his death reveal Magufuli’s enduring legacy, says Maria Sarungi Tsehai, activist and founder of the #ChangeTanzania movement, a civil society group that promotes freedom of expression.
Tsehai said the circumstances of his death and the “secrecy and intimidation” that citizens face for speculating or discussing it are “very revealing about the type of presidency he led.”
“Even now, in his death, people are still terrified and talking quietly,” Tsehai said.
Magufuli was the fifth president of Tanzania and part of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party that has ruled the country since independence in 1961.
The latest reported figures of 509 cases and 21 deaths were in April of last year.
Magufuli frustrated world health leaders after suspending nationwide tracking of Covid cases, blaming the country’s number of infections on faulty test kits.
Magufuli’s death has raised many questions about how the country is progressing through a pandemic with a massive information gap.
Magufuli did not make any offers for the Covid vaccines as he questioned their safety and instead promoted the use of prayers, herbal treatments and steam inhalation to combat the disease.
Tsehai says the lack of information makes it difficult for health workers and citizens to know what the real situation is. His organization conducted an informal survey to get a “snapshot” of the Covid situation in the country last year.
“We are seeing more obituaries, death announcements and that more people are leaving us. There are people older and 50 years old. Parents also tell us that children are entering the hospital with respiratory problems,” he said.
However, the changes are far from imminent, Tsehai added. “Nothing will happen right away. We have to wait and see what Samia (Hassan) can do.”
On Friday, Hassan was sworn in as the country’s first female president.
Now the new leader must select a vice presidential candidate and form a cabinet, Tsehai said.
“We are very concerned. She needs to act now. The ceremony and the burial and the last rites ceremony will be Covid super-recreation events,” Tsehai added.
Fighting Covid with prayers
Magufuli was devoutly religious and a rabid Covid-19 denier who repeatedly downplayed the severity of Covid-19 in Tanzania, while declaring the country virus-free last June after three days of massive prayers.
“Let us pray and fast for three days, I am sure we will win … today for the Muslims who have already started, tomorrow the Seventh-day Adventists who pray on Saturdays and on Sunday for the Christians,” Magufuli said on February 19.
“God has never abandoned this nation. We won last year and went to middle-income status amid the coronavirus,” he added.
Deus Valentine Rweyemamu, who heads the Center for Strategic Litigation, a pro-democracy movement in Tanzania, told CNN that Magufuli did not provide leadership in his handling of the pandemic.
“President Magufuli hid behind religious fundamentalism and managed to lead an entire nation to denialism. His only public speech recorded in Covid has half of it made up of verses from the Bible,” Rweyemamu said.
However, religious leaders were among his fiercest critics.
Father Charles Kitima, secretary of the Tanzania Bishops’ Conference, a group of Catholic bishops, told CNN on Thursday that the Magufuli regime did not take urgent action to handle the coronavirus.
Kitima, who had been a vocal critic of Tanzania’s Covid response under Magufuli, said that some members of the Catholic Church in Tanzania may have died from Covid-related complications.
“Some church members had respiratory complications and died,” he told CNN.
“As for the months from mid-December 2020 to February 2021, we lost 25 priests and 60 nuns … Some of them died from respiratory difficulties,” he said.
He added that the volume of infections in the country could not be determined due to a lack of evidence.
Kitima criticized Magufuli’s Covid response, which was largely based on religion and neglected scientific recommendations.
“You cannot separate prayer from science. Religion is there to support doctors and researchers. Science and faith must work together,” Kitima told CNN.
Rweyemamu told CNN that many Tanzanians trusted Magufuli’s methods, albeit unconventional.
“If President Magufuli appeared in public wearing a mask, even the sickest dog in Tanzania would wear one. This is because … Tanzanians believe in their president more than their own parents,” he added.
Mussa Khamis, a project officer for Good Neighbors, a humanitarian non-profit organization in Tanzania, told CNN: “While some of my friends and relatives were inhaling steam to combat this pandemic … I took care of myself by observing the prevention measures recommended by WHO and other medical experts “.
The 26-year-old resident of the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar in Tanzania said the existence of Covid-19 had begun to resonate with many Tanzanians following the passing of Zanzibar’s vice president, Seif Sharif Hamad, who died in February after contracting the virus.
Hamad spoke openly about his illness, which he made public three weeks before his death.
“People now wear masks and wash their hands frequently. I think this is motivated by the recent loss of our vice president,” Khamis said.
The end of the Magufuli era is expected to usher in a new national perspective on Covid-19.
However, it remains to be seen whether things will continue as usual for Tanzania’s new leader or whether she will change course and leave room for science to flourish as the pandemic progresses.
