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Mourners line the streets of Dar es Salaam to bid farewell and pay tribute to the late President John Magufuli, who died suddenly this week after an illness shrouded in mystery.
Maria Nyerere (2nd R), widow of Tanzania’s first President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, cries during the national funeral of Tanzania’s fifth President John Magufuli at Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam on March 20, 2021 (AFP).
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has led mourners to pay their last respects to his predecessor, John Magufuli, who died suddenly this week after an illness shrouded in mystery.
Mourners lined the streets of Dar es Salaam on Saturday to bid farewell to the late president, some of them crying and throwing flower petals as the coffin, towed in a carriage with weapons by a military vehicle, was moved from a church to the stadium. Uhuru to lie down. in state.
“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.
Hassan, who was sworn in on Friday to become the country’s first female president, led a government procession that passed the coffin, which was draped in the Tanzanian flag, offering his condolences to Magufuli’s wife.
Many wore black, or the ruling party’s green and yellow colors, but few inside the stadium or among the packed crowd outside wore masks in the Covid-skeptical country, a skepticism that Magufuli himself had embodied.
“It’s 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.
READ MORE: Tanzania swears in first female president after Magufuli’s sudden death
Women mourn as attendees mourn the death of the coffin of Tanzania’s fifth president, John Magufuli, during the national funeral at Uhuru Stadium in Dar es Salaam on March 20, 2021 (AFP).
Skeptical coronavirus
The government announced Wednesday that 61-year-old Magufuli had died of a heart condition in a Dar es Salaam hospital after three weeks without being in public view.
His inexplicable absence had fueled speculation that the famously skeptical Covid leader was being treated for coronavirus abroad.
Tundu Lissu, Tanzania’s top opposition leader, insists his sources said Magufuli had died a week before from the illness he had long played down.
Lissu has lived in exile in Belgium since last November, after losing the presidential elections against Magufuli, which according to him were rigged.
Magufuli had declared that the prayer had rid the country of Covid-19, rejected masks or confinement measures, stopped the publication of case statistics and defended alternative medicine, denouncing the vaccines as “dangerous.”
But by February, the cases had skyrocketed. After the death of several important figures, officially from pneumonia, the president popularly known as the “Bulldozer” had to admit that the virus was still circulating.
READ MORE: Tanzanian President Magufuli dies of ‘heart disease’
21-day mourning period
While Hassan says he will take over where Magufuli left off, there are high hopes that it will usher in a change in the leadership style of his predecessor, under whose rules there have been repeated attacks on the opposition.
All eyes will be on his handling of the pandemic.
Hassan, a soft-spoken veteran politician, will convene a special meeting of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party on Saturday, where the appointment of a new deputy is expected to be discussed.
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.
READ MORE: Tanzania’s policy towards Covid-19 has been to deny it
Source: AFP
