- Tanzanian President John Magufuli has not been seen for 17 days, sparking rumors about his health.
- Magufuli declared Tanzania free from Covid last May and stopped releasing data. He rejected vaccines.
- Media reports and statements by an opposition figure have fueled rumors that he is seriously ill with Covid-19.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
Dar es Salaam – Tanzanian President John Magufuli, Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 denier, disappeared from public view 17 days ago. Now, it is rumored that he is seriously ill with the same virus that he discarded and minimized last year.
Last May, Magufuli declared that “Tanzania won the coronavirus” after ordering three days of national prayer. The president abruptly stopped updating the number of cases and assured foreign tourists that Tanzania’s nature parks and Indian Ocean resorts were open for business, leading to a wave of travel warnings warning travelers to avoid the country.
Since then, he has scoffed at the use of masks, criticized regional neighbors for imposing blockages and rejected coronavirus vaccines until his government independently verified them. In early January, Magufuli told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that “there is no coronavirus in Tanzania”.
Then, after appearing at an event in the commercial capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, on February 24, Magufuli disappeared from public view.
This week, the leading newspaper in neighboring Kenya, the Daily Nation, wrote: “The leader of an African country that has not appeared in public for almost two weeks has been admitted to Nairobi Hospital for treatment with Covid-19, although his government remains silent. about his whereabouts. ”
Within hours, it was speculated that Magufuli had been secretly flown to Nairobi for emergency medical care and later flown for treatment in India. Insider was unable to confirm these reports.
“Last update from Nairobi,” Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu tweeted this week.
—Tundu Antiphas Lissu (@TunduALissu) March 10, 2021
Contacted by Insider, Lissu repeated the claim, but provided no evidence.
“Last month, the country lost university professors, army generals, doctors, lawyers, engineers and other high-level public professionals,” Lissu told Insider. “It is highly irresponsible, and in my criminal opinion, the president continues to deny the presence of the coronavirus, to reject international aid and to repudiate vaccines.”
Dozens of Tanzanians and neighboring Kenyans turned to social media to demand responses, with the hashtag #WhereIsMagufuli being a trend on Twitter in both countries.
On Friday, government officials first approached the rumor and insisted that Magufuli was alive and well, but offered no proof.
On the streets of Dar es Salaam, some have switched to wearing masks to protect themselves against Covid-19, but many have not.
ERICKY BONIPHACE / AFP via Getty Images
“President Magufuli is in good health and continues with his normal duties,” Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said in a statement from his office. “I spoke to him (Magufuli) today and he sends his greetings to you,” insisted Majaliwa.
In a separate announcement, Mbeya region commissioner in southern Tanzania, Albert Chalamila, told reporters on Friday: “I spoke with President John Magufuli on the phone this morning … he is very strong and continues with his work . “
“WE WANT AN EXPLANATION, NOT THREATS”
Tanzania confirmed its first coronavirus case in March 2020, but a month later Magufuli – who has a doctorate in chemistry – questioned the accuracy of the test results. The cumulative cases reached 480 people and 16 were reported killed by the coronavirus on April 29, but Magufuli ordered the country’s Ministry of Health to stop publishing updates.
On February 27, three days after his last public appearance, the government announced that Magufuli had presided over the oath of a senior civil servant and participated in a virtual regional summit for the East African Community (EAC) trade bloc.
It was later revealed that Magufuli did not, in fact, attend the EAC summit, and was instead represented by his vice president, Samia Suluhu Hassan.
Since then, Magufuli has remained visibly out of public view, losing his usual church attendance on Sundays for two consecutive weeks, a rarity for the devout Catholic.
Mourners carrying the body of the vice president of Zanzibar, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad, in Dar es Salaam on February 18, 2021.
AFP via Getty Images
On the streets of Dar es Salaam, Magufuli’s inexplicable absence has been a source of concern and frustration for many city residents.
“Instead of telling us the truth about Magufuli’s whereabouts, government ministers have been making threats against users of social media. We want an explanation, not threats,” Innocent Mushi, a taxi driver, told Insider.
The death last month of Zanzibar’s first vice president, Seif Sharif Hamad, days after he announced he was hospitalized with the virus, and the death of Magufuli’s chief secretary at the State House and head of public service, John Kijazi, of an unspecified disease exposed what many concerns were the true extent of the pandemic.
“I renew my call for Tanzania to start reporting COVID-19 cases and sharing data,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement on February 20. in breaking the chains of transmission and preparing for vaccination. “
There were reports of local hospitals being invaded by patients who exhibited Covid-19 symptoms and a shortage of intensive care beds, oxygen and ventilators in major cities across the country. The government denies these reports.
Unlike other East African countries, which called for social distance and encouraged the use of masks, Tanzania has been functioning normally. Public buses are packed with passengers, with few wearing masks, while pubs and nightclubs are full of revelers. Local league matches at football stadiums and music festivals take place across the country, usually crowded.
People lining up to wash their hands with chlorinated water in Dar es Salaam on March 16, 2020, hours after Tanzania announced its first Covid-19 case.
ERICKY BONIPHACE / AFP via Getty Images
Magufuli continued to avoid modern medicine and methods of prevention, such as wearing masks and social detachment. Instead, he aggressively promoted unproven traditional remedies, such as steam inhalation and a ginger-garlic-lemon-onion drink as the government’s official line of treatment and prevention against the virus.
Some hospitals have incorporated these drugs into their treatment protocols for patients who have symptoms of coronavirus.
PRAYERS, STEAMS AND HERBS
During his five years in power, Magufuli ruled Tanzania with an iron fist, in contrast to the gentle touch of his predecessor Jakaya Kikwete, and transformed the once progressive East African nation of 60 million people into one of the most repressive and secretive states from Africa, critics say. .
Under his leadership, the government arrested opposition leaders and activists and limited the protests. In 2017, it closed a private weekly newspaper. Only the president and three other public officials are allowed to release data about Covid’s infections and talk about the pandemic.
In January, Magufuli rejected coronavirus vaccines while other countries around the world were fighting for inoculations, saying he would not allow his countrymen to be used as guinea pigs. “Vaccines are not good. If whites could bring these vaccines, they would have brought vaccines for AIDS, cancer or malaria, ”he said in a speech.
Tanzania opposition leader Tundu Lissu on August 4, 2020
STR / AFP via Getty Images
The government’s chief spokesman, Hassan Abbasi, last month backed down allegations that Tanzania was virus-free, changing the new official narrative to “we control the virus”.
Leaders of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches have begun in recent weeks against denial of the Magufuli virus, urging the government to take the disease seriously.
Earlier this month, Charles Kitima, who heads an association of Catholic bishops, told journalists in Dar es Salaam that more than 25 priests and 60 nuns have died across the country in the past two months due to several causes, including “breathing difficulties” , which has become a euphemism for coronavirus.
Lissu, the opposition leader, made the most of the moment.
“It is a sad comment about the administration (of Magufuli) of our country that reached this point: that he himself had to obtain COVID-19 and be flown to Kenya, in order to prove that prayers, steam inhalations and other mixtures of unproven herbs that he advocated there is no protection against coronavirus, “he said on Twitter.