DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) – Samia Suluhu Hassan made history on Friday when she was sworn in as Tanzania’s first female president after the death of her controversial predecessor, John Magufuli, who denied that COVID-19 is a problem in the country of East Africa.
Wearing a hijab and holding a Koran in his right hand, Hassan, 61, took the oath of office at State House, the government offices in Dar es Salaam, the country’s largest city.
The inauguration was attended by members of the Cabinet, former presidents Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Jakaya Kikwete. Former heads of state were among the few people in the room wearing face masks for protection against COVID-19.
Hassan succeeds Magufuli, who had not been seen in public for more than two weeks before his death was announced on state television on Wednesday. Magufuli denied that COVID-19 was a problem in Tanzania, saying that national prayer had eradicated the country’s disease. But Magufuli recognized weeks before his death that the virus was a danger.
A major test of Hassan’s new presidency will be how she deals with the pandemic. Under Magufuli, Tanzania, one of the most populous countries in Africa with 60 million inhabitants, has made no effort to obtain vaccines or promote the use of masks and social detachment to fight the virus. This policy of ignoring the disease endangers neighboring countries, warn African health officials.
Although Hassan announced that Magufuli died of heart failure, exiled opposition leader Tundu Lissu said the president died of COVID-19, citing well-informed medical sources in Dar es Salaam.
“The immediate job, the immediate decision she has to make, and she doesn’t have much time for that, is what is she going to do about COVID-19?” Lissu told the Associated Press at his place of exile in Belgium.
“President Magufuli challenged the world, challenged science, challenged common sense in his approach to COVID-19 and it finally brought him down,” said Lissu.
“President Samia Saluhu Hassan has to decide very soon whether she is changing course or continuing with the same disastrous approach to COVID-19 that her predecessor did,” said the opposition leader.
Hassan must also decide how she will deal with Magufuli’s legacy, including whether to continue with her policies that have led Tanzania from a relatively tolerant democracy to a repressive state, Lissu said, questioning whether she will be able to restore political freedoms and democracy from the country.
Lissu went into exile in 2017 after being shot 16 times. The attack came shortly after Magufuli said that those who opposed his economic reforms deserved to die. Lissu returned to Tanzania to challenge Magufuli in the 2020 elections. He lost to Magufuli in polls marked by violence and widespread accusations of electoral fraud. Lissu returned to exile, saying that his life was in danger.
Speaking in his possession, Hassan gave little indication that he intended to change Magufuli’s course.
“It is not a good day to speak to you because I have a wound in my heart,” said Hassan, speaking in Kiswahili. “Today I took an oath different from the others I took in my career. These were taken with happiness. Today I took the highest oath of office in mourning, ”she said.
She said that Magufuli, “who always liked to teach”, prepared her for the task ahead. “Nothing should go wrong,” she assured, asking for unity.
“This is the time for us to be together and connect. It is time to bury our differences, show love for each other and look forward with confidence, ”she said. “This is not the time to point the finger at each other, but to hold hands and move on to build the new Tanzania that President Magufuli aspired to.”
Hassan will complete Magufuli’s second term, which began in October. She had a meteoric rise in politics in a male-dominated field. Both Tanzania and the surrounding East African region are slowly emerging from patriarchy.
After Magufuli chose her as his running mate in 2015, Hassan became Tanzania’s first female vice president. She was the second woman to become vice president in the region, after Specioza Naigaga Wandira, from Uganda, who held the position from 1994 to 2003.
Born in Zanzibar, Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago, in 1960, Hassan went to primary and secondary school at a time when very few girls in Tanzania were receiving an education, as parents thought the woman’s place was that of wife and housewife .
After finishing high school in 1977, Hassan studied statistics and started working for the government, at the Ministry of Planning and Development. She worked for a World Food Program project in Tanzania in 1992 and then attended the University of Manchester in London to obtain a postgraduate degree in economics. In 2005, she obtained a master’s degree in community economic development through a joint program between the Open University of Tanzania and Southern New Hampshire University in the United States.
Hassan entered politics in 2000, when he became a member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives. In 2010, she won the Makunduchi parliamentary seat with more than 80% of the vote. She was appointed cabinet minister in 2014 and became vice president of the Constituent Assembly that drafted a new constitution for Tanzania, a role in which she gained respect for skillfully handling various challenges.
As president, Hassan’s first task will be to unite the governing party Chama Cha Mapinduzi to support him, said Ed Hobey-Hamsher, senior analyst for Africa at research firm Verisk Maplecroft. The party has been in power since Tanzania’s independence.
As a Muslim woman from Zanzibar, Hassan may find it difficult to win the support of Christians on the party’s continent, he said, warning that some entrenched leaders may develop “obstructionist strategies” against her. He said that Hassan is likely to start his government maintaining the status quo and not embark on a major cabinet reshuffle.
Hassan is the second woman in East Africa to serve as head of state. Sylvia Kiningi of Burundi served as acting president of that small landlocked country for almost four months until February 1994.
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Odula contributed from Nakuru, Kenya. AP journalist Bishr Eltouni in Tienen, Belgium, contributed.