President John Magufuli of Tanzania, a prominent skeptic of COVID-19 in Africa, whose populist government has often put his East African country in the international spotlight, has died. He was 61 years old.
Magufuli’s death was announced on Wednesday by Vice President Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure.
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ARCHIVE – In the archive photo of this Friday, October 23, 2015, President John Magufuli gestures during an election rally in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (AP Photo / Khalfan Said, Archive)
“Our beloved president passed away at 6 pm tonight,” Suluhu said on national television. “All flags will be raised at half-mast for 14 days. It is sad news. The president has had this disease for 10 years.”
The vice president said that Magufuli died in a hospital in Dar es Salaam, the Indian Ocean port that is the largest city in Tanzania.
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ARCHIVE – In the archive photo of this Sunday, October 25, 2015, the presidential candidate of the ruling Tanzania party, John Magufuli, votes in his hometown of Chato, in northern Tanzania. (AP photo, file)
Magufuli had not been seen in public since the end of February, and senior government officials denied that he was in poor health, even with online rumors that he was ill and possibly disabled because of the illness.
Magufuli was one of the most prominent deniers of COVID-19 in Africa. He said last year that Tanzania eradicated the disease through three days of national prayer. Tanzania has not reported its COVID-19 records of confirmed cases and deaths to African health officials since April 2020.
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ARCHIVE – In the archive photo this Saturday, July 11, 2020, President John Magufuli speaks at the national congress of his governing party Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) in Dodoma, Tanzania. (AP photo, file)
But the death toll of people with respiratory problems has grown, and earlier this month, the U.S. embassy warned of a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Tanzania since January. Days later, the presidency announced the death of John Kijazi, Magufuli’s chief secretary. Shortly afterwards, the death of the vice president of the semi-autonomous island region of Zanzibar was announced, whose political party had previously informed him that he had COVID-19.
Critics accused Magufuli’s rejection of the COVID-19 threat, as well as his refusal to block the country as others in the region did, may have contributed to many unknown deaths.