Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Saturday led the mourners in their last tributes to their predecessor John Magufuli, who died suddenly this week after a mysterious illness.
The mourners took to the streets of Dar es Salaam to say goodbye to the late president, some of them crying and throwing flower petals while the coffin, towed by a gun car by a military vehicle, was transferred from a church to the Uhuru Stadium to stay in the state.
“Before I saw the coffin, I didn’t believe that our president was really dead,” said flower seller Pauline Attony after watching the procession go by.
Hassan, who swore an oath on Friday to become the country’s first female president, led a government procession in front of the coffin, which was covered with the Tanzanian flag, offering his condolences to Magufuli’s wife.
Many wore black, or the green and yellow colors of the ruling party, but few inside the stadium or among the crowded crowd outside wore masks in Covid’s skeptical country – a skepticism that Magufuli himself incorporated.
“It’s too early for you to go, Dad. You touched our lives and we still needed you,” said one mourner, Beatrice Edward.
“We lost our defender,” said another, Suleiman Mbonde, a merchant.
– Coronavirus skeptic –
The government announced on Wednesday that Magufuli, 61, died of a heart condition at a hospital in Dar es Salaam after three weeks disappeared from public view.
His inexplicable absence fueled speculation that Covid’s famous skeptical leader was being treated for coronavirus abroad.
Tundu Lissu, Tanzania’s main opposition leader, insists that his sources said Magufuli had died a week before the illness he had minimized.
Lissu has lived in exile in Belgium since last November, after losing the presidential election against Magufuli, who he says was defrauded.
Magufuli declared that the prayer freed the country from Covid-19, refused facial masks or blocking measures, stopped publishing case statistics and defended alternative medicine, classifying vaccines as “dangerous”.
But in February, cases skyrocketed. After the death of several important figures – officially from pneumonia – the president popularly known as “Bulldozer” had to admit that the virus was still circulating.
Although Hassan says he will take over from where Magufuli left off, there are high hopes that she will initiate 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 how she deals with the pandemic.
A soft-spoken veteran politician, Hassan will convene a special meeting of the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi on Saturday, where the appointment of a new deputy is due to be discussed.
According to the constitution, the 61-year-old will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which does not expire until 2025.
She announced a 21-day mourning period. The late president will be in the state in several locations in Tanzania before his funeral next Friday in his hometown of Chato.
str-np / jj / tgb