Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Wednesday died aged 61 from a heart condition, according to the Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan in an address on state television, after many days of uncertainty over his health and whereabouts.
“It is with deep regret that I inform you that today on the 17th of March, 2021 at 6 pm we lost our brave leader, the President of the Republic of Tanzania, John Pombe Magufuli,” she declared.
Magufuli, according to her, had died of a “heart condition”, which he has suffered for a decade, at a hospital in Dar es Salaam.
He had first been briefly admitted to the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute on March 6, but was subsequently discharged, Hassan said. But Magufuli had again felt unwell and was on March 14 rushed to hospital again.
Confirmation of Magufuli’s death comes after weeks of uncertainty and wild rumours over his absence, as he was last seen in public on February 27.
Opposition leader Tundu Lissu had raised questions about his health, citing sources that the president was suffering from COVID-19.
Magufuli, who was first elected in 2015 and then again in a disputed poll last year, had for months insisted the virus no longer existed in Tanzania, and had been fended off by prayer.
He refused to wear a face-mask or take lockdown measures. But a week before he was last seen, Magufuli conceded the virus was still circulating, after the vice-president of semi-autonomous Zanzibar was revealed to have died of COVID-19.
Born on October 29, 1959, in northern Tanzania in a fishing village near the shores of Lake Victoria, John Pombe Magufuli worked as a high-school mathematics and chemistry teacher before training as an industrial chemist.
In 1995, he was elected a lawmaker for the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party and served a decade as Works and Infrastructure Minister, forging a reputation as an incorruptible enforcer of government policies, including the construction of multibillion-dollar road and railway projects.
Just days after coming to power in late 2015, Magufuli canceled a lavish Independence Day ceremony and directed that the funds be used to widen a highway notorious for traffic jams in Tanzania’s commercial capital of Dar es Salaam.
Weeks later, he banned foreign travel for all civil servants, a move that saved his government some $430 million during its first year, according to the central bank.
Similarly, political rallies were outlawed with arguments that voters should be left alone during non-election years to focus on building the nation.
Nicknamed “the Bulldozer” for the forceful leadership style used on allies and opponents alike, Magufuli was among East Africa’s rising cadre of autocratic technocrats, who saw Western-style democracy as an obstacle to the economic transformation of the world’s poorest continent.
His populist policies included public spats with international mining companies accused of shortchanging Tanzanians. He also chastised his own officials for wasteful spending. These actions and rhetoric secured him huge support in conservative and rural communities.
Last year, the World Bank classified Tanzania as a middle-income economy for the first time, a feat achieved five years ahead of schedule. Tanzania’s increasing wealth was driven by domestic and foreign investments in infrastructure and agriculture, particularly from China, the country’s largest trading partner.
Those successes, however, came at the cost of civil and personal liberties in what had long been considered one of Africa’s more stable democracies.
On the COVID-19 pandemic, Magufuli did not put Tanzania into lockdown. He mocked masks and other social-distancing measures, a decision that his critics say led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. News organizations that reported on the virus, which he insisted had been defeated in Tanzania in May, were fined and journalists threatened with prosecution.
Instead, the late President encouraged citizens to pray in churches and mosques to defeat a “satanic” virus and refused free COVID-19 vaccines from a World Health Organization (WHO)-backed facility that provides shots to poor countries, even as reports mounted of prominent figures succumbing to respiratory illnesses. – Source: AFP with additional agency reports
