DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) – Samia Suluhu Hassan made history on Friday when she was sworn in as the first female president of Tanzania after the death of her controversial predecessor, John Magufuli, who denied that COVID-19 had a problem in the East African country is. .
The 61-year-old Hassan wore a hijab and held a Koran with her right hand and took the oath at State House, the government offices in Dar es Salaam, the country’s largest city.
The inauguration was seen by cabinet members, former presidents Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Jakaya Kikwete. The former heads of state were among the few people in the room wearing face masks to protect against COVID-19.
Hassan succeeds Magufuli, who has not been seen in public for more than two weeks before his death was announced on state television late Wednesday. Magufuli denied that COVID-19 was a problem in Tanzania, saying that national prayer had eradicated the disease from the country. But Magufuli admitted weeks before his death that the virus was a danger.
An important test for Hassan’s new presidency is how she handles the pandemic. Under Magufuli, Tanzania, one of the most populous countries in Africa with 60 million people, made no effort to obtain vaccines or promote the use of masks and social distance to fight the virus. This policy of ignoring the disease endangers neighboring countries, warns health officials in Africa.
Although Hassan has announced that Magufuli has died of heart failure, exiled opposition leader Tundu Lissu says the president died of COVID-19, citing informed medical sources in Dar es Salaam.
“The immediate job, the immediate decision she has to make, and she does not have much time for it, is what is she going to do about COVID-19?” Lissu told The Associated Press in his exile in Belgium.
“President Magufuli has challenged the world, challenged science, challenged common sense in his approach to COVID-19 and it has finally brought him down,” Lissu said.
“President Samia Saluhu Hassan must decide very soon whether she will change course or continue with the same disastrous approach to COVID-19 as her predecessor followed,” the opposition leader said.
Hassan must also decide how he will address Magufuli’s legacy, including whether to pursue his policies that have taken Tanzania from a relatively tolerant democracy to an oppressive state, Lissu said, asking if she wanted the country’s political freedoms and democracy will be able to recover.
Lissu went into exile in 2017 after being shot 16 times. The attack came shortly after Magufuli said those opposed to his economic reforms deserved to die. Lissu is back in Tanzania to challenge Magufuli in the 2020 election. He lost to Magufuli in polls used by violence and widespread allegations of voting rights. Lissu returns to exile and says his life is in danger.
In her inauguration, Hassan did little to indicate that she intended to change from Magufuli.
“This is not a good day for me to talk to you because I have a wound in my heart,” Hassan said, speaking to Kiswahili. ‘I took an oath today that is different from the rest I have taken in my career. It’s happy. “I took the highest oath of office in mourning today,” she said.
She said Magufuli, “who has always loved teaching, has prepared her for the task ahead. ‘Nothing will go wrong,'” she assured, insisting on unity.
‘It’s time to stand together and make contact. It is time to bury our differences, show love to 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 forward to build the new Tanzania that President Magufuli has been striving for.”
Hassan will complete Magufuli’s second term, which began in October. She had a meteoric rise in politics in a male area. Both Tanzania and the surrounding East African region are slowly emerging from patriarchy.
After Magufuli elected her running mate in 2015, Hassan became Tanzania’s first female vice president. She was the second woman to become vice-president in the region, following Uganda’s Specioza Naigaga Wandira, who was in office from 1994 to 2003.
Hassan, born in 1960 in Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous archipelago of Tanzania, Hassan went to primary and secondary school at a time when very few girls in Tanzania were educated, as parents believed that the woman ‘s place was a woman and a homemaker.
After graduating from high school in 1977, Hassan studied statistics and began working for the government in the Ministry of Planning and Development. She worked for a World Food Program project in Tanzania in 1992 and then studied at the University of Manchester in London to obtain a postgraduate diploma in economics. In 2005, she earned a master’s degree in community economics development through a joint program between the Open University of Tanzania and Southern New Hampshire University in the USA.
Hassan entered politics in 2000 when she became a member of the House of Representatives in Zanzibar. In 2010, she won the parliamentary seat of Makunduchi with more than 80% of the vote. She was appointed as a cabinet minister in 2014 and becomes vice-chair of the Constitutional Assembly, which drafted a new constitution for Tanzania, a role in which she gains respect for the deft handling of various challenges.
As president, Hassan’s first task will be to unite the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party behind her, Africa’s senior analyst Ed Hobey-Hamsher told the Verisk Maplecroft research firm. 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 the party’s Christians on the mainland, and he warned that some established leaders could develop ‘obstruction strategies’ against her. He said Hassan would probably start her reign by maintaining the status quo and not embarking on a significant cabinet reform.
Hassan is the second woman in East Africa to serve as head of state. Sylvia Kiningi, Burundi, sat around the country for almost four months until February 1994 as interim president of that small country.
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Odula made a contribution from Nakuru, Kenya. AP journalist Bishr Eltouni in Tienen, Belgium, contributed.