Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who plagued mining companies, dies at age 61

“Tanzania has lost a brave leader,” the vice president said in tears, standing next to the national flag.

It has been speculated for more than a week in East Africa that Mr. Magufuli, a skeptical Covid-19 skeptic, was critically ill with the coronavirus.

The nickname “the bulldozer” because of the powerful leadership style he used on allies as well as opponents, was mr. Magufuli among the rising group of autocratic technocrats in East Africa, who saw Western democracy as an obstacle to the economic transformation of the poorest continent in the world.

His populist policies included open talks with international mining companies, which he accused of curtailing Tanzanians. He also chastised his own officials for wasteful spending. This action and rhetoric has Mr. Magufuli ensured great support in conservative and rural communities.

Last year, the World Bank classified Tanzania for the first time as a middle-income economy, achieving five years above schedule. Tanzania’s growing prosperity has been driven by domestic and foreign investment in infrastructure and agriculture, particularly from China, the country’s largest trading partner.

However, these successes have cost at the expense of civil and personal freedoms in what has long been considered one of Africa’s more stable democracies. After the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Africa, Mr. Magufuli never put his country in the air and mocked masks and other social distance measures, a decision that, according to his critics, led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. News organizations reporting on the virus, which Magufuli said was defeated in Tanzania in May, have been fined and journalists threatened with prosecution.

Instead, he urged citizens to pray in churches and mosques to defeat a ‘satanic’ virus and refused free Covid-19 vaccines from a World Health Organization-backed facility that gives shots to poor countries – even if reports are about prominent figures who succumbed to respiratory system. illnesses. Late last month, Mr. Magufuli’s breathless and coughing finance minister, flanked by unmasked doctors, held a news conference to deny rumors of his death.

Days earlier – after the death of the vice-president of the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar from Covid-19 – Mr. Magufuli has asked Tanzanians for the first time in months to take precautions against the coronavirus, including wearing locally made masks. “This disease is dead,” he told worshipers after attending a church service in the capital, Dodoma.

According to the Tanzanian constitution, Mrs. Sulhu, the current vice-president and Magufuli’s leading partner in last year’s election, is the president-elect and will complete his five-year term.

Opposition leaders expressed their condolences on Wednesday. “I have just spoken by telephone to the President-elect, Sulhu Samia, and sympathized with the death of President Magufuli,” said Zitto Kabwe, leader of the Alliance for Change and Transparency Party.

Mr. Magufuli swept last year’s election, with the US embassy doubting a victory margin that gave the president 84% of the vote, while his ruling party secured 253 of the 264 seats in parliament. Mr. For years, Magufuli concentrated his own authority and aroused the fear of a turbulent political transition.

John Pombe Magufuli, born on October 29, 1959, in northern Tanzania in a fishing village near the shores of Lake Victoria, worked as a high school teacher in mathematics and chemistry before training as an industrial chemist.

He was elected legislator for the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party in 1995 and has served for a decade as Minister of Works and Infrastructure, earning a reputation as an unwavering adherent to government policies, including the construction of multi-million dollar road- and railway projects.

Just a few days after coming to power at the end of 2015, Mr. Magufuli canceled a lavish Independence Day ceremony and ordered that the funds be used to enlarge a highway notorious for traffic jams in Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam.

Weeks later, he banned foreign travel for all civil servants, a move that, according to the central bank, saved his government about $ 430 million during the first year. He banned political rallies, arguing that during non-election years voters should stay alone to focus on building the nation.

Mr. Magufuli argued that melancholy moves are needed to change economic status, widening the gap between politically connected elite and poor farmers and blue-collar workers. He soon turned his attention to the mining industry, the mainstay of the Tanzanian economy.

In 2017, Mr. Magufuli executives from world’s largest gold miner – Barrick Gold – called Corp.

—Thieves during a sensational tax bracket that resulted in the Canadian company paying a $ 300 million settlement to save its license. That year, he also ordered Acacia Mining to pay a large tax bill and accused the miner of declaring the value of his mineral exports for nearly two decades. Weeks later, officials seized $ 30 million worth of diamonds belonging to British Petra Diamonds.

Mr. Magufuli has passed legislation stipulating that the government must take a 16% stake in all mining projects. He threatened to evict mining investors who he accused of stealing resources. In 2019, according to Canada-based Fraser Institute, Tanzania supplanted Venezuela as the least attractive mining law area in the world when Magufuli continued a campaign against miners.

Mr. Magufuli’s belligerent attitude towards foreign companies was soon applied to domestic political opposition. His government implemented laws that stifled independent journalism and severely curtailed the activities of activist groups and political parties and drew the condemnation of rights groups.

A Tanzanian opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, was shot 16 times in an assassination attempt in 2017, but survived. After almost a year of treatment in Belgium, he returned last year to face Mr. Magufuli to run. But Mr. Lissu fled abroad again shortly after the violent election, citing threats to his life.

Mr. Magufuli is survived by his wife, Janeth, and five children.

Write to Nicholas Bariyo by [email protected]