Samia Suluhu Hassan, president of Tanzania, on Saturday mourners paid their last respects to her predecessor John Magufuli, who died suddenly this week after a disease was shrouded in mystery.
Mourners take to the streets of Dar es Salaam to say goodbye to the late president, some of them crying and throwing petals while the coffin, towed by a military vehicle on a weapon, is transferred from a church to Uhuru Stadium to lie in the state.
“Before I saw the coffin, I did not believe our president was really dead,” florist Pauline Attony said after seeing the freeway pass.
Hassan, who was sworn in on Friday to become the country’s first female president, led a government march that submitted to the coffin, which was draped in the Tanzanian flag and expressed her condolences to Magufuli’s wife.
Many wore black, or the green and yellow colors of the ruling party, but few in the stadium or among the crowded crowd outside wore face masks in the Covid-skeptical country – a skepticism embodied by Magufuli himself.
“It’s too soon for you to go, father. You touched our lives and we still needed you,” said one mourner, Beatrice Edward.
“We have lost our defender,” said Suleiman Mbonde, a trader.
– Coronavirus skeptic –
The government announced on Wednesday that the 61-year-old Magufuli had died of a heart condition in a hospital in Dar es Salaam, after not being seen in public for three weeks.
His unexplained absence has sparked speculation that the famous Covid skeptical leader is being treated abroad for coronavirus.
Tundu Lissu, the largest opposition leader in Tanzania, maintains that his sources said that Magufuli had died a week earlier from the disease he had been killing for a long time.
Lissu has been living in exile in Belgium since November last year, after losing the presidential election against Magufuli, which he said was impeccable.
Magufuli stated that prayer had rid the country of Covid-19, refused face masks or lock-in measures, stopped publishing case statistics and concentrated alternative medicine, and considered the vaccines ‘dangerous’.
But by February, things had skyrocketed. After the death of a number of senior figures – officially due to pneumonia – the president, popularly known as the “Bulldozer”, had to admit that the virus was still circulating.
While Hassan says she will take over where Magufuli left off, hopes are high that she will usher in a change in leadership style from her predecessor, under whose rules there have been repeated attacks on the opposition.
All the attention will be on her dealing with the pandemic.
A gentle veteran politician, Hassan, will convene a special meeting of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party on Saturday, where the appointment of a new deputy is expected to be discussed.
Under the constitution, the 61-year-old will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which expires in 2025.
She announced a mourning period of 21 days. The late president will lie in several places in Tanzania in the state before being buried next Friday in his hometown of Chato.
str-np / yy / tgb