Tanzania’s populist president John Pombe Magufuli, who claimed that prayer prevented corona transmission, has died of heart failure, the country’s vice president said.
According to Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan, the 61-year-old president died at a hospital in the capital Dar es Salaam on Wednesday afternoon.
John Pombe Magufuli came to power in 2015 and was re-elected in a controversial election in November last year. He then received 84 percent of the vote, but the election was, according to the opposition, characterized by extensive cheating.
Two weeks ago, the president disappeared from the public eye, and it was therefore diligently speculated where he was and whether he was ill.
Coronarykter
According to some rumors, Magufuli was infected with the coronavirus and was on a respirator, but the government refused to answer questions about his health.
Magufuli claimed that Tanzania had got rid of the coronavirus through three days of nationwide prayer, and that vaccination was therefore unnecessary. The authorities have not wanted to disclose the number of infections and corona deaths since April last year.
The official death toll is therefore still 21, in a country with around 61 million inhabitants.
WHO criticism
However, diplomats in Tanzania have reported a strong spread of infection in recent months, and earlier this month it became known that Magufuli’s close associate John Kijazi was dead. Authorities refused to say the cause of death.
Shortly afterwards, it was also reported that the vice president of partially autonomous Zanzibar, Seif Sharif Hamad, was dead. His party stated that he had been diagnosed with coronary heart disease.
In February, WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus called on Tanzania to take the corona pandemic seriously.
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