"Tanzania’s populist President John Magufuli has died at 61" by The Associated Press, March 18, 2021
NAKURU, Kenya (AP) — President John Magufuli of Tanzania, a prominent COVID-19 skeptic in Africa whose populist rule often cast his East African country in a harsh international spotlight, has died. He was 61.
Magufuli's death was announced on Wednesday by Vice President Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure.
Opposition politicians had earlier alleged that he was sick from COVID-19.
Magufuli had not been seen in public since the end of February and top government officials had denied that he was in ill health even as rumors swirled online that he was sick and possibly incapacitated from illness.
That's all the print he received, and the result is the same: he has been moved out of the way and is with the angels now.
“Our beloved president passed on at 6 p.m. this evening," said Suluhu on national television. “All flags will be flown at half-mast for 14 days. It is sad news. The president has had this illness for the past 10 years.”
The vice president said that Magufuli died at a hospital in Dar es Salaam, the Indian Ocean port that is Tanzania's largest city.
The vice president said the cause of Magufuli’s death was heart failure.
Magufuli was one of Africa's most prominent deniers of COVID-19. He had said last year that Tanzania had eradicated the disease through three days of national prayer. Tanzania has not reported its COVID-19 tallies of confirmed cases and deaths to African health authorities since April 2020, but the number of deaths of people experiencing breathing problems reportedly grew and earlier this month the U.S. embassy warned of a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Tanzania since January. Days later the presidency announced the death of John Kijazi, Magufuli’s chief secretary. Soon after the death was announced of the vice president of the semi-autonomous island region of Zanzibar, whose political party had earlier reported that he had COVID-19.
Critics charged that Magufuli’s dismissal of the threat from COVID-19, as well as his refusal to lock down the country as others in the region had done, may have contributed to many unknown deaths.
It is hard to gauge how most Tanzanians regarded Magufuli’s COVID-19 skepticism, in a country where he remained genuinely popular among many for his seemingly frank talk against corruption even as he curtailed political freedoms and increasingly asserted an authoritarian streak. Police arrested at least one man earlier this week who was accused of spreading false information about Magufuli's health.
There they go, spitting on and desecrating his memory.
First elected to the presidency in 2015, Magufuli was serving a second five-year term won in 2020 elections that the opposition and some rights groups said were neither free nor fair.
Has there ever been one, anywhere?
His main opponent in that race, Tundu Lissu, had to relocate to Belgium after the vote, fearing for his safety. Lissu, who was among the first to raise questions about the whereabouts of Magufuli after he went missing for several days, had been shot 16 times back in 2017, an attack he blamed on government agents because of his criticism of the president.
Magufuli had become so powerful by the start of the COVID-19 outbreak that he could deny the existence of a pandemic without incurring the criticism of his predecessor and other prominent people within Tanzania. In early 2021, amid speculation that Magufuli would seek an unconstitutional third term when his mandate expired in 2025, his ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party was compelled to deny such a thing could happen.
Maybe the people there know what he knew, 'eh?
John Pombe Magufuli was born on Oct. 29, 1959, in the rural area of Chato in the country’s northwest. The son of a subsistence farmer, he tended his father’s cattle but was a good student, seeing classroom studies as a way out of poverty. Magufuli earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and chemistry at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1988. Much later, in 2009, he earned a doctorate in chemistry from the same university.
Oh, he was a very learned and intelligent man, 'eh?
So smart that he sent the WHO samples of motor oil, fruit, and a goat -- of which two of the three cam back positive for CVD with the other inconclusive.
He called out and proved their fraud, and they never forgot.
For years he was a secondary school teacher and then a chemist with a farmers’ cooperative union before entering politics as a lawmaker representing Chato in the National Assembly. The legislative role was a springboard to a career in national politics, and he served in several Cabinet positions, notably as the hardworking public works minister nicknamed “the bulldozer” in the administration of predecessor Jakaya Kikwete.
A reputation as an incorruptible man was widely seen as one reason for his selection as the new leader of Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the party that had dominated Tanzania since independence but whose popularity was declining in large part because of allegations of rampant corruption.
Oh, the WORLD has LOST SO MUCH!
May God bless him and keep him close to his heart (sigh).
In 2015, the newly elected Magufuli made news on his first day in office. He showed up unannounced in the morning at the Ministry of Finance offices to see how many officials had come to work on time. That week he also banned unnecessary trips by government officials, as an austerity measure. He soon canceled Independence Day celebrations and said the funds budgeted for the event would be used to improve roads and infrastructure in Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital. Magufuli also fired a number of top government officials in his anti-corruption crusade.
Made a lot of enemies, did he?
At least in the early days of his presidency, Magufuli was seen as the leader Tanzania needed. He was widely admired by Tanzanians but also by others in East Africa who, citing his tough stance against corruption, wished for a leader like him, but very quickly others saw signs of intolerance as Magufuli cracked down on dissenters and those who criticized his work methods.
Those must be the western hypocrites.
In early 2016 Magufuli stopped live broadcasts of parliamentary debates in which the opposition criticized the government, and in July that year he banned political rallies.
Magufuli’s harsh rule was extended to the country’s LBGT community, with his government preventing aid agencies from supporting same-sex groups to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Amnesty International criticized several bills supported by Magufuli and passed into laws as designed to “stifle all forms of dissent and effectively clamp down on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” but it was Magufuli’s denial of COVID-19 that brought him intense international attention.
Soon after the first case of the disease was confirmed in Tanzania in March 2020, Magufuli urged people to go to churches and mosques to pray. Magufuli, a devout Catholic, pronounced that “coronavirus is a devil ... and cannot sit in the body of Christ.” Then in April the country stopped cooperating with the international community regarding its COVID-19 caseload.
Why did he stop cooperating?
You know the answer because I already told you above.
Magufuli announced in June that COVID-19 had been eradicated from Tanzania by three days of national prayer. He spoke against social distancing and the wearing of masks and questioned the efficacy of vaccines. He even sent samples from bicycle lubricant, papaya fruit and a quail bird to be tested for the coronavirus in his bid to discredit testing.
THAT was his BIG MISTAKE, and I'm surprised they mentioned what I already had!
“Countries in Africa will be coming here to buy food in the years to come … they will be suffering because of shutting down their economy,” he said of others imposing lockdowns.
Magufuli promoted herbs and exercise as COVID-19 remedies; however, people leaving Tanzania reported that intensive care units in hospitals were filling up with people with severe respiratory illness. Others said that burials were being held at night to hide the numbers of deaths. Migrants from Tanzania were found to have COVID-19. Government officials denied most of these accounts, and health officials who reported problems related to COVID-19 were fired.
Critics say Magufuli’s legacy will be turning a country previously praised for its tolerance and relative stability into a more repressive state. Under founding president Julius Nyerere, Tanzania was an influential country as the host of pan-African liberation groups including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.
Same as Biden!
“Tanzania has weaponized the law to the point that no one really knows when they are on the right or wrong side of it,” Deprose Muchena, an Amnesty International official in Africa, said of Magufuli’s rule in an October 2020 report.
Politicians were arrested for holding or attending meetings, online activism was criminalized and non-governmental organizations were stifled with endless regulations, that report said.
Zitto Kabwe, leader of the opposition Alliance for Change and Transparency party, said he had been arrested 16 times since Magufuli came to power.
Lissu, Magufuli’s main opponent and challenger in the 2020 polls, complained that security forces interfered with his campaign. His party’s offices were fire-bombed and dozens of parliamentary candidates were disqualified. Tens of thousands of opposition electoral agents were not accredited by the electoral commission, effectively denying them access to poll centers to verify results. On the eve of the election 11 people were shot dead by security forces, nine of them in Zanzibar as they protested alleged election fraud.
Despite the repression, Magufuli’s supporters say he was focused on Tanzania’s economic success and sought to implement ambitious projects that would lift more of his people out of poverty. Scores of infrastructure programs, including trains and the revival of Air Tanzania, were launched under Magufuli’s reign. Tanzania is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and in July the World Bank categorized it as a middle-income country five years ahead of schedule.
“We had envisaged achieving this status by 2025 but, with strong determination, this has been possible in 2020,” Magufuli tweeted at the time.
Magufuli’s survivors include a wife and two children.
My prayers are with them in their grief, and they should be very proud of their husband and father.
Also see:
"Tanzanian President Who Was Skeptical of Western Vaccines DEAD After Missing for Two Weeks" by Brian Shilhavy | Editor Health Impact News | March 17, 2021
It is being reported today that Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, has died after being missing for more than two weeks.
The President’s death was announced today by the country’s vice-president Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure. He was 61.
About two weeks ago Health Impact News published an article that was written by Rishma Parpia of The Vaccine Reaction reporting that both President John Magufuli, and his health minister, Dorothy Gwajima, had announced that their country has no plans in place to recommend widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines in the African country.
On Feb 2, 2021, Tanzania’s health minister, Dorothy Gwajima, announced that her country has no plans in place to recommend widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines in the African country.
The announcement came a few days after Tanzania’s President John Magufuli expressed concern about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines developed and manufactured in Western countries.
President Magufuli said that the health ministry will only accept COVID-19 vaccines after Tanzania’s experts have examined and certified them. Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima explained,
“We are not yet satisfied that those vaccines have been clinically proven safe.”
President Magufuli reiterated that he will not allow Tanzanians to be used as guinea pigs in COVID-19 vaccine trials conducted by vaccine manufacturers. He warned that COVID-19 vaccines could be harmful and has been urging Tanzanians to stop living in fear and adopt common sense disease control measures and lead a healthy lifestyle. Health Minister Gwajima said:
We must improve our personal hygiene, wash hands with running water and soap, use handkerchiefs, herbal steam, exercise, eat nutritious food, drink plenty of water, and [use] natural remedies that our nation is endowed with.
See:
Tanzanian President Says Citizens Will Not Be Guinea Pigs in COVID Vaccine Trials – Skeptical About Safety of Current COVID-19 Vaccines
Almost immediately after this article was published, President Magufuli disappeared from public life.
Last week, Kit Knightly, writing for Off-Guardian, wrote an article titled: Tanzania – The second Covid coup?
President John Magufuli’s disappearance makes him potentially the 2nd “Covid denier” head of state to lose power.
John Magufuli, President of Tanzania, has disappeared. He’s not been seen in public for several weeks, and speculation is building as to where he might be.
The opposition has, at various times, accused the President of being hospitalised with “Covid19”, either in Kenya or India, although there remains no evidence this is the case.
To add some context, John Magufuli is one of the “Covid denier” heads of state from Africa.
He famously had his office submit five unlabelled samples for testing – goat, motor oil, papaya, quail and jackfruit – and when four came back positive and one “inconclusive”, he banned the testing kits and called for an investigation into their origin and manufacture.
In the past, he has also questioned the safety and efficacy of the supposed “covid vaccines”, and has not permitted their use in Tanzania.
In the Western press Magufuli has been portrayed as “anti-science” and “populist”, but it is not fair to suggest that the health of the people of Tanzania is a low priority for the President. In fact it’s quite the opposite.
After winning his first election in 2015 he slashed government salaries (including his own) in order to increase funding for hospitals and buying AIDs medication. In 2015 he cancelled the Independence Day celebrations and used the money to launch an anti-Cholera campaign. Healthcare has been one of his administration’s top priorities, and Tanzanian life expectancy has increased every year while he has been in office.
The negative coverage of President Magufuli is a very recent phenomenon. Early in his Presidency he even received glowing write-ups from the Western press and Soros-backed think tanks, praising his reforms and calling him an “example” to other African nations.
All that changed when he spoke out about Covid being hoax.
If we are about to see the sudden death and/or replacement of the President of Tanzania, he will not be the first African head of state to suffer such a fate in the age of Covid.
Last summer Pierre Nkurunziza, the President of Burundi, refused to play along with Covid and instructed the WHO delegation to leave his country…before dying suddenly of a “heart attack” or “suspected Covid19”. His successor immediately reversed every single one of his Covid policies, including inviting the WHO back to the country.
That was our first Covid coup, and it looks like Tanzania could well be next.
Kit Knightly is looking more and more like a modern day prophet. Read his full article here.
President Magufuli could hardly be “anti-science.” He had masters and doctorate degrees in chemistry from The University of Dar es Salaam. In 2019 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Dodoma for improving the economy of the country.
I would expect that the incoming new administration will be quick to accept western COVID experimental “vaccines” now, similar to what happened in Burundi.
SOURCE
It's looking more and more like only a miracle can save us now, and I pray the brave Magufuli will pass that on to the ears of God. Please help us.
