Tanzania’s President John Pombe Magufuli has died at the age of 61.
The New Diplomat’s checks indicate that Magufuli’s death has paved the way for the East African nation to get its first female President as Tanzania’s Vice President, Mrs. Samia Suluhu Hassan is set to officially take over power in line with the country’s constitution any time from now.
In a televised speech on state-owned TBC, late Wednesday, the Vice President had announced that the President died of a heart condition on March 17, 2021, at about 6pm at Mzena Hospital in capital Dar es Salaam where he was admitted on March 14.
The Vice President said Magufuli was first briefly admitted to the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute on March 6, but was subsequently discharged.
But he was rushed to hospital again on March 14 after feeling unwell. She announced that the nation will observe a 14-day period of mourning.
According to the Tanzanian Constitution, the Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan is now the acting president of Tanzania.
While a date for her swearing in has not yet been announced, she will be Tanzania’s first female president and her term is expected to run till 2025.
She became Tanzania’s first female vice-President following the 2015 General election, after being elected on the CCM ticket along with president John Magufuli.
Suluhu and Magufuli were re-elected to a second term in 2020.
Before her tenure as Vice-president she had served as the Member of Parliament from 2010 to 2015, and was also the Minister of State for Union Affairs in the Vice-President’s office from 2010 to 2015.
‘What To Know About Magufuli’
Born in Chato, Geita Tanzania, in 1959, Magufuli studied chemistry and maths at the University of Dar es Salaam.
He worked as a chemistry and maths teacher before he was first elected as an MP in 1995.
Mugufuli later became a cabinet minister in 2000 and was first elected president in 2015.
The New Diplomat’s checks revealed that Magufuli had not been seen in public since 27 February and rumours swirled online that he was sick and possibly incapacitated from illness.
A Kenyan newspaper had reported on 10 March 2021 that “an African leader” was being treated for COVID-19 at a hospital in Nairobi, leading to speculation that it could be President Magufuli.
Tanzania’s opposition politician Tundu Lissu, while citing unnamed sources but without providing evidence, said that he had heard that it was Magufuli who had contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalised.
However, while announcing Magufuli’s death, the country’s Vice-president, Samia Suluhu did not specify whether the late President had died of Covid-19, but said that he had suffered from chronic atrial fibrillation for more than a decade.
