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Introduction – March 18, 2021

Last year Burundi’s President Nkurunziza refused to comply with the World Health Organisation’s Covid vaccination program. He then expelled the WHO team who were coordinating Burundi’s response to the pandemic.

Whereupon President Nkurunziza unexpectedly died from a sudden “heart attack”. His successor promptly changed tack on the pandemic, declared coronavirus “the countries’ biggest enemy” and complied with the WHO demands.

Now Tanzania’s President Magufuli (above), who also opposed Covid vaccinations, has passed away due to a sudden “heart attack”.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but this looks like too much of a coincidence. Two prominent African leaders had voiced their opposition to Covid vaccinations and shortly thereafter they both reportedly die of heart attacks.

Between them Presidents Nkurunziza and Magufuli could have derailed the World Health Organisations vaccination plans for Africa and that’s why, I suspect, they were silenced. Ed.

Tanzania’s populist President John Magufuli has died at 61

Tom Odula and Rodney Muhumuza — AP March 17, 2021

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 years old.

Magufuli’s death was announced on Wednesday by Vice President Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure.

“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.

Although the vice president said the cause of Magufuli’s death was 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.

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.

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