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Samia Suluhu Hassan said Magufuli was treated at a Tanzanian hospital when he died on Wednesday evening.
However, opposition leaders insist Magufuli died of Covid-19 at least a week earlier.
Tundu Lissu, of the opposition Chadema party, said in an interview with a Kenyan broadcaster on Thursday that Magufuli died of Covid in early March.
“I received the news of President Magufuli’s death without any surprise,” he added.
“I’ve been expecting this since the first day I tweeted on March 7… when I asked the question ‘Where is President Magufuli and how is his health? “I had information from very credible sources in the government that the president was gravely ill with Covid-19 and his situation was actually very bad,” Lissu said from his base in Belgium. CNN contacted Lissu to more comments.
CNN has not been able to independently verify its claims. Tanzanian authorities also did not respond to calls for comment on Lissu’s allegations.
The secrecy and mystery surrounding his death reveals Magufuli’s enduring legacy, says Maria Sarungi Tsehai, activist and founder of the #ChangeTanzania movement, a civil society group promoting free speech.
Tsehai said the circumstances of his death and the “secrecy and intimidation” citizens face for speculating or discussing are “very revealing of the type of presidency he has led.”
“Even now, in his death, people are still terrified and speak in low voices,” Tsehai said.
Magufuli was the fifth president of Tanzania and was part of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party which had ruled the country since independence in 1961.
The last reported figures of 509 cases and 21 deaths were from April of last year.
Magufuli has frustrated world health leaders after suspending nationwide monitoring of Covid cases – attributing the country’s infection toll to faulty test kits.
Magufuli’s death has raised many questions about how the country is moving into a pandemic with a huge information vacuum.
Magufuli did not make any offers for the Covid vaccines as he questioned their safety and instead encouraged the use of prayers, herbal treatments and steam inhalation to fight the disease.
Tsehai says the lack of information makes it difficult for healthcare workers and citizens to know what the real situation is. His organization conducted an informal investigation to get a “snapshot” of the Covid situation in the country last year.
“We are seeing more obituaries, death announcements, and more people leaving us. There are old people and people in their fifties. Parents also tell us that children are admitted to the hospital with problems. respiratory, ”she said.
However, the changes are far from imminent, Tsehai added. “Nothing will happen immediately. We have to wait and see what Samia (Hassan) can do.”
Hassan was sworn in as the country’s first female president on Friday.
Now the new leader must select a candidate for the vice-presidency and form a cabinet, Tsehai said.
“We are very worried. She must act now. The ceremony and the burial and the ceremony of the last rites are going to be super Covid-spreading events,” Tsehai added.
Fighting Covid with Prayers
Magufuli was devoutly religious and a rabid Covid-19 denier who repeatedly downplayed the severity of Covid-19 in Tanzania, while declaring the country free from the virus last June after three days of mass prayers.
“Let’s pray and fast for three days, I’m sure we will win… today for the Muslims who have already started, tomorrow the Seventh-day Adventists who pray on Saturdays and Sundays for Christians,” Magufuli said on February 19.
“God has never abandoned this nation. We won last year and achieved middle-income country status in the midst of the coronavirus,” he added.
Deus Valentine Rweyemamu, who heads the Center for Strategic Litigation, a pro-democracy movement in Tanzania, told CNN that Magufuli has not provided leadership in his handling of the pandemic.
“President Magufuli has hid behind religious fundamentalism and has managed to tip an entire nation into denial. His only recorded public speech on Covid is half made up of Bible verses,” Rweyemamu said.
However, religious leaders were among its fiercest critics.
Father Charles Kitima, secretary of the Tanzania Bishops’ Conference, a group of Catholic bishops, told CNN on Thursday that the Magufuli regime had not taken urgent action to deal with the coronavirus.
Kitima, who had strongly criticized Tanzania’s response to Covid under Magufuli, said some members of the Catholic Church in Tanzania may have died from complications related to Covid.
“Some church members had respiratory complications and died from it,” he told CNN.
“As for the months from mid-December 2020 to February 2021, we lost 25 priests and 60 nuns … Some of them died due to breathing difficulties,” he said.
He added that the volume of infections in the country could not be determined due to the lack of testing.
Kitima criticized Magufuli’s Covid response, which relied heavily on religion while neglecting scientific recommendations.
“You cannot separate prayer from science. Religion is there to support doctors and researchers. Science and faith must work together,” Kitima told CNN.
Rweyemamu told CNN that many Tanzanians trust Magufuli’s methods – albeit unconventional.
“If President Magufuli were to appear in public with a mask, then even the sickest dog in Tanzania would wear one. This is because … Tanzanians believe in their president more than in their own parents,” he said. he added.
Mussa Khamis, project manager at Good Neighbors, a nonprofit humanitarian organization in Tanzania, told CNN: “As some of my friends and relatives inhaled steam to fight this pandemic … I have took care of me by observing the preventive measures advised by WHO and other medical experts. “
The 26-year-old resident of Tanzania’s semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar said the existence of Covid-19 began to resonate with many Tanzanians after the death of Zanzibar Vice President Seif Sharif Hamad, who died in February after contracting the virus.
Hamad has been open about his illness, which he made public three weeks before his death.
“People now wear masks and wash their hands frequently. I think this is motivated by the recent loss of our vice president,” Khamis said.
The end of the Magufuli era should usher in a new national perspective on Covid-19.
However, it remains to be seen whether it will be business as usual for Tanzania’s new leader or whether it will change course and use science to thrive as the pandemic rages on.
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