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Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania – An emotional week in Tanzania culminated on Friday with the funeral of the late President John Magufuli.
From offices and pubs to beauty salons and convenience stores, millions of Tanzanians for days were glued to the constant stream of images on their televisions showing praise and dirges as the late leader’s coffin was transported from the center. from Dar-es-Salaam, through the capital Dodoma, to his last resting place, his hometown of Chato.
Throughout, large crowds of mourners have taken to the streets and stadiums to bid their final farewells to a president who has spent much of his tenure traveling the country to meet with his constituents.
Often, Magufuli used these tours to meet people’s needs, relying on his power to demand on-the-spot solutions for various citizens’ complaints. But in other cases, during visits to opposition strongholds, he was known to castigate voters for not supporting his ruling party, the CCM, and he even said publicly that he would not resolve the issues. problems of the inhabitants of these constituencies.
Tanzanian soldiers put the national flag on Magufuli’s coffin during the state funeral at Uhuru Stadium in Dar-es-Salaam [File: AFP]
And so, Magufuli left behind a divided nation in her memory of a ruler who was both revered and hated.
Since Magufuli’s death, new President Samia Suluhu has repeatedly promised to continue Magufuli’s work. But that left a lot of people wondering – what part of her predecessor’s legacy does she refer to?
“Magufuli was a complex person to analyze. He left a mixed legacy, ”said Jenerali Ulimwengu, veteran journalist and political commentator. “Was he a control freak?” Was he a developmentalist? The debate over his legacy will go on for a long time. “
Coronavirus management
On the evening of March 17, then-vice president Hassan appeared on state television to announce that Magufuli was dead and declared two weeks of national mourning. At the time, the president had not been seen in public for more than two weeks. The absence sparked rumors that the 61-year-old was already dead or lying in a coma in a hospital overseas.
Many have speculated that Magufuli had contracted COVID-19, the disease whose outbreak he has treated with constant controversy. Instead, Hassan told the nation that the president had died of chronic heart disease.
But for many, the pandemic is almost certainly one of the most defining issues of Magufuli’s presidency.
As the coronavirus took hold around the world last year, Magufuli downplayed its severity and dismissed the idea of lockdown. Tanzania officially stopped reporting the number of cases in April 2020, remaining open to travelers and without restrictions on social gatherings.
Magufuli also made a number of headline-grabbing statements, including that the virus was a Western hoax and could not survive “in the body of Christ.” He also made fun of mask wearers and told Tanzanians to treat flu-like symptoms with inhaling steam and other traditional herbal medicines.
Last week, Krisp, a scientific research institute, said the most mutated variant of the coronavirus to date was found in travelers arriving in Angola from Tanzania.
‘Accidental President’
A former teacher and industrial chemist, Magufuli was known as “the bulldozer” for his pragmatic approach to road building during his terms as Minister of Public Works (2000-05 and 2010-15).
In 2015, he became an unexpected presidential candidate for the CCM, the party which, along with its predecessor, had been in power continuously since independence but was rocked at the time by internal divisions and corruption scandals.
Faced with the prospect of defeat, the CCM turned to Magufuli, whose uncompromising reputation was seen as an antidote to the ignominy plaguing the party’s upper ranks.
After passing the political heavyweights, Magufuli won the 2015 election – but the fluke of his “accidental” presidency did nothing to dampen his vision. Magufuli was eager to see the results, and his zeal to fight corruption and develop Tanzania’s infrastructure is what many will remember him for.
“Death has robbed us of the leader you could have become if our prayers had been answered,” lamented columnist and commentator Elsie Eyakuze, in an intimate open letter to Magufuli last week.
Since the 1960s, there had been discussions about building a mega-dam on the Rufiji River, but time and time again the project stalled. Less than two years after becoming president, Magufuli had approved the plans and construction began in 2019, funded not by donors but by the government.
There is also other evidence of bricks and mortars from Magufuli’s time in power. Supporters point to the construction of many highways and the improvement of thousands of feeder road areas. They also draw attention to the country’s first electric railway under construction and credit it with relaunching the national carrier, Air Tanzania.
“ Freedom is not negotiable ”
Steadily, Magufuli has made strides that will continue to affect the lives of millions of Tanzanians for years to come. Yet he was still willing to use his constitutional power to restrict civil and political liberties and bend the law to do whatever he wanted.
During the same period that saw the implementation of massive infrastructure projects, Magufuli banned teenage mothers from classrooms; prohibits opposition rallies and the broadcasting of parliamentary sessions; and introduced legislation that nullified civil rights.
The Statistics Act 2015 criminalized the publication of statistics and independent research without government approval. Amendments to the Electronic and Postal Communications Act restricted freedom of expression online, while the Media Services Act 2016 gave the government broad powers to impose fines or shut down media houses. little control.
Amnesty International has called this trend, which gained ground in the second half of Magufuli’s first term, “an outright abuse of due process and a perversion of justice”.
In the last elections in October 2020, independent observers were effectively locked out, but one observer, Tanzania Election Watch, retrospectively confirmed at least 18 arrests of opposition party officials, as well as “arbitrary arrests , illegal detentions, sexual violence and violence against women. “.
The vote, which Magufuli won with 84%, was fiercely contested by opposition figures, who said the results were not credible. Members of the international community, including the United Nations, the United States and the European Union, have condemned the intimidation and harassment of opposition figures and their supporters, alongside the shutdown of the Internet at nationwide.
Meanwhile, many of Magufuli’s multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects have been marred by allegations that public procurement procedures have been routinely bypassed in the race for project completion.
On the one hand, Magufuli made it his mission to purge the civil service of corruption, but a few years after coming to power, his sleepy hometown of Chato, with a population of less than 28,000, was transformed by the erection of a regional hospital. , an airport and industrial facilities more worthy of an urban center serving three to four times as many inhabitants.
Ulimwengu emphasizes Magufuli’s contradictory approach in the fight against corruption – he quickly cracked down on wrongdoing, but also thwarted the comptroller’s general audit and the press.
“He shot himself in the foot,” Ulimwengu said. “By weakening key institutions and placing itself at the center of the fight against corruption, it has diminished its own power of intervention.”
For prominent Kenyan economist David Ndii, Magufuli’s legacy is not complex. “It’s a bad one,” Ndii said.
“Freedom is not negotiable. Freedom is a fundamental foundation for development. I define development as freedom, ”he said.
“This idea that you can develop people while beating them, that does not fly,” added Ndii. “There is no compromise on this authoritarianism, this paternalism that people need to be beaten up and tortured and locked up and all kinds of things, it’s a very primitive colonial mindset.
Meanwhile, Michaella Collord, a junior political researcher at the University of Oxford, called for caution in perceiving the Hassan presidency as a new chapter for Tanzania, arguing that part of Magufuli’s legacy is a continuation of the legacy of its predecessors.
“Even though Magufuli made some major changes, there was also continuity with the past,” she said.
“For example, [former] President [Jakaya] Kikwete and the CCM government acted in an authoritarian manner before Magufuli took power, passing authoritarian legislation like the Cybercrime Bill, temporarily banning newspapers and canceling elections in Zanzibari in 2015 after he became clear that the opposition was winning.
Likewise, Collord rejected suggestions that Magufuli’s departure would automatically lead to a fully peaceful and business-friendly democratic environment.
Even if Hassan allowed for greater political contestation within the ruling party and renewed opposition activity, Collord said she believed this would be limited by the legacy of Tanzania’s authoritarian past – which predates the presidency of Magufuli.
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