Tanzania’s divisive president John Magufuli has said the economy is “more important than the threat posed by coronavirus”, adding that he wants to reopen the country for tourism despite warnings that Africa could face the next wave of the disease.
The comments by Magufuli, who has modelled his populist response on that of Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – in repeatedly denying the risk of the pandemic to his country – come amid mounting alarm among Tanzania’s neighbours over his approach.
So far there have been 21 officially recorded deaths in Tanzania.
Magufuli made the remarks on Sunday during a mass in his hometown of Chato, where he said he intended to keep Tanzania’s borders open with its eight neighbours. The remarks follow a series of statements in recent weeks minimising the threat of coronavirus.
In a video the Tanzanian president once again touted natural remedies for coronavirus, saying these had helped his son.
“My own son, after contracting the virus, closed himself in his room, took a lemon and ginger solution before getting well and is even able to do push-ups,” he said in a video that went viral.
“We have had a number of viral diseases, including Aids and measles. Our economy must come first. It must not sleep. If we allow our economy to sleep, we will not receive salaries … Life must go on,” he added.
“As I am talking here,” he continued, “some airline operators are fully booked – until August – with tourists who want to visit Tanzania.”
The president’s latest comments follow several bizarre interventions – including his order that animals and fruit be tested for the virus as a demonstration of “false positives”. He has also been accused by health professionals of covering up the true number of infections.
Elected in 2015, and nicknamed the “Bulldozer”, he has become Tanzania’s most high profile leader since Julius Nyerere both for his popularity and also for his reputation of targeting those critical of him.
Even as the US embassy has warned of the risk of “exponential growth” of Covid-19 cases in the country, adding that hospitals were “overwhelmed”, Magufuli has accused international health officials of exaggerating the crisis and suggested some health workers “may have been put on the payroll of imperialists”.
While Tanzania has introduced some of the same social distancing measures as its neighbours, Magufuli’s own preferred solution has been to encourage people to attend services in churches and mosques, insisting that prayers “can vanquish” the “satanic” virus.
While neighbouring countries have watched with mounting concern, the stunt by the former maths and chemistry teacher of sending samples from animals and fruit to the country’s main testing laboratory to undermine testing credibility has been baffling.
According to Magufuli, samples were secretly obtained by “testers”, including from a sheep, a goat and a pawpaw, given human names and sent to the country’s national referral laboratory to test for coronavirus which, according to Magufuli, came back positive.
Calling for an investigation into the “dirty game” in the laboratory, he suggested that “equipment or people may be compromised”, hinting at “sabotage” in a speech broadcast on the state-run channel. What he did not address, as he ordered the firing of the head of the lab, was where the testing kits had come from or how accurate they are.
“I have always raised my suspicions about how our national lab has been conducting the Covid-19 cases,” the president said in a speech.
Like Trump, Magufuli is facing elections in the autumn and is no friend of his country’s media. He is a follower of charismatic Nigerian preacher TB Joshua, who subscribed to magical thinking predicting the virus would stop spreading on 27 March.
When that did not happen he revised his prophesy to say that he meant that the virus would stop spreading from Wuhan on that date. Perhaps equally worrying is how Magufuli (again like Trump) has used the pandemic to further his own political ends, including calling for self-isolating opposition MPs not to be paid.
The country has denied it has been weak in the face of the pandemic. “The claims that Tanzania has wavered and isolated itself in the fight against Covid-19 are not true because Tanzania has provided leadership in the economic bloc of the southern African countries (Sadc), which the country chairs, and it has continued to do so with respect and all efforts required,” said foreign affairs minister Palamagamba Kabudi.
