Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Saturday led mourners in paying their last respects to her predecessor John Magufuli, who died suddenly this week.
Mourners lined the streets of Dar es Salaam to bid farewell to the late president, some of them weeping and throwing flower petals as the casket, towed on a gun carriage by a military vehicle, was transferred from a church to Uhuru Stadium to lie in state.
“Before I saw the coffin, I didn’t believe our president was really dead,” said flower-seller Pauline Attony after watching the motorcade pass.
Hassan, who was sworn in Friday to become the country’s first female president, led a government procession filing past the coffin, which was draped in the Tanzanian flag, offering her condolences to Magufuli’s widow Janeth.
Many wore black, or the green and yellow colours of the ruling party, but few inside the stadium or among the packed crowds outside wore face masks in the Covid-sceptic country — a scepticism Magufuli himself had embodied.
“It is too soon for you to go, father. You touched our lives and we still needed you,” said one mourner, Beatrice Edward.
“We lost our defender,” said another, Suleiman Mbonde, a tradesman.
The government announced Wednesday that Magufuli, 61, had died from a heart condition at a hospital in Dar es Salaam after three weeks missing from public view.
The late president will lie in state in several locations across Tanzania including Zanzibar, Dodoma, Mwanza before his burial on Friday at his ancestral home in Chato.
SOURCE: THE CITIZEN