Tanzania’s government is covering up the true extent of the coronavirus pandemic with secret burials taking place at night, hospitals overflowing and three parliamentarians suspected of dying from the disease, according to doctors, opposition leaders and activists.
President John Magufuli, who has spent much of the crisis holed up in his home village 750 miles west of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam, has denied the virus is serious and urged people to continue working and attending religious ceremonies.
On Sunday, in a national address, Mr Magufuli even accused the national laboratory of fabricating results under the influence of what he called imperialists. “We only see them releasing positive, positive, positive results,” he said.
Zitto Kabwe, a prominent opposition leader, said that, by questioning the results of the government’s own laboratory, ordinary Tanzanians would lose faith in the health system’s response to Covid-19. He cited records being kept secretly by doctors that, he said, showed the number of infections nationally at six times the official figure of 480. According to government records, 16 people have died of the virus.
Night burials had taken place in different parts of the country, including Arusha and Dar es Salaam, with gravediggers and pallbearers wearing protective clothing, Mr Kabwe said. His party had sent people to film the night-time ceremonies at Uninio, north of Dar es Salaam, but he added that a true reckoning of how many people had died from the disease would not emerge until the pandemic was over.
Although schools have been closed since mid-March, strict social distancing measures have not been enforced in the east African nation of 56m people. That makes Tanzania unusual in Africa where many countries have imposed lockdowns, curfews and other measures to stop the progress of the disease.
[The president] told us to go back to work and pray, then he got on his private presidential jet, went to [his home village] Chato and left us to it
Fatma Karume, lawyer
Last week, Augustine Mahiga, 74, justice minister, became the third parliamentarian in 11 days to die of a short illness, though there was no official confirmation that he had contracted Covid-19. The three deaths represented nearly 1 per cent of the 384-member national assembly, prompting the opposition Chadema party to say its MPs would no longer attend.
Hassan Abas, a government spokesperson, said Tanzania had implemented more than 40 measures to curb the pandemic and was learning from the experience of other countries about how to tackle the virus. He defended the government’s statistics and denied that it could be hiding the extent of the outbreak. “It takes one to be insane to insinuate that Tanzania is not taking serious measures or hiding data,” he said.
Someone with close knowledge of the medical profession said it was almost impossible to secure a hospital bed in several cities. The Aga Khan hospital in Dar es Salaam had a well-equipped ward for 80 coronavirus patients, but several were dying each night, he said.
“There is such a hush-up on how many people are really sick with Covid. We know that all the hospitals are full,” he said. “We always thought it would be the elderly that would succumb, but we are also looking at cases of young people in their 30s and 40s who we know have passed away.”
Fatma Karume, a prominent lawyer and government critic, said: “On Monday I woke up to find that five people I knew had passed away from respiratory illnesses.”
Tanzanians, she said, had been shamed into not admitting they had caught Covid-19, which had been stigmatised by a government that said only weak people died from the illness. “They want to own the numbers and the statistics,” she said, adding that a lawyer who had urged more transparency had been arrested.
Ms Karume said people were referring to Covid-19 by a euphemism in Kiswahili, the national language, of “kutopumuwa”, which roughly translates as the “hard-to-breathe” disease.
She said she blamed Mr Magufuli for retreating to his home village of Chato on Lake Victoria. “He basically told us to go back to work and pray, then he got on his private presidential jet, went to Chato and left us to it.”
Mr Magufuli, known as “the bulldozer” because of his trenchant style, was elected president in 2015 amid hope that he would carry out his pledge to eradicate corruption. Instead, he has become increasingly authoritarian, declaring that pregnant girls should be banned from school and clamping down on the internet and press freedom.
As other African leaders reacted swiftly to coronavirus, closing their frontiers and preparing for lockdown, Mr Magufuli made a point of attending crowded church gatherings, telling people that the “satanic” virus could not survive in the bodies of the faithful.
On Sunday, as he sought to cast doubt on the work of the national laboratory, Mr Magufuli said he had arranged for samples of blood from goats, sheep and the francolin bird, as well as papaya, jackfruit and engine oil, to be sent for testing. The samples had been given false identities, he said. “We took the papaya sample and gave it the name Elizabeth Ann, 26-year-old female. The papaya results were positive,” he said. “There were many such shocking outcomes.”
If Mr Magufuli was so confident the risk had been exaggerated and that religious faith would protect Tanzanians from the worst effects, Mr Kabwe asked why the president had been “hiding” in his home village.
“We have been asking him to come out and lead this fight,” he said.
