Museveni declares 14 days to mourn ‘true friend’ Magufuli
President Museveni (left) listens as Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli (right) gestures during the signing of the key agreement on oil pipeline last year. PHOTO | COURTESY
What you need to know:
- President Museveni eulogised the deceased leader as a true friend of Uganda and committed champion of the East African integration and advancement.
President Museveni has described the death of Tanzanian president John Pombe Magufuli as a “terrible moment for all advocates of African independence of thought and action”.
In a statement the President has now declared a 14-day period of mourning in honour of the deceased leader.
President Magufuli succumbed to heart ailment that he had been battling for over a decade.
A statement issued on Wednesday by his vice president, Ms Sami Hassan Suluhu, who was on Friday sworn in as the first female president of Tanzania, indicated that President Magufuli had been receiving treatment at Mzena Hospital since last Sunday.
“In honour of the late President Dr John Pombe Joseph Magufuli and as a mark of solidarity with the government and people of the United Republic of Tanzania at this sad moment, I Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda, do hereby proclaim that…The Republic of Uganda shall join the United Republic of Tanzania in observing a period of mourning for 14 days,” Mr Museveni’s proclamation reads in parts.
Mr Museveni also proclaimed that the flags of Uganda and that of the East African community shall be flown are half-mast throughout Uganda’s missions abroad.
In the statement issued on Thursday, Mr Museveni described the late president as “a true friend of Uganda and committed champion of the East African integration and advancement, and of African sovereignty and dignity”.
In his quest to ensure that Tanzania and its development partners negotiated favourable terms of loans and development aid, once he assumed office Mr Magufuli set out to renegotiate most of the big deals that his predecessors had signed with investors in the mining, natural gas, telecoms and infrastructure.
That resulted into suspension of projects such as the $10 billion sea port project at Bagamoyo, which the China Merchant Holdings International, China’s largest port operator was meant to construct and operate.
The port was also meant to have an industrial zone and rail and roads linking it to oil and gas fields.
President Magufuli insisted that Tanzania was handed a raw deal in the contract for the Bagamoyo deal that was signed in 2013 by his predecessor, President Jakaya Kikwete.
“Those investors are coming with tough conditions that can only be accepted by mad people. They told us once they build the port, there should be no other port to be built all the way from Tanga to Mtwara south,” Magufuli told local entrepreneurs in June 2019.
His move on the Bagamoyo port project cut him out as a true champion of African sovereignty.
Statement
“In honour of the late President Dr John Pombe Joseph Magufuli and as a mark of solidarity with the government and people of the United Republic of Tanzania at this sad moment, I Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda, do hereby proclaim that…The Republic of Uganda shall join the United Republic of Tanzania in observing a period of mourning for 14 days,” Mr Museveni’s proclamation reads in parts.
