Although the virus’s effect on Africa – including the numbers hospitalised or being tested – has not been quantified, the grim facts are crystal clear from within Magufuli’s own circle.
He knows Ghana’s former president, Jerry John Rawlings, has died from the virus. So too has former Congo-Brazzaville president Jacques Joaquim Yhombi-Opango. Last month four Zimbabwe cabinet ministers, including Sibusiso Moyo, the army general turned foreign minister who helped oust Robert Mugabe, died of Covid. In Malawi, four government officials, including two cabinet ministers, succumbed.
In Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), the prime minister, Ambrose Dlamini, fell to the virus. Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi, has died, as has Libya’s former prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, and Somalia’s former prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. In Burundi, Tanzania’s neighbour, two former presidents – Pierre Nkurunziza and Pierre Buyoya – have died from Co