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The news of the death of Tanzanian President John Pombe Maghufuli is something I don’t even know how to react to. I know it’s un-African to criticize the dead, but please indulge me to release what is in my heart peradventure I may find “closure” on this man’s short stint at the helm of East Africa. Political theatre.
Firstly, this president never liked Kenyans. He detained our cows in TZ and on another occasion burnt alive our chicken.
President Maghufuli worked hard to undermine the spirit of unity in the EAC. One day a Kenyan government delegation that included cabinet secretaries was literally held captive at an airport by confiscating their passports until a meeting they were going to attend ended and they were asked to return to Kenya.
Most recently this President ordered a plane carrying a high profile Kenyan delegation going to attend the burial of late former President Mkapa not to land in TZ.
This JPM, at the height of the Covid 19 pandemic advised his citizens to sell food to Kenyans at double the price.
This President, through his “mkuu wa mkoa” that borders Namanga, mocked our Covid 19 protocols of requiring that TZ drivers be tested of Covid. The shameless “mkuu wa mkoa” said drivers who are citizens of all other countries will be allowed to cross in TZ except Kenyans.
When Kenya denied TZ flights to land in Kenya due to non compliance to Covid 19 protocols, JPM ordered that KQ and all Kenyan flights be denied landing in TZ.
Most recently, JPM has championed a near hatred campaign in TZ against Kenyans. TZ citizens hate Kenyans for nothing. They think they are poor because Kenya is rich.
President JPM relished in lying to TZ about Covid 19 reality. He denied that there’s Covid 19 in TZ. He mocked our fight against the pandemic. He poured a lot of scorn on our “faithlessness” and “prayerlessness”. Mr. Maghufuli talked as though he is the deputy Holy Spirit or deputy Jesus! When Kenya’s Citizen TV called him out on the same, captioning their story “Ukatili wa Maghufuli”, he forced the TV to apologize to him publicly for more days than the ones his country has declared as national mourning days!
On a more hilarious note, when a Zambian diplomat named MUSENGE MUKUMA was sent to TZ, Mr. Pombe Maghufuli, whose name is as funny, refused to accept the diplomat because the name was reminiscent of gayism and an organ of the female body! As though his name doesn’t remind us of beer!
On the home front this President has taught his citizens to be intolerant of each other politically! The opposition was crushed mercilessly. Former Tanzanian MP Godbless Lema recently fled to Kenya with his family to seek political asylum. Lema is a politician from the opposition Chadema party who failed to retain his seat in northern Tanzania’s Arusha City constituency. After the recent presidential votes, Freeman Mbowe, Tanzania’s main opposition party leader and other party officials were also arrested ahead of a planned countrywide protest to oppose the vote count.
In the same context, Tundu Antiphas Mughwai Lissu who returned to Tanzania in July after a three-year self exile in Belgium where he was recovering from 16 bullet wounds sustained in an assassination attempt, reportedly sought political asylum after taking refuge in the German Embassy in Dar es Salaam, following threats to his life. Lissu denounced the polls as “travesty”.
JPM has almost coached his government officials lie to the public with absolute abandon so long as the lie is in his defense. Just days ago one TZ official, in a video that has since gone viral, even insulted Kenyans and singled out the “nation” for telling the truth about the sickness of JPM due to Covid-19.
The damage JPM has done to TZ-Kenya’s relations on all fronts will take years to repair. I can predict that Kenyan officials will be denied attendance of JPM state burial because of the venom he has injected into his officials.
And after denying Covid 19 is in TZ, he’s died of Covid related issues but his officials including his Vice President, who, if no monkey business is done on her, may be the first female President of TZ, are all refusing to admit his death was due to Covid. They concocted some deep long Kiswahili jargon to try and confuse our unswahilid minds on what killed JPM. They said he died due to: “Tatizo la moyo la mfumo wa umeme.”
Kweli as the Ameru say: mukui atiigagua ibere or in Kiswahili, sikio la kufa, halisikii dawa. In emojis 
!
JPM history will have a chapter for you.