ZANZIBAR’S VEEP DIES AFTER SUFFERING COVID
DAR ES SALAAM - Zanzibar’s first vice president Seif Sharif Hamad, who led the island’s opposition for three decades, died yesterday, President Ali Hussein Mwinyi said, after he had been hospitalised for over three weeks with coronavirus.
Tanzania and its semi-autonomous island Zanzibar have played down the threat of the virus, which President John Magufuli has said has been fended off by prayer.
However Hamad’s ACT-Wazalendo party announced in January that the 77-year-old had been hospitalised with the virus.
The president of Tanzania’s semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar has announced seven days of national mourning following the death.
Flags would fly at half-mast during the mourning period, Hussein Mwinyi said.
The 77-year-old Zanzibari politician had been receiving treatment at Muhumbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, a few weeks after contracting coronavirus.
He is likely to be buried today.
Hamad, popularly known as Maalim Seif, was a giant figure in opposition politics in Zanzibar - and Tanzania in general.
He had joined a government of national unity in
Zanzibar following last October’s elections.
He was the leader of the ACT Wazalendo party and was the most prominent official in Tanzania to openly declare that he had contracted Covid-19.
The authorities have repeatedly declared that the country is free from coronavirus or that the virus is under control - and stopped publishing official Covid-19 data in June last year.
Magufuli also expressed his condolences in a message on Twitter. Neither leader mentioned the cause of death.