South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is in Tanzania to attend late Tanzanian President John Magufuli’s funeral at Jamhuri Stadium in Dodoma, the country’s capital.
According to the presidency on Monday, Ramaphosa has joined several other African leaders who are in central Tanzania to pay their last respects to the 61-year-old, who died last week from heart complications.
Magufuli, Tanzania’s fifth president and one Africa’s most revered leaders, transformed his country from a poor country into a middle-income state, according to economic reports of his five-year leadership of the nation of 60 million people.
He has been succeeded to the high post by his former vice-president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, whose elevation to the presidency her Tanzania’s first ever female leader and Africa’s third female president after Ellen Sirleaf Johnson of Liberia and Malawi’s Joyce Banda.
Tanzanians from all walks of life have been lining the streets of Dar es Salaam since last Wednesday when he died to bid Magufuli’s funeral procession a final farewell.
On Sunday the wananchi (people) breached security at Dar-es-Salaam’s Julius Nyerere International Airport and rushed into the apron as the plane carrying his remains was about to take off for Dodoma, a final stop before he taken to be laid to rest in his home village of Chato in northwestern Tanzania.
Several people were injured in the melee, the Tanzanian police said.
NM/jn/APA