PRESIDENT John Magufuli of Tanzania is increasingly becoming a bizarre leader. He never cares about other people’s feelings.
He never respects people’s rights, and he has no regard for other people’s dignity. In word and deed, he nurses his own ego in private and in public.
Magufuli never chooses his words wisely. When he said, in 2016, that he would break legs of opposition politicians who would dare him, few people took him seriously. A year later, unidentified assailants cruelly broke the legs and hands, and pierced an abdomen, of Tundu Lissu, an opposition chief whip, when they attacked and shot him at his home in Dodoma. He miraculously survived an attempted assassination, thanks to dexterous doctors at the Nairobi Hospital in Kenya where he was quickly rushed.
After “bringing him back to life,” having done more than 16 surgeries on his body, doctors said Lissu was a living miracle. After four months in Nairobi, he was taken to Brussels, Belgium, for further treatment. To-date, ten months on, not a single suspect has been apprehended in connection with the shooting of this member of parliament.
Speaking to the media at the Nairobi Hospital on 5th January 2018, a day before his departure to Brussels, Lissu said Magufuli had become “a skunk of the world.”
Magufuli has become notorious for leading a government that is accused of harbouring a killing squad accused of abducting and torturing critical activists, artists, politicians, and journalists. Recently, his government threatened to shut churches down if their bishops kept on delivering critical sermons or issuing tough pastoral letters that implicate his government with some obnoxious conduct.
He is already infamous for closing down critical newspapers and blogs, incarcerating opposition leaders, banning opposition political rallies, and literally silencing every critical voice while proclaiming himself “saviour of the people.”
Magufuli is on record for publicly contradicting an educational policy of his own government when he suddenly said at public rally that he would never allow his government to give second chance to teenage mothers wishing to pursue their educational ambitions.
His latest bizarre order for prison officers to torture prisoners has depicted him as a ruthless and heartless despot.
In just two years, Magufuli has disappointed his unsuspecting supporters and admirers who had been fooled by his first impression of posing as an agent of change, a no-nonsense leader bent on cracking down on corruption. The real Magufuli is crashing critics, laws and constitution; destroying the country’s democratic gains of the last 26 years.
Magufuli’s alarming brutality has taken a US senator to call for action from the Trump government – something never experienced before.
