Zanzibar’s first vice president, Seif Sharif Hamad, who led the island’s opposition for three decades, died Wednesday, the president said, after he had been hospitalised for over three weeks with coronavirus.
“Hamad died this morning at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam where he was hospitalised,” Zanzibar president Ali Hassan Mwinyi said in a short speech broadcast by state-run ZBC television.
“The nation has really lost a patriotic leader. I also declare seven days of mourning and the national flag will fly at half-mast”, he added.
Hamad’s ACT-Wazalendo party announced in January that the 77-year-old had been hospitalised with the virus, as part of rising evidence of a surge in cases in the country.
Hamad was a member of Tanzania’s sole ruling party, the CCM, and served as Chief Minister of Zanzibar until being expelled and imprisoned for two years from 1989 to 1991.
In 2020, Hamad quit the CUF and ran under the banner of the ACT-Wazalendo opposition party, in an election that saw a brutal crackdown on the islands.
Hamad was arrested twice during the election and his party spokesman Ismail Jussa mercilessly beaten by security forces.
The island teemed with soldiers, police and a militia linked to the ruling party known as “zombies” — clad in black with their faces covered by bandanas — who were feared for rounding up and beating civilians at random.
In December, his party decided to join a unity government in a bid to “heal the nation”, and Hamad was named first vice president
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