At the time of writing, Africa was in mourning. News of the passing of Tanzania’s 61-year-old leader, John Magufuli, had just broken. His robust crusade against corruption in high places from early on in his Presidency had endeared him to many, both at home and abroad. So too had his equally robust drive to invest in infrastructure, which saw his government build several megaprojects and complete others that had been launched during past administrations.

Magufuli’s deputy cited a heart condition that had dogged her boss for a decade as the cause of death. I’m no medical professional, but the late leader performing vigorous push-ups while on the campaign trail – both in 2015 and last year – is hardly what one would expect a cardiac patient to do.

In the three-odd weeks preceding his death, Magufuli was out of the public eye, fuelling speculation he had contracted the coronavirus. Now, Magufuli was one of Africa’s foremost Covid-19 denialists, despite being highly qualified as a scientist, with a chemistry doctorate to boot. At one time, he poked fun at Tanzania’s coronavirus testing facilities, claiming samples from a goat and a pawpaw he had secretly sent came out positive. He averred that this proved some people were getting false positive result. From May 2020 – when 509 people were known to have been infected, with 29 having died – Tanzania stopped publishing statistics on infections and fatalities.

Unlike many countries, Tanzania introduced neither lockdown measures nor curfews to curb the spread of Covid-19. The triple protocols of hand sanitising, wearing masks and physical distancing were not enforced, with Magufuli declaring that the most effective antidote to the virus consisted of prayer to God, steaming and a diet that bolsters immunity.

Despite his insistence that Tanzanian had overcome Covid-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is on record as stating that travellers from Tanzania had tested positive for the disease. This implies that many Tanzanians may have died unnecessarily, simply because of his scepticism. And for all we know, he himself may have been a casualty of his outlandish views.

Magufuli was but one of a few African leaders who prioritise superstition and pseudoscience over proper science when dealing with public health issues, thus unnecessarily consigning many people to the grave. This dubious group includes characters such as former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, Madagascar’s Andry Rajoelina and The Pipe Smoking One (aka Thabo Mbeki).

Posterity will remember Jammeh for, among other things, claiming that he could cure HIV/Aids using herbal concoctions and spiritual healing. Those who signed up for the healing programme were told on arriving at the makeshift clinic that they had to stop taking antiretroviral (ARV) medication immediately and that withdrawing from the programme was out of the question. A total of 9 000 people were treated, but it’s not clear how many died. As the BBC reported in 2018, citing people familiar with the programme: “One thing seems certain, though – the only ‘miracle’ about this cure was that anyone survived at all.”

In Madagascar, Rajoelina courted controversy in 2020 for promoting a herbal treatment for Covid-19 whose efficacy has not been verified by bodies such as the WHO. But his saving grace is that his government clamped down on those who failed to comply with mask-wearing regulations, with offenders sentenced to on-the-spot community service, which included sweeping roads and cleaning drains.

I stated previously that more than 300 000 South Africans died because they were denied ARVs when The Pipe Smoking One was in charge. This figure is not a thumb-suck; it was arrived at after intricate modelling by experts from the Harvard School of Public Health Aids Initiative, in the US.