For quite some length of time it was beginning to look like Tanzania’s President John Pombe Magufuli had deserted his command post, the headquarters of the country, and decided to hunker down in his home village until the coronavirus was over.
Magufuli’s home village is Chato—a little backwater of no significance till its most famous son became what he became five years ago—sits some 600km from Dodoma, the nation’s capital, and only 200km from the Rwanda border.
He even had time for a little joke about Tanzanian drivers who have been held at various regional borders (because apparently they tested Corona-positive) by ordering his own driver to show himself and wave to the public in an attempt to show that not all Tanzanian drivers had the virus.
More to the point, however, President Magufuli announced that he had spoken to President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya on the phone, and that the two had agreed to take measures to get officials from the two countries to coordinate their economic and commercial activities under the stressful conditions of the pandemic, to eliminate unnecessary friction and bickering across our borders.
With feline nimbleness, Magufuli suggested that his officials may have reacted to provocation—and that may be true from what we have heard coming from the other side of our borders—but the message to the playing rodents was clear: I am the one in charge here.
