Tanzania’s former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi has passed away at 98, as confirmed by President Samia Suluhu Hassan. Mwinyi, who held office as Tanzania’s second president from 1985 to 1995, was hospitalized in early February due to a chest ailment, according to his family.
“With advice from his doctors, the family has decided that it is good that he gets privacy while receiving treatment. The family asks the public to pray for him,” said family spokesperson and son of the former leader Abdullah Mwinyi then.
Mwinyi joined Afro Shiraz Party (ASP) in 1964 and held different positions for the Government of Zanzibar and United Republic of Tanzania such as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education of Zanzibar in 1963.
In 1970 he was appointed Minister of State in the President’s Office of the United Republic of Tanzania and between 1982-83 he was Minister of Health, Home Affairs, Natural Resources and Ambassador of the United Republic of Tanzania in Egypt from 1977 to 1982
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In 1983 he was appointed Minister of State in Vice President’s Office and in 1984 he was elected the President of Zanzibar and Vice President of the United Republic of Tanzania.
Handpicked by his socialist predecessor, Julius K. Nyerere, Mr. Mwinyi was credited with reforms, among them permitting the sale of mobile phones and computers.
As a private citizen, Mr. Mwinyi lived without ostentation and was photographed traveling by public transport. In 2021, Mr. Mwinyi published a memoir in Kiswahili whose title translated as “Mister Permission: The Journey of My Life.”
According to a review of the book published in The East African, a weekly newsmagazine, he said his prime legacy lay in economic reforms that broke with the Nyerere era — a task, he said, that “was not easy at all, but change was a must.”
