Former Foreign Minister Bernard Membe has died

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s former foreign Minister and Diplomat Bernard Membe 69 has died, at Kairuki Hospital in Dar es Salaam where he was rushed in the early hours of Friday, sources have confirmed.

The cause of death was not immediately communicated.

He served as a Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2015 under President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete.

Following his death President Samia Suluhu Hassan sent condolence message saying she had received the news with profound sadness.

“I have received with sadness the news of the death of Bernard Membe. For more than 40 years, Membe was a brilliant public servant, diplomat, Member of Parliament and Minister who served our country professionally,” she wrote on her twitter handle.

Membe’s political career kicked off in 2000, after he was elected as a CCM Member of Parliament representing Mtama constituency in the general election. He was re-elected in 2005 and 2010.

Prior to this he had served as a national security analyst at the President's Office from 1978 to 1989.

He thereafter attended Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. where he studied international relations from 1990 to 1992.

In 1992, he was assigned to serve as an Advisor of the Tanzanian High Commissioner in Ottawa, Canada, where he served until 2000.

He was appointed as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs by President Jakaya Kikwete after the 2005 general elections.  In the October 2006 cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed as Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals.

In January 2007, he was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation after his predecessor Asha-Rose Migiro was appointed as the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General by then United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

He has also served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party since 2007; having been re-elected in 2012 at the 8th CCM Congress in Dodoma.

In January 2013, Membe informed his constituents that he would not be vying for a seat in the next parliamentary elections in 2015 thus giving rise to speculation that he may be considering to run for the presidency.

This was to set stage for the hotly contested CCM candidacy in the 2015 intra-party primaries between him and Former Premier Edward Lowassa.

It was contest that threatened to divide the party into the Membe Lowassa factions, the two were dropped in favour of John Pombe Magufuli.

He, later in an interview, compared his defeat in party's primaries to the infamous 'Sudden Death' goal in football.

However, in a sudden turn of events, in February 2020, the CCM's central committee expelled Membe from the party after accusing him of ‘indiscipline and violating the party's ethics and constitution’.

He denied any wrongdoing, saying it was all about the Presidency in the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi.

In July 2020 he handed back his CCM membership card and later that month he joined the opposition Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT- Wazalendo) and said he was willing to stand as its candidate in the 2020 General Election

In March 2022 he returned back to CCM after the Central Committee for CCM agreed and decided to reinstate his membership.