Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika (pictured) has died after a heart attack, political and hospital sources said yesterday, but the government’s official silence created suspense over his succession. The impoverished nation was plunged into a long night of intrigue after Mutharika’s heart attack Thursday in the capital Lilongwe. He was rushed to hospital, but doctors were unable to save him, a source at the hospital said. “The president died yesterday, and his body has been flown to South Africa for embalming and for the process to be dignified, the official announcement will come later on,” a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. An official in Mutharika’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party also confirmed the death, and indicated that an announcement would come later. The news nonetheless trickled out to Malawians through short-wave radio, private local media, and social networks—even as state media reported only his airlift to South Africa. Opposition figure Humphrey Mvula said that the lack of official communication was “making it difficult to comment on the sticky issue of incapacitation” of the president and his eventual succession.