Tanzania Elections: Clampdown on Democracy a Cause for Concern

Dr Sizo Nkala

Tanzania will hold presidential elections in October.

This will be the incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s first election contest since she succeeded the late John Magufuli who died in office in 2021.

President Suluhu made history by becoming Tanzania’s first female president. She came into power as a reformist set on undoing her predecessor’s repressive posture. She lifted the ban on political rallies, preached media freedom, and released the leader of the main opposition party Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA), Freeman Mbowe from detention.

Mbowe had languished in prison for almost 8 months under trumped-up charges of terrorism. She also met with the CHADEMA leader Tundu Lissu upon his return to Tanzania in 2023 after spending five years exiled in Belgium. Lissu had survived an assassination attempt in 2017 believed to have been sanctioned by Magufuli’s people.

Moreover, President Suluhu removed Magufuli’s hangmen from key posts such as the head of national security and the ideology and publicity secretary of CMM which were central to Magufuli’s repressive machinery. 

However, Suluhu’s dalliance with reform was short-lived as she soon reverted to the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party’s default tactics of repression and intimidation. Towards the local elections in November 2024, opposition leaders including Mbowe and the current leader Tundu Lissu were detained, and their officials and supporters were attacked and brutalized by the state security forces as they prepared to hold a rally. 

About 83 people with links to the opposition were abducted allegedly by state agents in the lead-up to the elections. Thousands of opposition candidates were banned from contesting the elections Having elbowed the opposition out of the contest, CCM unsurprisingly secured a landslide victory winning a whopping 99 per cent of the seats.

The last time the opposition contested local elections in 2015 (they boycotted the 2020 elections) it got 45 per cent of the vote. The media was not spared from the wrath of the Suluhu regime as online news platforms namely The Citizen, Mwananchi, and Mwanaspoti were banned for 30 days following the publication of cartoons perceived to be critical of the President. 

The CCM’s reversion to the Magufuli era tactics is widely attributed to the internal politics of the CCM which saw a return of some of the Magufuli loyalists to key positions in the party and government including Doto Biteko who served as Magufuli’s Minister of Minerals and Paul Makonda who was previously the Dar es Salaam regional commissioner. 

It is believed President Suluhu is making overtures to the Magufuli loyalists to secure the support of the Magufuli camp which will be crucial for her 2025 presidential election bid. As such, while the Magufuli camp has regained some of its turf within the CCM, the democratic space in Tanzania keeps shrinking.

The leader of CHADEMA, Tundu Lissu, was arrested and charged with treason early in April after holding a political rally in southern Tanzania where he called for election reforms. Upon assuming power, Suluhu put together a task force to look into electoral reforms. The task force recommended the creation of a new non-partisan Independent National Election Commission (INEC) and an amendment of the constitution to make election results challengeable in the Tanzanian courts.

However, these recommendations have not been taken up by the government which means the INEC – the body responsible for running the elections remains under the control of people whose loyalties lie with the CCM. It thus did not come as a surprise when the director of the INEC announced that Chadema had been disqualified from participating in the October elections after the party failed to sign the electoral code of conduct agreement by the required deadline. Chadema did not attend the signing ceremony of the electoral code of conduct arguing that its decision not to attend the ceremony was part of its push for electoral reforms.

The party has long argued that elections would be void and meaningless without the necessary reforms. In the absence of the biggest opposition party, CCM will be in a position to get yet another landslide.

Tanzania’s clampdown on democracy took on a regional dimension when the government forces arbitrarily arrested and detained an activist from Kenya, Boniface Mwangi and another from Uganda, Agather Atuhaire, who had travelled to Tanzania to attend the trial of Tundu Lissu. It is alleged that the two were held incommunicado, beaten and tortured. Agather said that she was sexually assaulted during her detention.

Following this incident, President Suluhu vowed not to allow activists from neighbouring countries to cause chaos in Tanzania. Meanwhile, the governments of Kenya and Uganda, themselves accused of violating human rights in their own countries, have largely kept mum on the issue. Harassment of the opposition parties is a worryingly widespread phenomenon in Africa which has been witnessed in Senegal, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda and Chad to mention a few countries.

Time and again, African elections fail to meet regional and continental standards for a free and fair election which represents a great setback for democracy on the continent. Tanzania’s southern neighbour, Mozambique, went through a violent election cycle during which some opposition figures were murdered and the leader of the main opposition had to seek refuge outside the country.

In Uganda, which is scheduled to hold elections in January 2026, an opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, has also been languishing in prison since the end of 2024 charged with illegal possession of firearms and threatening national security. It is indeed sad that on the 62nd anniversary of Africa Day, we still have African countries practising colonial politics of criminalizing and brutalizing dissenters.

* Dr. Sizo Nkala is a Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.