Tanzania’s ruling party seeks to rid itself of the ‘troublesome’ Tundu Lissu

During a visit to a Tanzanian game park last year, an official pointed out an unruly lion to President Samia Suluhu Hassan. “Does this troublesome animal have a name?” she asked. “If not, we should call him Tundu Lissu.”

It is doubtful that Samia had in mind the phrase uttered by the English King Henry II in 1170 – “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” – which led a group of knights to storm Canterbury Cathedral and murder Archbishop Thomas Beckett during evening vespers.

After all, that was one of history’s most infamous incitements to political assassination, the plot of TS Eliot’s celebrated drama, Murder in the Cathedral.

Lissu is the leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema).

Samia was also probably unaware that Lissu’s family, pastoralists from the Singida region of north-central Tanzania, have a long history of keeping lions away from their cattle. Lissu’s great-grandfather, Mughwai Murro Munyangu, even killed a lion with a spear and, years later, his father, Lissu Mughwai, shot a lion with a locally made gun.

But, fair enough: for many Tanzanians, especially the youth, Tundu Lissu has the heart of a lion. He is a fearless champion for justice, democracy and the underdog.

He will be back in court this week in Dar es Salaam, facing charges of treason, a capital crime, accused of obstructing the elections that will be held in October.

Political repression

Lissu is not alone in facing political repression in what was once one of Africa’s better democracies, but which spiralled downward after the election of “The Bulldozer” John Pombe Magufuli a decade ago.

Jeff Smith, executive director of pro-democracy non-profit Vanguard Africa based in Washington, DC, says that while Lissu’s case has a high profile, people outside the country have not come to terms with the level of repression in Tanzania.

“Opposition members can’t hold private meetings in their homes,” he says. “And when it does happen, attendees are beaten unconscious, they’re hunted down by authorities, they’re arrested on frivolous charges.

“It really seems all steps are being taken to muzzle the opposition ahead of the October election. The regime knows they can’t win fairly and are doing everything in their power to steal the election before it happens.”

A smaller opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, is still running in the 28 October election and has nominated a CCM defector, Luhaga Mpina, as its presidential candidate. ACT-Wazalendo is particularly strong in Zanzibar.

But the alliance of intelligence services and law enforcement operating under the aegis of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) has focused special attention on Lissu, who has suffered years of criminal prosecution, beatings and incarceration.

They have gone to such lengths to get him out of the way, not only because he is a popular figure, but because he cannot be bought. This is seen as a fundamental threat to the CCM, which has been in power since independence in December 1961, the longest unbroken run in Africa. 

Like others that have been in power too long, the CCM stands accused of having become a patronage machine captured by wealthy businesspeople and foreign money.

In September 2017, Lissu, then the opposition’s justice spokesperson, was shot at his residence inside the parliamentary compound in Dodoma. He had 16 AK-47 bullets pumped into him by masked assailants who left him for dead. The attack was never properly investigated and the culprits were never found.

Lissu spent several years on his back and in operating theatres, many of them in Leuven, Belgium. Still limping and on crutches, he flew back to Dar in 2020 to challenge Magufuli for the presidency – an act of such immense courage that it earned him the respect not just of millions of Tanzanians, but of people throughout the world.

Far-from-free elections

But courage and electoral support were never enough. The 2020 election was marred by vote-rigging and violence against opposition members, dozens of whom were killed, according to human rights organisations. 

Lissu, tipped off that an assassination squad was coming for him, was rescued through the intervention of the German ambassador, and he returned to exile in Belgium.

Magufuli died on 17 March 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, having taken advice from Nigerian evangelist TB Joshua that he could beat Covid with steam baths and prayer. Joshua soon followed him to the grave.

Samia, a woman from Zanzibar who had been grafted on to the ticket as vice president to balance Magufuli, became president. On a trip to Belgium in 2022, she sought out Lissu and wooed him with the promise of reform and a fresh start.

He came home, buoyed by the lifting of political restrictions, but soon realised that the long-overdue revamp of the constitution and the electoral system – reforms needed to create a level playing field and prevent a repeat of 2020 – was not on the CCM’s agenda.

Samia will run for president in her own right for the first time in October. But she is a weak candidate who was a virtual unknown before her accidental presidency. No one is in any doubt that, under a fair electoral system, she would struggle to beat Lissu.

‘No reforms, no election’

Lissu campaigned under the slogan “No reforms, no election”, covering the length and breadth of the country before he was arrested on 9 April after a rally in Mbinga, in the Ruvuma region in Tanzania’s deep south, and taken to Dar es Salaam.

For the past four months, he has been confined to a solitary cell, six feet by six feet, at the Ukonga maximum security prison in Dar. He is being kept in a special section where he is surrounded by more than 100 death row prisoners, some of whom have been facing execution for years.

The prosecutors in his case will appear before a magistrate in Dar on Wednesday, 13 August, at a committal hearing to read the information, documentary exhibits and statements of the intended prosecution witnesses to Lissu.

Thereafter, Lissu will be invited, for the first time, to speak to his case before the file is sent to the high court and he goes on trial for his life.

The high court has ruled that the identities of witnesses testifying against Lissu will be kept confidential, effectively shielding them from both Lissu and the public.

Vigilance and noise

The charges against Lissu follow the long-standing pattern of autocrats who use legal gamesmanship, or lawfare, to silence or lock up opponents. But there is an added dimension of seriousness and deliberation in the way they have gone about the Lissu prosecution.

Last week, democracy activist and influencer Maria Sarungi Tsehai posted that she had been warned of a plan to poison Lissu in prison, where his food is in the hands of his jailers.

Such things are not unheard of. Last year, the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, a man in the same mould as Tundu Lissu, died in prison in the Arctic Circle after multiple attempts on his life.

The Tanzanian authorities may be emboldened by the change in the political climate in Washington, DC, where the Trump administration has dumped the US’s previous concern for human rights and governance in favour of pursuing critical minerals and competing with China, which has had a close association with the CCM for 60 years.

Still, some international news media and parts of the international community that still care are watching. The European Union has taken a particularly strong position, condemning Lissu’s arrest and dismissing the treason charges as politically motivated.

A group of political leaders and activists from across Africa, under former Botswana President Ian Khama, are standing in solidarity with Lissu. They all need to maintain a level of vigilance and noise, even with so many other more high-profile conflicts happening across the world.

It is not just Tundu Lissu who is at risk, but human rights and democracy through an entire region that is threatening to lapse into authoritarianism and thuggery. DM

Phillip van Niekerk is managing partner of Calabar Consulting, a political risk consulting firm.