Crackdown on popular dissent in Tanzania as sham election goes ahead

As President Samia Suluhu Hassan orders hundreds of Tanzanian troops to the streets to secure what local observers say is a coronation, not an election, hundreds of citizens are being arbitrarily detained across the country.

More than 70 opposition leaders and pro-democracy activists have allegedly been forcibly disappeared. Popular politician Tundu Lissu, who has been charged with, but not yet found guilty of, treason, is reportedly being held in solitary confinement on death row, under 24-hour surveillance. His deputy, John Heche, was arrested and unlawfully detained in Dodoma last week. 

“We are being deleted by the government under Samia’s regime,” Heche’s brother said. 

Security forces in full military regalia patrolling the streets. Reports of torture, beatings, starvation and arbitrary detention of dozens of political opposition leaders and citizens alike. Truckloads of stuffed ballot boxes reportedly uncovered en route to voting sites and government employees threatened with firings if they don’t cast a ballot: Overwhelming evidence shows that Tanzania’s national election on 29 October is nothing more than Kabuki theatre, say local observers and opposition politicians, many of whom are in hiding.

“The saying here is, Samia is running against Suluhu – she is running against herself,” said John Kitoka, the spokesperson for the country’s largest opposition party, Chadema. 

“She is forcing people to vote for her to legitimise an illegal process, because what is going on is a coronation, not an election,” Kitoka said.  

Despite selling herself as a reformer when she came into power in 2021, replacing President John Magufuli, who died of Covid, Samia Suluhu Hassan and her party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), have taken a sharply authoritarian turn over the past two years. 

Daily Maverick has written about the brazen kidnapping and torture of foreign activists and observers by state security forces earlier this year. CCM has also carried out a sustained and heavy crackdown on members of opposition parties, particularly leaders of the Party for Democracy and Progress, known as Chadema. It was barred from contesting the election in April and the party’s assets and properties were seized, and its bank accounts frozen. Extrajudicial acts against its leaders and members have ramped up significantly in the months leading up to Thursday’s election. 

Party leader Tundu Lissu has been a prominent and popular opposition figure in Tanzania for decades, until an assassination attempt in 2019 sent him into