Protest and Crackdown in Tanzania

Tanzania’s elections in late October were not just demoralizing; they were disastrous. For months leading up to the polls, the state waged a campaign of dodgy legal maneuvers and even more alarming abductions and torture of opposition leaders and civil society activists to clear the field of any serious challengers. The foregone conclusion led to markedly low voter turnout. But with or without the actual voters, the state was determined to achieve a resounding victory. As evidence of methodical ballot box stuffing surfaced and citizens took to the streets to protest the lack of genuine choice on the ballot, security forces responded with deadly force, killing hundreds. Prominent journalists were assassinated. Officials throttled mobile data speeds and blocked access to social media. 

The ruling party’s candidate and incumbent, Samia Suhulu Hassan, was ultimately declared the winner with over 97 percent of the vote, a tally so embarrassingly implausible that Kenya’s President William Ruto, who has worked with Samia in a cross-border effort to intimidate dissidents, struggled to endorse its legitimacy. Observers from the Southern African Development Community as well as the African Union found that the exercise did not meet democratic standards.  

In the aftermath, Tanzania seems to be reeling, like a weakened patient rising too soon from the sick bed. On social media, young people engage in gallows humor and warn each other that reposting the wrong images could be deadly. Meanwhile, President Samia is more worried about optics than the blood-soaked authoritarian turn that secured her mandate. As she swore-in her cabinet, including her daughter and son-in-law, she warned that the country’s reputation had been stained. Her spokesman embellished this diagnosis further, claiming that reports documenting the violence are part of an international conspiracy to weaken the nation’s economy.   

The government has gone so far as to cancel independence day celebrations, slated for December 9, in a bid to stop additional protests. Some of the hundreds of young people arrested and charged with treason have been released, while others await trial for a crime punishable by death. An inquiry has been established to look into the violence, but Tanzanians have little faith that the government will investigate itself with integrity. Public trust is at an all-time low.  

The protests and violence may have been out of character for mainland Tanzania, but they were entirely predictable. East Africa, and much of the rest of the continent, has been experiencing the seismic effects of young, urban populations demanding more political agency and rejecting the status quo. Tanzania’s dominant political narratives have been about the supremacy of the ruling party, the CCM. For the old guard, the party is more important than democracy, and apparently more important than the lives of Tanzanian citizens. But across the continent, young people express frustration with electoral cycles that provide no real opportunity for change or accountability. They reject the nepotism and self-dealing of ruling elites. The elections are over, but the clash between the aspirations of young Tanzanians and the self-preserving instincts of their leaders will persist.