Samia Suluhu Hassan Jailed Her Main Rival and Called It Justice

Read that again. A man is sentenced to four years in prison for demanding that elections be fair. The court cleared him of treason, the charge that could have killed him, and then convicted him of incitement for the crime of speaking. This is what passes for justice in Tanzania under President Samia Suluhu Hassan. We should not accept it as normal, and we should not let anyone in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, or Pretoria pretend it is.

Lissu has been held since April 2025. His offence was launching a campaign under a simple slogan: "No Reforms, No Election." He wanted the electoral system changed before voting went ahead. Six months later, in October 2025, Tanzanians went to the polls with the main opposition party, Chadema, disqualified, and with Lissu locked up. Hassan was declared the winner with 98 percent of the vote after her two main challengers were excluded. Let that number sit with you. Ninety-eight percent is not an election result. It is a confession.

Now consider the body count. A government-appointed commission put the death toll at no fewer than 518 and blamed the protesters. Opposition groups and human rights organisations say the security forces killed thousands. The government has rejected the claims of excessive force, insisted the election was free and transparent, and blamed foreigners for the unrest. We have heard this script before, in Zimbabwe in 2008, in Uganda in 2021, in Ethiopia's Tigray war, and in too many capitals where a ruler discovers that his people want a vote they can trust. The script never changes. Only the names and the body counts do.

Think about what the disappearances and disqualifications actually mean for an ordinary Tanzanian. A market trader in Mwanza who wants to vote for someone other than the incumbent does not see a debate. She sees her options removed one by one, until the ballot looks like a formality. A young graduate in Dodoma who joins a protest because he has no job and no voice watches critics vanish, hears that abductions are "alleged," and then learns the death toll from a commission that is part of the same government. Every one of these people is being told that their future is not their business.

The international community has not been silent, and that matters. British and European Union lawmakers wrote directly to Hassan, warning that the use of capital punishment against a political opponent risks turning the justice system into a weapon of repression. They were right. But letters are not enough, and we must be honest about who has been slow to act. The African Union has a Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance that Tanzania has signed. The East African Community and the Southern African Development Community have their own rules on democratic conduct. Where are their statements, their observer missions, their demands for an independent inquiry into the killings? A charter that is ignored whenever a leader is inconvenient is not a charter. It is decoration.

We also need to say something uncomfortable about the pattern. Tanzania under Hassan has been eager to court foreign investors, to project itself as a responsible regional power, and to travel to Moscow as relations with Western capitals grew frayed. Foreign capitals and foreign firms are happy to sign deals with governments that jail opposition leaders, provided the mining licences and the infrastructure contracts keep flowing. Whether the partner is Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Ankara, London, or Brussels, the question for us must be the same. Does this deal strengthen the people's voice, or does it strengthen the hand that silences them? Any partner who looks away from a massacre to protect its commercial interests is not a friend of African democracy. It is a co-signatory to its burial.

Let us be clear about what we are not saying. Tanzania is not a monolith. Its people have a long tradition of civic life and a proud history of independence, shaped by Julius Nyerere and carried forward by generations who believed that a free nation could be built by free citizens. Many Tanzanians want reform. Many Tanzanians are ashamed of what was done in their name. But complexity is never an excuse for silence. When a court convicts a man for asking for honest elections, it is not a difficult question. It is a test of whether our continent believes in its own constitutions.

Africa has answers, and they are not hypothetical. Botswana, which has been governed by the same party since independence, saw power change hands peacefully in 2024 when voters chose a new government and the outgoing president conceded. Mauritius has alternated power through competitive elections for decades, built one of the continent's most respected independent judiciaries, and grown into an open, prosperous economy. Senegal, in 2024, saw an incumbent attempt to delay a presidential vote. Its courts, its electoral authorities, and its citizens pushed back, and the transition went ahead. These are not perfect systems. They are proof that African voters can demand institutions that protect them and that African leaders can be held to account by something stronger than their own ambition.

So here is what must happen. The Tanzanian government must release Tundu Lissu and drop the charges that criminalise political speech. It must allow Chadema and every other party to compete on equal terms, with no candidate excluded by administrative trickery. It must open an independent investigation into the deaths, with international observers, and publish the findings in full. The electoral commission must be stripped of its partisan character and made genuinely independent, with its members chosen through a transparent, cross-party process. The African Union, SADC, and the East African Community should send missions, demand these reforms in writing, and attach real consequences to their failure. The UN Human Rights Council should give this case the attention it deserves rather than letting it slip into the diplomatic fog.

And you, the reader, have a part to play. Ask your MP, your journalist, your union leader, and your church or mosque leader what their position is on Lissu's conviction. Ask whether your country's government has spoken for Tanzanians who cannot speak for themselves. Support the civil society groups in Tanzania who document abuses at great personal risk. Share the facts, because silence is exactly what the regime is counting on.

Ninety-eight percent. Four years. Five hundred and eighteen dead by the government's own count, and thousands by the account of those who were there. We will not let this become another footnote in the long list of African elections stolen in plain sight. Tanzania deserves better than a court that convicts speech and a ballot that announces its own result. Africa deserves better. And we will keep asking the question until someone with the power to act is forced to answer it: when will a free and fair vote finally be allowed in Tanzania?

Based on reporting by RFI