Tanzania Shot Its Own Voters Dead and No One Has Been Punished

Maria Chami was eighteen years old. On election day in October 2025, she walked out in Arusha to buy phone credit, the kind of errand every young African has run a thousand times. She was shot. Her mother, Neema Munuo, now says she feels "as though I am burning inside" whenever she remembers that day. Maria's death was not an accident of history. It was the result of a state that chose force over the ballot box, and a year later that state still has not said her name.

Ask yourself what kind of government lets a teenager be killed for buying airtime and then sends no one to answer for it. Tanzania's government has given us its answer, and it is a shameful one.

Consider the numbers the government itself has been forced to admit. A commission of inquiry, appointed by the state, recorded 518 deaths from what it called "unnatural causes." Of those, 197 were people shot dead. Those are not statistics. They are 197 bodies, and behind each one a mother, a father, a widow, a child who will not come home. Mwajuma Hamisi's husband, George Kisivani, was shot in Arusha on the day of the vote and died two days later, leaving five children and no income. She now sells vegetables at a market to keep them fed. Juma Nasibu has not been able to recover the body of his 25-year-old nephew, Juma Shabani, who was reportedly among people rounded up and shot. His family searched hospitals, police stations and prisons. They found nothing but silence.

The evidence of state violence is not hidden in rumour. BBC Africa verified multiple videos showing police units blocking protesters, firing tear gas and shooting into crowds. Amnesty International says it has documented security forces using excessive force with impunity, and its regional director, Tigere Chagutah, stated plainly that not a single official has been criminally investigated, let alone prosecuted. Read that again. Hundreds dead, and the paperwork is still waiting on a single arrest.

The government's response has been to protect itself. The commission's report was handed to President Samia Suluhu Hassan in April, yet the full document has not been published. Amnesty rightly calls that secrecy what it is: a policy that "entrenches a culture of secrecy." A second commission has now been set up to identify who was behind the violence, which is a remarkable choice. The first question should never be who organised the protest. The first question must be who gave the order to fire.

The rot does not stop with the dead. Hospitals reportedly turned away injured people in the immediate aftermath. Meshack Sane, shot in the leg in Arusha, has undergone more than five major operations and still needs surgery he cannot afford. His relatives were told by the district commissioner that no budget had been allocated for victims. Think about that. The state that fired the bullets has allocated nothing to repair the bodies it broke. The families who paid for the funerals are now paying for the wounds.

Then there is the crackdown that continues today. Amnesty interviewed seventeen people between 3 and 17 September 2026 who described an ongoing campaign against critics. A 26-year-old man who expressed support for planned reform marches was arrested in Dar es Salaam on 24 July and held without charge for 47 days. He told Amnesty he was blindfolded, threatened with death, denied food, and when he asked for water, was urinated on. Torture is not a side effect of this regime. It is a tool of its interrogation rooms.

Meanwhile, the opposition's leader, Tundu Lissu of Chadema, was put on trial for treason before the poll, which kept him off the ballot. He has spent his time demanding electoral reform and, this week, went on hunger strike because he was being denied access to his lawyers. The prison authorities deny that claim. A verdict is due next week. Is this how a democracy defends its elections, by prosecuting the man who asked for a fair one? Samia won with 98 percent of the vote. Ninety-eight percent. No honest electoral system produces that number. Only a system that has decided in advance who may stand on the ballot can.

Tanzania's leadership has also reached for the oldest excuse in the authoritarian handbook. Samia has blamed foreigners and claimed the unrest was a plot to overthrow her. Let us be clear: when a government cannot explain why its soldiers and police fired on unarmed young people, it invents an enemy abroad. We have seen this script in Harare, in Kampala, in Conakry and in Ouagadougou. It always ends the same way, with the blame shifting to the people and the power staying in the same hands.

This is not only a Tanzanian story. It is an African story, and it sits within a broader pattern across our continent in which elections have become rituals of control rather than tests of consent. Across the Sahel, juntas have swapped ballots for decrees. In East Africa, the tools of counterterrorism, designed to protect citizens from real terror, are being turned against journalists, students and opposition supporters. Every time a government can jail its critics under an anti-terror label without consequence, the entire region grows more dangerous for anyone who dares to speak.

So what must happen? First, Tanzania must publish the full commission report, immediately and in its entirety, with no redactions for the security services. Secrecy is the first ally of impunity. Second, every security officer credibly implicated in the killings must face independent prosecution in civilian courts, not promotion or quiet transfer. Third, the government must establish a compensation fund for the dead and wounded, with medical treatment guaranteed for survivors like Meshack Sane, and it must start paying the families of Maria Chami, George Kisivani and Juma Shabani today. Fourth, the treason case against Tundu Lissu should be dropped, and the Anti-Terrorism Act should be reviewed so that it cannot be used against peaceful protest.

The region has shown us what better looks like. Botswana built its prosperity on a stable constitutional order and an independent judiciary that the powerful cannot simply buy. Mauritius has held competitive elections for decades and transferred power peacefully, which is why investors trust it. Ghana and Senegal have shown that incumbents can lose and walk away, and that the republic survives. Tanzania itself once had a reputation as a reasonably stable constitutional state. That reputation can be rebuilt, but only by a government willing to accept that legitimacy is earned in the courthouse and at the ballot box, not in the barrel of a rifle.

To the African Union and the East African Community: stop issuing polite statements about "concern." Send an independent observation mission with the power to investigate the killings and publish its findings. To the development partners and investors who fund Tanzania's roads, ports and gas projects: tie your support to verifiable accountability, because your money should not be quietly underwriting impunity. And to the Tanzanian people, the ones who still gather in bars and markets and on WhatsApp to talk about what happened in October: demand the report, demand the names of the commanders, demand the treatment of the wounded, and demand a date for the trial of the men who gave the orders. Silence is what the regime is counting on.

Maria Chami should be alive. George Kisivani should be home. Juma Shabani's family deserves a grave they can visit. Meshack Sane deserves the surgery he needs. None of this can be undone, but all of it can be answered for. The question is whether Tanzania will become a country that tells the truth about its dead, or another African state that buries them and hopes the world forgets.

Based on reporting by BBC