Tanzania’s authoritarian government showed its true colours when protesters took to the streets following the undemocratic general election held on 29 October. Security forces fired live ammunition, killing at least several hundred people, and possibly thousands. The state’s devastating response to the protests shattered any remaining illusions about President Samia Suluhu Hassan, once internationally celebrated as a reformer but now clearly willing to use lethal violence to maintain her grip on power.

Authoritarian playbook

Hassan took office in 2021, promoted from vice president following the sudden death of President John Magufuli. Magufuli had a well-deserved reputation as a hardliner, notorious for cracking down on freedom of expression, political opposition and the rights of LGBTQI+ people. Hassan initially looked like a refreshing contrast, talking up what she called ‘the four Rs’: reconciliation, resilience, reform and rebuilding. She ended Magufuli’s ban on political rallies, released jailed opposition politicians, allowed banned media to reopen and set up a political reform taskforce. Tanzania’s first woman president, she garnered global acclaim.

But the reforms quickly stopped. Hassan was, after all, the head of the Party of the Revolution (Chama cha Mapinduzi, CCM), which has been at Tanzania’s helm ever since independence in 1961, having survived the 1995 transition to multiparty elections. The party has maintained its hegemony by carefully controlling electoral processes, including the electoral commission. It has excluded opposition candidates, deployed security forces against opposition supporters, intimidated voters, used ballot stuffing and passed laws that constrain opposition parties by allowing the government to interfere with their registration, funding and internal operations.

A renewed crackdown came ahead of local elections in 2024, with mass arrests of members and supporters of the main opposition party, the Party for Democracy and Progress (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo, Chadema) and a wave of abductions, torture and killings of critical voices. Police assaulted journalists and authorities suspended major news outlets and convicted people for criticising the government online. As well as its evident desire to tightly control the local elections, the government was likely looking across its border to Kenya, where mass Generation Z-led anti-government protests mobilised from June 2024, inspiring similar protests in other African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda.

Eliminating opposition

Hassan’s crackdown accelerated further ahead of the 29 October general election. In April, Chadema’s chair Tundu Lissu, who ran against Magufuli in 2020, was arrested and detained on incitement and treason charges after calling for electoral reforms. Authorities arrested and deported his Kenyan lawyer when he arrived to represent him the following month. Security forces abducted and tortured activists from Kenya and Uganda who came to observe Lissu’s trial, dumping them near the border.

Then came the knockout blow. In April, the electoral commission banned Chadema from all elections until 2030 after it refused to sign a code of conduct over its demand for electoral reforms. This move, eliminating the only credible opposition party, went a step further than Hassan’s predecessors: however flawed past elections were, Chadema had competed at every one since 1995. For good measure, in September the commission disqualified the presidential candidate of the third-largest party, Luhanga Mpina of the Alliance for Change and Transparency, leaving Hassan facing no serious candidates.

Hassan’s son, Abdul, was reportedly put in charge of a police and intelligence services taskforce on election security, blamed for an upsurge in abductions of activists ahead of the vote. The government hammered the media and online freedoms too. In September, authorities imposed a 90-day suspension on Jamii Forums, a popular online platform, taking it out of action during the campaign. Authorities reportedly refused accreditation to foreign journalists seeking to cover the election. The week before the election, the government banned public use of Twitter/X.

With debate stifled and competitors sidelined, Hassan duly took 97.95 per cent of the vote, a figure not seen since the days of one-party rule. But the non-competitive vote brought rare criticism from African organisations: African Union (AU) observers found that the election failed to comply with democratic standards, with its integrity compromised through ballot stuffing, politically motivated abductions, excessive military force and internet restrictions. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) stated that ‘voters could not exercise their democratic will’.

Generation Z mobilises – but pays the price

The audacity of the government’s denial of democracy triggered rare protests that erupted in Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, on 29 October before spreading to other cities. Protesters blocked roads and burned tyres, condemning the election as a sham. Those protesting were overwhelmingly young men, with the non-competitive election the tipping-point for pent-up frustration at poverty, unemployment and the government’s refusal to take them seriously.

The protests echoed the mobilisations in Kenya and those they helped inspire last year, and followed in the footsteps of many Generation Z-led protests this year. In Madagascar and Nepal, Gen Z-led protests have brought down governments, and in recent months, young people have mobilised in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Morocco, Peru, Philippines and Timor-Leste, motivated by anger at economic hardship and unemployment, government corruption, broken political promises and out-of-touch elites.

Tanzania is also the latest African country with a young population – the median age is between 17 and 18 – where elections have been manipulated to prevent change and confirm the continuing power of long-established political elites. In the same month as Tanzania’s election, Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya secured an eighth presidential term through a tightly controlled election while Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara won a fourth term after leading opponents were disqualified from standing.

Repression, including state violence, is also a shared reality. Security forces killed dozens and arrested hundreds in post-election protests in Cameroon, while authorities in Côte d’Ivoire banned protests ahead of voting. Recent Gen Z-led protests have been met with state violence in Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal and Timor-Leste.

But Tanzanian authorities took the violence to another level. Armed police repeatedly fired live ammunition into crowds. An internet shutdown and a police threat of jail sentences for anyone sharing protest videos made it hard for the outside world to see what was unfolding in real time, but as the government began to lift the internet blackout and curfew restrictions in early November, the extent of the carnage became impossible to hide. There’s no official death toll but even conservative estimates suggest hundreds have been killed, while an African human rights network puts the figure at over 3,000, with many others missing. Chadema accuses police of disposing of hundreds of bodies, and there are reports that some people were shot in their homes.

Authorities followed up by charging at least 240 people with treason, a charge that carries the death penalty, accusing them of instigating protests.

Accountability needed

Hassan has now been sworn in, in a ceremony closed to the public held at a military base in the capital, Dodoma. The government’s priority is now to restore Tanzania’s reputation as a stable country that doesn’t make headlines for conflict and unrest. That makes the attention from the AU, SADC and the United Nations (UN) unwelcome: the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, has called for a full investigation into killings and other human rights violations.

Hassan may have had an eye on this international audience when she promised an inquiry and called on prosecutors to show leniency towards those arrested. Police have now released several Chadema officials detained during the protests. But Hassan continues to insist the election was free and fair and says the death toll has been exaggerated, while refusing to give an official estimate. Meanwhile, the authorities have bizarrely tried to blame foreigners for instigating unrest.

Hassan may have assumed that a show of ruthless force would make her look strong. Her position isn’t entirely secure, with sections of the CCM and military rumoured to be opposed to her. But if anything, she’s emerged weaker, her legitimacy shattered.

The families of the many dead and missing may well question what the price of Tanzania’s reputation for stability is. They deserve answers, but no investigation will have value if the government controls it. There’s been no news from an inquiry into abductions Hassan promised last year. But a fully independent and transparent investigation, with those who ordered killings held responsible and a firm commitment to implement its recommendations, would be a start. This deeply undemocratic election and lethal response to protests must be a never again moment for Tanzania. To rebuild her legitimacy, Hassan must show her government is prepared to listen and learn.

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