The words could not have been more clear, if not nerve-jangling. On the eve of Tanzania going to the polls, the chilling effect of unsolicited advice from the incumbent president—Samia Suluhu Hassan—doubtless made the idea of sacrifice weigh heavily on the mind of change-seeking forces.
“We expect everyone to come out, vote, and then go straight home. No [loitering around] will be permitted unless it is absolutely necessary. Our security forces will be keeping a close watch on people’s movements,” Hassan, who has built with an iron grip the dominant position in which the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party finds itself, said while making a stump speech in Arusha last week.
Voters, who will on October 29 have tens of candidates on the ballot from whom to choose their next president, were shorn of the option of Tundu Lissu of Chadema.
The opposition leader has been incarcerated for nearly six months after words he carefully chose to use to demand for electoral reforms were deemed treasonable by state prosecutors. Whereas he scored a remarkable triumph last Thursday when the High Court in Dar es Salaam shot to pieces evidence upon which prosecution’s treason case was based, the high-profile arrest has already inflicted the damage it was expected to.
Bread riots
Lawfare in Africa is still more prevalent, and more frequently pernicious in its consequences. It has proven a handy tool for rulers amidst the proliferation of bread riots on the continent. In Tanzania, civil disturbances took root in the fertile soils of the country’s commercial capital of Dar es Salaam early this month. An annual GDP growth of six per cent on average for the past two decades has not insulated the country from poverty, which remains stubbornly high. Consequently, dissidents have been met with probably the most brazen use of lawfare on the African continent yet.
The paralysing horror of Lissu’s situation makes distressingly clear the weaponisation of the criminal justice system in Tanzania. A new report by Amnesty International, entitled Unopposed, Unchecked, Unjust: “Wave of Terror” Sweeps Tanzania Ahead of 2025 Vote, has urged authorities in Tanzania to dial back the ferocity of lawfare.
“A series of laws, including the Political Parties Affairs Laws (Amendment) Act, 2024, Cybercrimes Act, and Media Services Act, have been used to criminalize dissent, censor media, and control digital spaces. Media and digital censorship remained pervasive during the period as journalists and online content creators faced arrests, bans, and surveillance,” the October 20 report reads.
“Ensure the urgent repeal and review of all repressive laws and regulations that violates [sic] international human rights standards, including the Media Services Act, Cybercrimes Act, and Public Order Act and bring any such laws and regulations in conformity with Tanzania’s constitution and international human rights obligations and commitments,” it adds.
Amnesty International noted how, with horror at the unpleasantness of it all, the punitiveness, vagueness and expansiveness of charges in draconian laws has done a poor job of guaranteeing democracy. It reported “widespread and systematic violations, including enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings, and severe restrictions on freedoms of movement, expression, and peaceful assembly.”
Weaponising the law
The report’s body of work takes a ruthlessly unsentimental look at three pieces of legislation, expressing fears that are rooted in everyday observations. The requirements that the Political Parties Affairs Laws (Amendment) Act, 2024 demands are anything but administrative. They, Amnesty International further observes, “create room for selective enforcement against opposition parties and impose significant compliance burdens that can be used to justify deregistration or sanctions.” And Lissu’s Chadema can attest to the unbearable weight of the law that continues to bear down on it. The opposition party is barred from conducting political activities thanks to the broad latitude that the amended law gives the Registrar of Political Parties, a presidential appointee.
Speaking to the Independent National Electoral Commission Act, 2024, Amnesty International said thus: “This legislation was assented on 22 March 2024, and published on 10 July 2024, renamed the National Electoral Commission (NEC) to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), ostensibly to enhance independence. However, the legislation maintains presidential control over key appointments, allowing the President to directly appoint five of the ten commission members. This provision has been particularly criticized by the opposition who allege that it undermines genuine electoral independence ahead of the 2025 elections, and it forms the basis of Chadema’s ‘No Reforms, No Election’ campaign.”
On the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) Amendment Regulations, 2025, Amnesty International notes thus on the legislation enacted on 28 January 2025: “The amendments represent a continuation of the government’s efforts to control digital communications and online content. The amendments impose stricter compliance requirements on online content providers and expand regulatory oversight mechanisms, creating additional barriers to free expression and information sharing.”
It further shares thus: The regulations work in conjunction with existing laws to create a comprehensive framework for digital censorship. They require online content providers to establish systems for identifying information sources, effectively eliminating anonymity for digital communications and creating mechanisms for surveillance and retaliation against critics.”
East African problem
Tanzania is hardly an outlier in the East African Community (EAC). The economic bloc’s powerhouses Uganda and Kenya, which will have general elections in 2026 and 2027 respectively, have also in the recent past cultivated reputations for using legal and quasi-legal tactics to attack, impede, or delegitimise political opponents. In Uganda, where seven flag-bearers of opposition parties have been given the all clear to come up against strongman Yoweri Museveni in a 15 January 2026 presidential poll, the country’s electoral body—headed by a presidential appointee—has, with a caution that has become typical of this dark time, been accused of using a requirement that presidential candidates submit a large number of signatures to disadvantage anyone but the incumbent. In power since January of 1986, Mr Museveni has received a lot of criticism for weaponising the legal system so as to impede political adversaries. The legal tools have, observers note, helped the octogenarian entrench political power while turning electoral processes into a ritualistic coronation of the incumbent.
In Kenya, where President William Ruto has had the wind taken out of his sails by so-called Gen Z protests, cybercrimes law has ended up being weaponisable as the government—with an almost desperate alarmism—moves to address both offline and online dissent. Specifically, it is feared that the Assembly and Demonstration Bill—currently being debated—could use administrative burdens and the broad latitude of authorities to ban protests to restrict the right to peaceful assembly.
The punitive bail terms and draconian charges under terrorism laws that Kenyans caught in the crosshairs of mass arrests of demonstrators in July of 2025 face have in a sense had a chilling effect. Observers have kept from that episode and more the chilling vision of a government that is intent on going to extraordinary lengths to punish dissent.