THEY call it an election. The world sees a revolution brewing.
Election Day in Tanzania was supposed to be a celebration of democratic choice. Instead, it has become a flashpoint of fury – a day when decades of political repression, systematic opposition elimination, and silenced voices finally exploded into open defiance. From the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam to border towns like Tunduma, young Tanzanians have taken to the streets, not with ballots, but with barricades, stones, and an uncompromising message: This election is illegitimate, and they will not be silent anymore.
As polls opened Wednesday morning, protests erupted across Tanzania, with young people destroying polling stations and dismantling voting infrastructure. Groups of young people blocked roads, interrupted traffic, and confronted police officers in running battles that quickly escalated when protesters threw stones, prompting officers to fire teargas.
The scenes are unprecedented. In videos circulating widely, protesters are seen dismantling tents at polling stations and carrying away chairs, with voices declaring: “This is a polling station. There is no voting here”. The youth—Tanzania’s demographic majority in a nation where more than half the population is under 18—have decided that if this cannot be a real election, it will be no election at all.
As the protests intensified, Tanzania experienced a nationwide internet outage, cutting off online communication precisely when citizens needed it most. The digital blackout, combined with earlier restrictions on social media platform X and live discussions on TikTok, represents a coordinated effort to blind the world to what’s happening inside Tanzania.
Yet the fury cannot be contained. Livestreams—captured and shared before the shutdown—show the determination of a generation that refuses to be silenced, documenting their demonstrations even as mainstream media remains conspicuously aligned with the government narrative.
The Mockery of Democracy: A Ballot Without Choice
To understand the rage, one must understand the farce.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan faces 16 challengers on paper, but the main opposition candidates have been systematically eliminated. Opposition leader Tundu Lissu was arrested on April 9, 2025, charged with incitement and treason after calling for electoral reforms, and then disqualified from participating in the election on April 12. His party, Chadema, was banned entirely from competing.
Luhaga Mpina, the presidential candidate from ACT Wazalendo, Tanzania’s second-largest opposition party, was struck off the ballot twice, with the Attorney General’s appeal ensuring his exclusion remained final.
The pattern is unmistakable: Any candidate with genuine popular support is removed. What remains are token opponents without political infrastructure, funding, or realistic chances. Hassan is virtually unchallenged and will almost certainly win, following what rights groups say has been a heavy crackdown on popular opposition members, activists and journalists.
As one Dar es Salaam resident told the BBC: “We do not have an election without a strong opposition. The electoral system is not independent. We already know who will win. I can’t waste time voting”. This sentiment echoes across a nation where the outcome was determined long before ballot boxes opened.
A Regime Built on Fear: The Terror Before the Vote
The groundwork for this electoral charade was laid in blood, disappearances, and systematic intimidation.
Amnesty International documented widespread and systematic human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings of opposition figures and activists. The Tanganyika Law Society documented 83 cases of people going missing under mysterious circumstances as of August 9, 2024.
On September 7, 2024, the body of Ali Mohammed Kibao, a senior strategist for Chadema, was found dumped near the shores of the Indian Ocean a day after being abducted from a bus in Dar es Salaam. His death—following reports of severe beating and acid burns—sent a chilling message to anyone considering opposition politics.
On April 24, 2025, police arrested dozens of supporters outside the Kisutu Resident Magistrate Court, where Lissu was appearing, with many later reporting being harassed, beaten, and subjected to torture before being abandoned in remote areas like Ununio and Pande Forest, about 43 kilometres from central Dar es Salaam. One survivor described how attackers jammed a pointed object through his ankle, creating a gaping wound that squirted blood, while captors filmed the ordeal, laughing and taunting.
UN human rights experts documented more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance recorded in Tanzania since 2019, calling on Hassan’s government to immediately stop using the disappearance of political opponents, human rights defenders, and journalists as a tool of repression in the electoral context.
The Digital Battlefield: A War for Narrative Control
In the lead-up to Election Day, Tanzania’s youth turned to social media as their last refuge for political expression.
TikTok surged in popularity as a platform to express political views in a country with more than 49 million internet users, with one user burning a campaign poster of President Hassan to reveal a page with #MO29, referring to the planned protest on election day. The hashtag became a rallying cry, a digital marker of resistance.
Human rights activist Ananilea Nkya captured the national mood: “I have never seen, during any election, so many citizens losing hope about the fate of their lives as this year”.
The government’s response? Escalating repression. In September, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority suspended JamiiForums, a popular Tanzania-based social networking website, for 90 days for posts that “disrespected” the government and the president. Access to the social media platform X was restricted nationwide shortly before polling day, with full access reserved for government officials.
Just two days before the election, police arrested prominent social media influencer Jenifer Bilikwiza Jovin, a 26-year-old businesswoman known as Niffer, accusing her of inciting violence after she participated in a TikTok challenge using words from President Hassan’s campaign rally.
Deputy Police Commissioner David Misime warned: “Even those creating fake accounts, thinking they can hide, you cannot,” noting the authorities’ capacity to trace online activity. The message was clear: Express dissent, and we will find you.
Sixty-Four Years of “Choice”: CCM’s Unbroken Reign
The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party has governed Tanzania since the country gained independence in 1961, maintaining power in every election since Tanzania adopted multi-party politics in 1992. The party’s name literally translates to “Party of the Revolution”—a revolution that has calcified into perpetual rule.
Hassan’s governing party, CCM, whose predecessor party led the struggle for independence for mainland Tanzania in the 1950s, has dominated national politics since its founding in 1977. For six decades, Tanzania has known only one ruling party. This isn’t democracy—it’s dynastic control masquerading as electoral choice.
Hassan’s presidency reveals the pattern clearly. She ascended to power in March 2021 following the death of her iron-fisted predecessor, John Magufuli, becoming Tanzania’s first female president. Initially, she won plaudits for easing the repression of political opponents and censorship that proliferated under Magufuli. Hope flickered briefly.
But those initial reforms proved hollow—under her watch, authorities have continued and intensified repressive practices targeting opposition leaders, civil society, journalists, and dissenting voices, with nobody held accountable. The brief spring of openness has frozen into winter.
The Choreography of a Sham
Every detail of this election was designed to deliver a predetermined outcome.
The government and police made repeated threats that protests would not be tolerated and stationed tanks around the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, to prevent unrest. Police arrested 17 people in the northwestern Kagera region over the weekend who were planning unrest on election day.
Videos emerged of protesters blocking roads, interrupting traffic, and engaging police in running battles across several urban areas, including Dar es Salaam, with demonstrators hurling stones at police who responded by firing teargas. The promised “peaceful election” became street warfare.
Polling stations recorded notably low turnout across major cities, with some voters too afraid to make their way to the polls for fear of violence. One woman told AFP: “I could not go out today because of fear of violence”. Fear, not civic duty, defined the day.
For the first time in recent elections, Tanzania limited the participation of regional and international observer missions, with organisations such as the Southern African Development Community and the East African Community initially not fully accredited to observe the process. The regime clearly preferred to conduct its electoral theatre with minimal international scrutiny.
A Generation Says: No More
Tanzania’s demographics make this moment inevitable. Young people make up the majority of Tanzania’s 37.7 million registered voters. This is a nation ruled by a 65-year-old president and a party system that predates the birth of most citizens, yet these young Tanzanians inherit no political voice, no genuine choice, no pathway to change except the streets.
Amnesty International denounced a “wave of terror” ahead of the election, including enforced disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial killings of opposition figures and activists. Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, stated: “President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government has dashed hopes for reform”.
The protesters understand what international observers are finally acknowledging: This election is not democracy—it’s domination. As one Tanzanian rights activist declared: “Clearly this is a sham election”.
The International Response: Words Without Weight
Regional human rights groups, including the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the Pan-African Progressive Leaders Network, Vocal Africa, and PAWA 254, condemned what they described as a ‘sham election,’ accusing President Hassan’s administration of widespread human rights violations and systematic elimination of the opposition.
These groups declared that the political situation in Tanzania represents a total collapse of democratic principles within the East African Community, asserting there will be no genuine elections in Tanzania as the ruling regime has dismantled all mechanisms that would have guaranteed a free and fair vote.
Yet condemnations without consequences ring hollow. The African Union, the European Union, and the United Nations all express “concern” while Hassan’s government continues unopposed. Economic interests, regional stability calculations, and diplomatic inertia combine to protect a regime that systematically violates every democratic principle these organisations claim to uphold.
The Breaking Point
This is not merely about one stolen election. It’s about a generational reckoning.
Tanzania’s economy grew by 5.5 percent last year, according to the World Bank, on the back of strong agriculture, tourism and mining sectors. Yet nearly half the population still lives below the $3-a-day poverty line, while economic transformation has slowed. Growth that enriches elites while leaving youth in poverty is not prosperity—it’s exploitation.
The ruling party promised infrastructure, universal health insurance, and jobs. What Tanzanians received instead: A president who refuses genuine competition. Opposition leaders in prison or exile. Critics who disappear in the night. A judicial system that serves power rather than justice. An electoral commission that disqualifies any candidate with popular support.
The social contract is broken. When democratic channels are systematically destroyed, when peaceful opposition is met with disappearance and death, when ballots become meaningless theatre—what choice remains except the streets?
Zanzibar’s Parallel Crisis
The autonomous island of Zanzibar also elected a president and parliament members, where there is more of an atmosphere of competitive elections, with incumbent leader Hussein Mwinyi of the ruling CCM facing off against ACT-Wazalendo candidate Othman Masoud. Even in Zanzibar, where opposition has historically been stronger, the shadow of mainland repression looms large.
Reports indicate Zanzibar experienced similar patterns of protest and resistance, with the archipelago’s youth equally determined to reject an electoral process they view as fundamentally compromised. The fire spreading across the mainland has found kindling in the islands.
What Happens Next?
The regime has options, none good: Escalate repression and risk transforming protests into a sustained uprising. Make genuine concessions and admit the election lacks legitimacy. Or declare victory and hope the fury dissipates.
The election commission says it will announce the results within three days of election day. When Hassan inevitably claims victory, the question becomes whether Tanzania’s youth will accept another term of governance they view as illegitimate, imposed through violence and electoral manipulation.
The protesters carry a simple truth: Voting is meaningless when the electoral system is not independent and everyone already knows who will win. Democracy cannot exist where choice is illusion, where opposition is criminalised, where dissent means disappearance.
Echoes of Cameroon: A Continental Pattern
The parallels to Cameroon are haunting. Paul Biya, at 92, is claiming an eighth term after 43 years. Hassan, at 65, is crushing opposition to secure her grip. Different ages, same playbook: Eliminate rivals, intimidate citizens, control information, declare victory.
Africa’s autocrats have learned that formal democracy—the pageantry of elections without their substance—provides international legitimacy while maintaining absolute control. The formula works until the generation born under one-party rule decides it won’t.
Tanzania’s youth have decided. October 29, 2025, was meant to be Election Day. Instead, it became the day democracy’s pretence collapsed, replaced by open confrontation between a regime determined to maintain power and a generation determined to seize it back.
The Fire Spreads
Armoured vehicles and tanks were deployed across major cities to deter unrest, and police were stationed throughout Dar es Salaam in a show of force designed to intimidate. The message: Challenge this election and face state violence.
The youth answered with their bodies in the streets, their voices amplified through social media before the blackout, their presence at polling stations—not to vote, but to dismantle the theatre of democracy. They livestreamed their resistance, documenting for the world that Tanzania’s election is not an exercise in democratic choice but a battle for political survival.
As polls opened under military watch, as internet connections died, as police fired teargas into crowds of young protesters, one truth emerged: Tanzania’s social fabric is tearing. The question is no longer whether this election is legitimate—clearly it is not. The question is whether the regime can maintain its grip, or whether this generation’s rage will finally break 64 years of single-party rule.
