In Tanzania, Samia’s Facade of Reform Is Crumbling

At the height of her reform ambitions, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan proudly championed the “Four Rs” of reconciliation, resilience, reforms, and rebuilding, a program that marked a radical departure from her predecessor, John Magufuli. She reversed a number of retrograde and repressive policies implemented by Magufuli and initiated reconciliatory dialogue with the opposition. She also skillfully consolidated power within her party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, or CCM, which has held the presidency in Tanzania since independence in 1961.

However, Samia’s reforms have quickly stalled as the 2025 general elections draw nearer. The government’s recent arrest of Tundu Lissu, the chair of Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo, or CHADEMA, and his subsequent indictment on treason charges related to his advocacy for electoral reform, clearly indicates that the façade of progressive change that had been constructed under Samia is crumbling and could presage a return to authoritarian rule in Tanzania.

In the wake of Lissu’s arrest, CHADEMA was disqualified from the election after it refused to sign a code of conduct mandated by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Disillusioned by the government’s intransigence on electoral reforms, CHADEMA passed a “No Reforms, No Elections” resolution in December 2024. The resolution is at the center of the party’s campaign strategy to expose the government’s reluctance to institutionalize these reforms.

In 2022, following dialogue with opposition parties, Samia had formed a special task force on democracy and political parties, which issued a list of reform recommendations. The opposition’s demands of establishing an independent electoral commission, lifting the ban on political parties, and revising various laws that govern political activity were incorporated into the task force’s recommendations. The government subsequently introduced reform legislation that was presented as institutionalizing the needed reforms but which in reality largely maintained the status quo.

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For example, the opposition had demanded measures to ensure an independent electoral commission, but the president still has executive powers to appoint its members, despite a cosmetic name change from the National Electoral Commission to the Independent National Electoral Commission. Additionally, an election reform bill that became law in 2024 still allows government-appointed district executive directors to oversee election returns during elections. Finally, the task force had recommended that the results of presidential elections should be subject to challenge in a court of law, preferably a higher court, but there is still no mechanism for this to occur. In 2020, the African Court on Human and People’s Rights ruled that Tanzania violated the African Charter by refusing challenges to presidential elections in court.

The reforms and reconciliation Samia had begun were quickly reversed when it became evident that the opposition was gaining momentum.

In addition to the lack of progress on electoral reform under Samia, continued repression, especially abductions and disappearances of CHADEMA members, have deepened mistrust of the government.

CHADEMA’s reform campaign seems to have resonated with the Tanzanian public. Lissu is charged with treason because he called for disrupting the upcoming elections if his reform demands were not met.  In local elections held in November, many CHADEMA candidates were disqualified, and CCM went on to win 99 percent of the local contests.

Samia’s perceived outsider status, as a Muslim woman from Tanzania’s semi-autonomous state of Zanzibar, was seen as something that would undermine her chances of becoming president. However, she was able to overcome these hurdles through the support of CCM’s power brokers, such as former President Jakaya Kikwete. She has also been a shrewd political operator, using both party processes and the power of the presidency to eliminate rivals.

The reforms and reconciliation she had begun were quickly reversed when it became evident that the opposition was gaining momentum. After the ban on political parties was lifted, CHADEMA began holding nationwide rallies demanding a new constitution as the best pathway for consolidating reforms. The demand for a new constitution became CHADEMA’s main agenda, even as they spoke vehemently against government corruption and controversial government deals such as an agreement with a Dubai-based company, DP World, to manage ports at Dar es Salaam and elsewhere in the country whose terms were unusually generous to the the company. As opposition to the deal grew, the government began employing means to silence it. Critics of the port deal and opposition figures were harassed, arrested, and detained. Accounts of abductions, disappearances, and the killing of opposition voices followed.

Then, in January 2025, during a Special CCM convention, Samia was declared the party’s presidential candidate for the upcoming election in a political maneuver that went against party traditions. CCM has traditionally held its nominations in June or July of an election year. This unprecedented move demonstrated Samia’s intentions of eliminating potential party rivals for the presidential nomination. With the electoral body disbarring CHADEMA from the elections, it appears that she has now eliminated any external challenger as well. This positions Samia and CCM for a landslide victory in the general election.

These developments point to a worrying democratic decline in Tanzania. In its latest Freedom in the World report, Freedom House changed the country’s rating to “Not Free” from “Partly Free,” reflecting the country’s poor performance on measures of political rights and civil liberties.

At the regional level, Tanzania’s democratic backsliding mirrors similar trends in Kenya and Uganda. In November, Uganda’s longtime opposition figure, Kizza Besigye, was abducted while in Kenya and later charged with treason. Tanzanian human rights activist Maria Sarungi Tsehai, who resides in Kenya, was briefly abducted in Nairobi in January, and she has said she believes the Tanzanian government was involved. In Kenya, incidences of abductions and forced disappearances were reported following youth-led protests in June 2024 over the cost of living and a proposed tax hike. These patterns suggest a broader regional shift towards repression and away from democracy.

It remains to be seen whether the Tanzanian government’s decision to disqualify CHADEMA from the presidential election scheduled for October will be reversed or whether Lissu’s treason charges will be dropped. But it seems clear that Samia’s brief experiment in progressive reform is now over.

Nicodemus Minde is a Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, in Nairobi. He writes on politics, culture and big-power politics in Africa.

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