Tanzania's Reckoning: How Many Died in Post-Election Violence?

On Friday, the 7th of November, I received a call from an unknown Tanzanian number. The person on the other end, whom we shall call T. for this piece, requested anonymity because they were afraid of what the government would do if they ever learnt that this phone call happened. The call lasted about 10 minutes, during which I mostly listened as T. recounted stories of brutality and violence as the police tried to clamp down on protests that had erupted in the wake of a highly disputed election.

While Tanzanian elections are widely seen as corrupt, often marred by allegations of fraud and incidents of violence and voter intimidation, what happened during the October elections felt markedly different - a complete breakdown of even the pretense of adhering to the democratic process.

The signs were there from as early as April. On the 10th of that month, Tundu Lissu- the charismatic leader of the main opposition party Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema)- was arrested and charged with treason after a public rally during which he called for electoral reforms. Some of the reforms in question included turning the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into a truly independent body, the revival of the stalled constitution writing process, legal changes to allow independent presidential candidates, judicial review of presidential election results, and a requirement that presidential winners secure at least 51% of the vote.

Several days after Lissu’s arrest, the INEC banned Chadema from participating in not just the October elections but any elections until 2030. The commission cited the party’s refusal to sign the electoral code of conduct, a document ostensibly designed to ensure that the elections were peaceful, fair, inclusive and transparent. While the document sounds benign, and even progressive, especially for a country with Tanzania’s electoral history, critics saw it as another attempt by the ruling party to tighten their grip on the electoral process.

Emanuela Andrea, a Chadema supporter told DW, “Signing the code of conduct is akin to digging our own grave.”

Tundu Lissu wasn’t the only one barred from competing. The INEC disqualified Luhaga Mpina, presidential candidate for the Alliance for Change and Transparency party (ACT-Wazalendo), Tanzania's second-largest opposition party. The commission claimed Mpina had failed to meet nomination regulations, however, the timing suggested a coordinated effort to eliminate any viable challengers to President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

Mpina's disqualification was particularly significant because he was a former longtime member of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM). He even served as a minister during President Magufuli’s government alongside Suluhu, who at the time was vice president. He left CCM in August because as he told reporters at a recent press conference, “I fought for reforms inside CCM and realized it's impossible.”

As election day approached, it became clear that, as Africa analyst Michelle Gavin had predicted in an April article for the Council on Foreign Relations, Tanzania was headed towards an election with a foregone conclusion, one where President Samia would receive a seemingly historic mandate.

In the end, “historic” was almost an understatement. After the elections INEC claimed that Hassan won 97.66% of the vote with a turnout of almost 87%. If these figures are true, they would represent two things. One, a population that was deeply involved in the country’s democratic process, and two, the single greatest political victory in the history not just of Tanzania, but the entire world. For comparison, Jakayo Kikwete, a president so popular that he consistently enjoyed an approval rating north of 70% during his time in office, received a comparatively measly 62.8% in the 2010 elections. Globally, only three fair, free, and competitive national elections in the modern era have returned comparable margins to Hassan’s win: Georgia in 2004, and Iceland in both 1988 and 2020.

There are many reasons for believing Tanzania in 2025 shouldn’t rank alongside those examples. Serious doubts exist about the total number of people who turned out to vote. While INEC claimed that 87% of the country’s voters participated in the elections, impartial observers including the African Union and international media houses reported that turnout was low. It was so low that one CCM official told France 24, "We need to rescue the situation because some are hesitating.”

So…where was everyone if they weren’t voting?

Most were at home, but others were on the street protesting.

• put it this way, “What’s the point of voting if the government has already decided a winner? We didn’t want to legitimize a flawed process.”

The government responded to these protests by deploying heavily armed police officers, some in plain clothes, to the streets, cutting off internet access and announcing a curfew in Dar Es Salaam, the country’s economic capital.

Although T. wasn’t involved in the first day of protests, their friends were. and according to what T. told us, they painted a picture of a police service willing to do anything to stop the demonstrations. Nothing was off limits, including live ammunition, and this would become horrifyingly clear after T. shared a Google Drive folder compiled by local activists that allegedly showed the violence happening across the country. The folder contained images and videos that were difficult to look at, and while we can’t show you the graphic material, we will try our best to describe it.

One picture showed bodies piled on top of each other in what appeared to be a hospital corridor. Another captured a young man who had been shot in the head, his fatal injury gruesomely apparent.

One of the videos showed a young man with a gaping hole in his cheek, blood dripping steadily onto his clothes. When someone off camera asked if it was the police who did this to him, he could only manage a weak nod. The young man then climbed onto the back of a motorcycle, was handed a Tanzanian flag to press against his cheek to stem the bleeding, and they rode off, presumably heading to a hospital. In another video, a person wrapped in a Tanzanian flag lay motionless on the ground while a crowd gathered around. The person recording stated flatly that this individual had been shot dead by security forces. Yet another clip showed someone shot in the leg receiving makeshift first aid while the camera lingered on the severity of the wound.

We are not describing these scenes to shock you. Rather, we want to make sure you fully grasp the scale of what happened in Tanzania during and after these elections. These images represent real people who were killed or maimed for demanding that their votes count, for protesting what they, and the international community, saw as a fraudulent election.

And these aren’t the only images coming out of Tanzania. Once internet connectivity was restored, similar images flooded social media, allowing open source intelligence experts to geolocate where they took place. Kenyan outlet The Daily Nation, was able to verify a video, taken at a shopping center in Arusha, showing the moment two people were shot as they tried to flee amid heavy gunfire. Despite locals rushing in to help the wounded, the shooting continued relentlessly.

According to a statement by the UN Human Rights Office, hundreds of people had been killed and an unknown number injured or detained- Chadema, and several human rights activists claim that more than 2,000 people died during the protests. The statement also quoted U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk as saying there were reports security forces had removed bodies from streets and hospitals and taken them to undisclosed locations, "in an apparent attempt to conceal evidence.”

This wasn’t the government’s only attempt at concealing the evidence of what had transpired. In a message sent to all Tanzanian cell phone users, the government warned them against sharing any videos or photos of the violence. The message states: "Avoid sharing pictures or videos that cause panic or degrade a person's dignity. Doing so is a criminal offense, and if identified, strict legal action will be taken."

Beyond the violence, the Tanzanian government arrested and charged at least 240 people with treason for inciting demonstrations with the intention of obstructing the election. In Tanzania, treason carries the death penalty, but the majority of those sentenced to death eventually have their sentence commuted to life in jail. The government also arrested four senior Chadema leaders, but released them on bail on the 11th of November.

In the government’s first public comments on the unrest, Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmoud Thabit Kombo told Reuters that the opposition's death toll of over 2,000 dead was "hugely exaggerated" but that the authorities had not yet calculated the casualties. He also denied that security officers had used excessive force. The Tanzanian government would also claim that the unrest has been driven by foreigners intent on destabilizing the country. In her first comments after being sworn in, Hassan acknowledged the loss of lives but asserted that "it was not a surprise that those arrested were from other countries," without providing details. The Inspector General of Police Camillus Wambura went further, blaming illegal immigrants for inciting the protests and demanding that citizens report suspicious foreigners or else face dire consequences.

When I asked T. about this, it made him angry. “Do they think we need foreigners to come and show us how to protest? The people who died were Tanzanians. Young Tanzanians who wanted change. To say foreigners did this is just another way to avoid responsibility for spilling Tanzanian blood.” Still, he mentioned being happy that the international community had rallied to support Tanzania through social media, and sharing their stories.

For my final question, I asked T. what was next for Tanzania, because, it seems, for all intents and purposes that Samia Suluhu will continue on as the president, and her government will face no real consequences for what happened.

“We will go to the streets again on the 9th of December (Tanzania’s independence day) and this time, the protests will be even bigger. We will not allow Suluhu to rule with the blood of our brothers and sisters on her hands.”

This is a message that has been echoed by other Tanzanians on social media, and their anger is palpable. I listened in on several spaces on X, and the Tanzanian people made it clear that they wouldn’t rest until Suluhu had been ousted. Whether they can actually force Suluhu out remains to be seen, but their determination to try is undeniable.

Still, a risk exists.

The initial protests during and after the elections were largely spontaneous, catching the government off guard. Yet even without time to prepare, security forces still killed hundreds, perhaps thousands. Now, with protest organizers publicly announcing their plans for December 9th on social media, they're giving the government weeks to strategize its response. President Suluhu’s government has already demonstrated that they are willing to use lethal force without hesitation.

It seems all too likely that they are going to do so again, if they fear that their grip on power could come to an end.

(For more coverage of Tanzania’s post-election violence, see our report on WarFronts).

Sources

• dw.com
• bushcenter.org
• theeastafrican.co.ke
• researchgate.net
• apnews.com
• ippmedia.com
• facebook.com
• aljazeera.com
• news.un.org
• ohchr.org
• thecitizen.co.tz
• apnews.com