A wave of state-sanctioned violence and political repression engulfs the nation following an electoral farce, exposing the brutal machinery of a ruling party desperate to maintain its grip on power and serve imperialist interests.
DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA – November 18, 2025 – The façade of Tanzania’s democracy has been shattered. What the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party billed as a triumphant re-election for President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been exposed as a brutal exercise in authoritarian consolidation, leaving a trail of blood, broken families, and a nation gripped by fear. Declared the winner with a Soviet-style 97.66% of the vote in the October 29 presidential election, Suluhu’s “victory” was not won at the ballot box but enforced by police batons, live ammunition, and a systematic campaign of abductions and terror.
The aftermath has plunged Tanzania into its deepest political crisis in decades, revealing a regime that has wholly abandoned any pretense of popular legitimacy in its service to capitalist and imperialist masters.
From Stolen Poll to Bloody Streets
The outcome was preordained. In the months leading to the poll, the state apparatus moved ruthlessly to dismantle any credible opposition. CHADEMA leader Tundu Lissu, a formidable critic who survived an assassination attempt in 2017, was barred from contesting and remains imprisoned on trumped-up treason charges. Dozens of party members were arrested, rallies were disrupted, and independent media outlets were silenced.
When citizens dared to protest this electoral theft, the state unveiled its true face. Under the cover of a nationwide curfew and a total internet shutdown—a classic tool of modern repression—security forces unleashed horrific violence on demonstrators in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Mwanza.
“The regime has always relied on the myth of Tanzania being an ‘Island of Peace’ to suppress dissent,” said activist and analyst Sim Eklo, in an interview with OnlinePeoplesNews. “Religious leaders were co-opted by the state to spread this ‘peace’ gospel, which is really just a gospel of submission. That myth has now drowned in the blood of protestors.”
The opposition claims that thousands have been killed or forcibly disappeared. While independent verification remains impossible due to the regime’s media blackout, the testimonies of grieving families searching for missing loved ones paint a grim picture of state-sanctioned murder.
The Velvet Glove of Regional Complicity
The international response has followed a predictable pattern of complicity. The African Union (AU), an institution long accused of being a club for incumbents, was initially quick to congratulate Suluhu, lending a veneer of legitimacy to the atrocity. Only after a wave of condemnation from civil society across the continent did the AU weakly acknowledge that the elections “had not met the threshold of free and fair democratic values.”
In a more robust statement, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights expressed “deep concern” over grave violations of the African Charter, condemning mass killings and arbitrary arrests. Similarly, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) stated the poll fell short of standards, detailing how its own electoral observers were harassed and their materials seized by Tanzanian security.
Yet, these condemnations have rung hollow. No sanctions have been imposed; no tangible measures have been taken. The crisis exposes the profound limits of pan-African political bodies, whose structures are financially and politically dependent on the very regimes they are meant to oversee. Their diplomacy becomes the velvet glove around the iron fist of repression.
Capitalism as the Constitution of Suffering
For leftist analysts and grassroots movements, the current crisis is not an aberration but the logical endpoint of CCM’s decades-long shift from its stated socialist roots to a fervent embrace of neoliberal capitalism.
“CCM’s tragedy isn’t just staying in power; it’s that it long abandoned the task of leading Tanzanians away from capitalism,” Eklo concluded. “Until we face that truth, there can be no real democracy, no good constitution, because capitalism itself is the constitution of our suffering. This repression is what happens when a party exists only to manage a state for the benefit of foreign capital and a comprador bourgeois class, and the people finally say ‘enough’.”
The regime’s violence is seen as the desperate action of a client state, protecting the interests of multinational corporations extracting Tanzania’s natural resources—from gold to natural gas—at the expense of its people. The suppression of dissent is essential to maintain the low wages and pliable workforce required by this neocolonial economic model.
As President Suluhu held her inauguration behind closed doors, a symbol of a government terrified of its own people, the message was clear. The 97.66% figure does not represent national unity, but its utter absence. For the workers, peasants, and youth of Tanzania, the struggle has now entered a new and more dangerous phase, one defined by mourning, resistance, and a relentless pursuit for a future free from the twin yokes of political and economic oppression.