KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Less than six months after Samia Suluhu Hassan was inaugurated as Tanzania’s first woman president in 2021, the country’s most famous cartoonist depicted her in a military general’s uniform under the title “Dictatoress.”
In the cartoon by Tanzanian-born Gado, drawn from his base in Kenya where there is more press freedom, Hassan looks at her image in a mirror and sees herself as holding a torch — perhaps of liberty — when actually she wields a spiked club.
A former vice president who rose to the presidency after the death of predecessor John Pombe Magufuli, Hassan initially gave indications that she would relax the government’s repressive tactics against opposition leaders, civic groups, journalists and others.
But as Hassan seeks her first properly elected term in Oct. 29 elections, critics say she has defied early hopes of easing repression and instead shown an authoritarian streak.
Amnesty International said in a statement this week that repression in Tanzania has “intensified” with civilian abuses ranging from arbitrary arrests to enforced disappearances and even extrajudicial killings.
Single-party rule
Hassan’s political group, known as Chama cha Mapinduzi, or CCM, is one of Africa’s longest-ruling parties. A version of CCM, which maintains ties with the Chinese Communist Party, has held power since independence in 1961.
Although Tanzania is yet to witness an orderly transfer of power from one party to another, regular elections featuring successive leaders of CCM have long guaranteed a measure of stability that is rare among neighbors in the region.
That leadership model is gradually being challenged, with the opposition party Chadema consistently the strongest of the groups trying to break CCM’s grip on Tanzania. Chadema’s popular leader, Tundu Lissu, who survived an assassination attempt in 2017, is currently jailed on treason charges.
Chadema has said it will not participate in elections without the reforms it says are necessary to have free and fair polling, a stance that led to its disqualification by electoral authorities.
Another popular candidate, Luhaga Mpina of the Alliance for Change and Transformation-Wazalendo party, is also disqualified from running for allegedly violating his own party’s constitution.
Running against opponents from smaller parties, Hassan is effectively unopposed and will almost certainly be elected, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, or ACLED, a U.S.-based nonprofit that collects data on political violence around the world.
Tanzania’s election “will follow over four-and-a-half years of sustained repression by a CCM-controlled state that is keen to avoid the electoral pressures” faced by opposition parties elsewhere in Africa, ACLED said in a recent analysis.
CCM, after receiving its lowest-ever share of the vote in the 2015 election, has “since neutered Tanzania’s opposition through administrative, legal, and extra-legal means,” the group said.
Rights abuses
In June, a United Nations panel of human rights experts cited more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance since 2019. The experts said they were “alarmed by reports of a pattern of repression” ahead of elections, after two pro-democracy activists from Uganda and Kenya went missing in Tanzania, where they had gone to attend Lissu’s treason trial.
The activists, Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda, later reported that they had been sexually abused before they were deported.
A recent high-profile disappearance is of Humphrey Polepole, Tanzania’s former ambassador to Cuba, who resigned his post earlier this year. His resignation letter, leaked on social media, cited his loss of “peace of heart and faith” in a government that he said violates the rule of law.
Hassan responded by revoking Polepole’s diplomatic status, and earlier in October he was allegedly grabbed by unknown people at his home in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam. His whereabouts remain unknown despite calls for his freedom.
It was not possible to get a comment from Hassan. A presidential spokeswoman did not respond to emailed questions.
Lifting a ban on gatherings
Roland Ebole, an Amnesty International analyst, told The Associated Press that Hassan raised hopes early in her presidency with progressive measures such as lifting a ban on the right of opposition groups to hold rallies outside the electoral season.
But she has been just as responsible for the government’s turn toward more repression since then, Ebole said.
As the chairperson of CCM, “she cannot…distance herself from these violations,” Ebole said. “Her role as head of state and commander-in-chief places her directly in charge of the country’s security apparatus, giving her the authority to end the violations and restore a culture of respect for human rights.”
When Hassan took over as president, she asserted her authority by recruiting associates who had fallen out of favor with Magufuli, the previous president.
She is said to keep a small circle of advisors, and last year she appointed her third director of the Tanzania Intelligence and Security Service, the domestic spy agency, a high turnover that some analysts saw as a sign she was in charge or trying to consolidate power.
Hassan is running under the slogan “Work and Dignity,” promising opportunities in crop and livestock farming, the country’s top industry. Her vision has been summarized as the Four Rs, which stand for reconciliation, reforms, rebuilding, and resilience.
Foreign direct investment has rebounded after Magufuli alienated many investors with aggressive tax measures, and while Hassan’s pro-business stance has cheered many observers, critics say she has failed to seize an opportunity to be a consensus leader.
Many Tanzanians still hope for change.
“We expected more freedom, especially for political rallies and the press,” said one resident of Dar es Salaam, a man who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the authorities.
“But it feels like things are going back to the old ways.”
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Musambi reported from Nairobi, Kenya.
By RODNEY MUHUMUZA and EVELYNE MUSAMBI
Associated Press
