the fall of tanzania’s reformist president
the illusion of reform: how tanzania’s promise of change ended in blood and silence.
Five months ago, the story was already written between the lines. Samia Suluhu Hassan had gone from reformer to warden. Opposition figures were in prison or in exile, and Tanzania’s ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), was once again governing by fear. Still, there was a thin hope that the October 2025 election might reopen the political space she had once promised to defend. It didn’t. It closed it for good.
Read my previous piece from five months ago to see how the warnings of this moment were already unfolding:
tanzania’s crackdown has a feminist face
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Last month, Kenyan activist and photojournalist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan lawyer and journalist Agather Atuhaire were arrested in Dar es Salaam. Where they had traveled to attend the court hearing …
