Hassan's 'Constitutional Coup' Pushing Tanzania to the Brink

Kim Heller

It was close to midnight on 31 October 2025, when it was announced that the incumbent President of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan, had secured 97.66% of the presidential vote. Taken at face value, one may assume that Hassan hit the jackpot after winning almost all the votes cast in the election, purported to have had an 87% turnout.

However, Hassan's win was no victory for Tanzania. The election was not a majestic expression of Tanzania's democratic soul. Nor was it a splendid electoral sensation.

Despite many disruptions, election results were announced within 48 hours, raising alerts about legitimacy. Further to this, the 87% turnout figure appears to contradict the reality on the ground, where low participation was noted. Grim reports from observer groups of polling irregularities, including pre-marked ballot papers, added to concerns about the fairness of the election. Internet blackouts severely hampered real-time independent monitoring of the electoral process.

Of concern, too, is that during the election campaigning, opposition parties were given scant media access and many campaign permits were withheld. Leading politician, Tundu Lissu, from the CHADEMA party, was detained in April 2025 for what appears to be trumped-up charges of treason. Luhaga Mpina of ACT-Wazalendo was disqualified in September 2025, just weeks before the election.

There was no jubilation over Hassan's landslide victory. There was no joy in the streets of Tanzania. Within hours of the announcement, protests began in Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, and Arusha. The protestors were met with brute force. In the haze of media and internet blackouts, it has been difficult to confirm the extent of the human carnage. The official death toll is 28, although unofficial tallies place the death toll in the hundreds.

Tanzania's 2025 election has been decried as a constitutional coup. Media and internet blackouts, detentions, and deaths are the spawn of repression, not democracy.

Reports of the intimidation of journalists and election observers fuel perceptions of an election that was stolen rather than won.

The post-election atmosphere is thick with sorrow for the citizens massacred in a shocking exhibition of state brutality against protestors. Hassan has claimed that the protests were the work of "foreign agents". Her words are insensitive to a grieving nation. Tanzania's current turmoil stems from a breakdown in trust between the government and its citizens, not from some shadowy external force.

It was a sorry sight indeed to see Hassan sworn into office under heavy military security, out of public view. Reflecting on the election, Kenyan lawyer and journalist Gitobu Imanyara wrote in The Standard (Kenya) that the social contract between the Tanzanian government and the people of Tanzania, once founded on trust and quiet endurance, was "slowly unravelling." He writes that discontent is growing, fostered by systematic suppression.

Imanyara argues that "President Samia Suluhu Hassan, once celebrated as a symbol of continuity and moderation, now faces a tide of discontent from citizens who feel betrayed, marginalised, and unheard". His view is that the rising costs, coupled with the suppression of opposition voices and the rise of state intimidation, have eroded the goodwill that once surrounded her presidency.

A preliminary statement by the SADC Electoral Observation Mission concludes that the election in Tanzania "fell short of the requirements of democratic elections". The statement also points out that the "peaceful environment" was "a peace of submission, not freedom."

The European Union, the Commonwealth, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights have voiced grave concern about electoral transgressions and have called for an independent probe and release of political detainees. Tanzania's legal system offers little recourse. Courts are unable to review the results of presidential elections or question decisions of the electoral commission.

Julius Nyerere's model of exemplary leadership in Tanzania has collapsed amid persistent economic difficulties and the state's grave intolerance for dissent.

Tanzania's 2025 election is not an isolated event—there are clear signs of democratic erosion across much of the Continent. Elections, revered as noble expressions of democracy, often fail to deliver people-focused governance and often reproduce and entrench elite patronage.

An example of this is how, in Cameroon, the 92-year-old Paul Biya recently won his eighth term. In Tanzania, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) has been in power since independence in 1961.

At their very best, elections are but one tool in a larger democracy toolkit. They are meaningless without media, judicial, and economic freedoms and accurate representation and rights for all citizens. At worst, they are anti-democratic, staged, managed productions with predetermined outcomes.

It is not surprising that Africa's youth is increasingly disenchanted. If not addressed through citizen-focused economic and political policies and practices, this generational discontent will rise and spread across the Continent in an unstoppable flame of righteous anger. A poster held up by a young protester grabbed my attention this week. It said, "We have fought against colonialism, we will fight against autocracy".

For Tanzania, political instability could prove costly—its multi-billion-dollar offshore gas investments, in particular, are at risk. There is an urgent need for Hassa to rebuild trust and shift her leadership style away from autocracy to consensus-building.

In his article this week, Gitobu Imanyara writes that President Samia Hassan would do well to remember that leadership is not about managing silence but nurturing trust. He forewarns that "Peace is not submission; it is restraint." He writes that "The quiet of the masses is not consent; it is a waiting room for justice. And when the waiting ends, change arrives with the force of history behind it".

* Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.