There is so much popular opposition to Tanzania’s government that it had to deploy the military in response to massive demonstrations, and imposed a curfew. It has killed or disappeared hundreds of critics.
Yet it claims that the incumbent president was reelected with 97% of the vote, and that voters were so enthusiastic about her that she got more than twice as many votes as her predecessor got in his successful reelection campaign.
NPR reports:
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan won the country’s disputed election with more than 97% of the vote, according to official result…
Hassan’s two main rivals were barred or prevented from running. She faced 16 candidates from smaller parties.
The Oct. 29 election was marred by violence as demonstrators took to the streets of major cities…The military was deployed to help police quell riots. Internet connectivity has been on and off in the East African nation, disrupting travel and other activities.
The protests spread across Tanzania, and the government postponed the reopening of universities….
The foreign ministers of the U.K., Canada and Norway in a joint statement cited “credible reports of a large number of fatalities and significant injuries, as a result of the security response to protests.”
Tundu Lissu, leader of the Chadema opposition group, has been jailed for months, charged with treason after he called for electoral reforms….
Rights groups including Amnesty International warned of a pattern of enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings in Tanzania ahead of the polls.
In June, a United Nations panel of human rights experts cited more than 200 cases of enforced disappearance since 2019.
Although Tanzania’s president is very intolerant of opposition, her economic policies are less bad than those of the typical African ruler. As the Heritage Foundation notes, “Tanzania is ranked 6th out of 47 countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region” in economic freedom; “The country’s economic freedom score is lower than the world average [but] higher than the regional average.”
Tanzania is less corrupt and safer than most of its neighbors in Africa, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, and Uganda. But it has a worse judiciary than neighboring Kenya and is poorer than Kenya, which tolerates more dissent (but has a more corrupt bureaucracy).
In a fair election, Samia Suluhu Hassan would likely have carried the Zanzibar archipelago and many rural areas. But she would have lost in Tanzania’s largest cities to a united opposition.
