Tanzania - Free Tundu Lissu

TANZANIA - Update on the case of Tundu Lissu, a political leader who is on death row in Tanzania. Plus, a glimpse of Africa

November 2, 2025:

11/02/2025 - Tanzania. Update on the case of Tundu Lissu, a political leader who is on death row in Tanzania. Plus, a glimpse of Africa.

Italian schoolchildren are stranded in Tanzania due to post-election unrest.

According to the 'official' results, the outgoing president, Samia Suluhu Hassan of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, was re-elected with around 97.66% of the vote. Almost 87% of the more than 37 million registered voters took part in the election.

However, these figures are not credible. Independent observers who monitored the election campaign in the run-up to the vote reported almost empty polling stations and a population that boycotted the vote in protest against the government's coercive methods against dissenters.

As Hands Off Cain has written several times in recent months, the main opposition candidate, Tundu Lissu of the CHADEMA party, was arrested on treason charges and his party was banned from the elections.

Another prominent candidate would have been Luhaga Mpina of the ACT-Wazalendo party. Unlike Lissu, he was not arrested, but was still prevented from participating due to alleged 'technical' irregularities in submitting the lists.

Now that the elections are over, although there are serious doubts about the veracity of the results, and especially about the turnout figures, the fact remains that Tundu Lissu remains on death row, charged with a crime typical of all authoritarian regimes: those who criticise the government do so because they are “in the pay” of some enemy power. As we saw in our initial articles, although Italy has included Tanzania in its 'Mattei Plan for Africa', the African nation actually has very strong economic ties with China and military and security ties with Russia. Indeed, the sensational turnout and approval ratings for the ruling party bear a striking resemblance to the Russian tendency to completely falsify the truth.

However, despite the alleged plebiscite that would have confirmed the same party that has already ruled the nation for over half a century, Tanzania plunged into chaos immediately after the polls closed.

The exclusion of candidates and allegations of electoral fraud sparked violent protests in Dar es Salaam, the largest and most populous city in Tanzania, and in other cities. Thousands of protesters took to the streets to denounce electoral fraud and the government's increasing oppression.

It is difficult to obtain up-to-date information as the government has shut down the internet throughout the country for several days, silenced the media, and closed universities. Reports from a few NGOs and some UN offices in the area speak of protesters storming Julius Nyerere International Airport and setting fire to several public and government buildings, as well as attacking police stations and engaging in violent clashes with security forces.

The opposition claims that hundreds of people have died in the post-election clashes, while diplomatic sources have confirmed dozens of casualties. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has deplored the loss of life and called for an impartial investigation into the excessive use of force.

The BBC received information from a hospital in the capital stating that it was 'overwhelmed with victims' and that the same was true of other hospitals, which have full morgues.

Around 30 Italian students, who were in Tanzania on a school trip, have been stranded in a suburban area for several days and, as a precaution, are avoiding returning to Dar es Salaam, from where they were due to fly back to Italy.

The group comprises 16 students from Brescia's Gigli agricultural institute in Rovato, as well as 15 teachers and volunteers. They left at the end of October for Pomerini, located on the interior plateau of Tanzania, around 500 kilometres from Dar es Salaam, to spend two weeks at the agricultural school in Dabaga: an international cultural exchange focused on training and solidarity.

Shortly after they arrived, the country descended into chaos. However, these Italians are in a rural area far from the clashes and there are no security issues there. The situation is being closely monitored by the Crisis Unit at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although there is still no internet connection, the students and their chaperones can keep in touch with their families via text message. They are scheduled to return on 11 November.

The generous Italian schoolchildren will return home, but what will become of Lissu? The trial will continue and he will confirm that he criticised the government. He will obviously claim that he did so in the name of democratic values, his own values, the values of his party and the values of the DUA (Democracy Union of Africa). This is a supranational organisation that brings together more than 25 parties that identify with the 'Western' values of liberal democracy. The prosecution will continue to maintain the naive position that only a foreign agent could criticise a government as honest and efficient as Tanzania's.

How much longer will Lissu be held hostage? Will the government settle for a lenient sentence forcing him into exile, or will it take more drastic measures?

It is difficult to make a reliable prediction. Africa has been at the centre of intense tensions in recent months, and finally, the media has reported on Sudan, a region that has been ravaged by massacres for many years but which has seen a sharp deterioration in its already dire conditions in recent weeks. Finally, attention is being given to Mali, where a jihadist-inspired armed militia has taken control of almost the entire country, prompting Western embassies to urge their citizens to leave. There is also some news circulating in Europe about Ethiopia and Congo, where the humanitarian crises are particularly serious. Only slightly less serious are the humanitarian crises in Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia and Burundi.

The tense situation between Rwanda and Uganda has experienced a fragile stabilisation over the past few months, helped by the fact that the road world championships were held in Rwanda for the first time in cycling history a few weeks ago, finally attracting the attention of the international media and, more generally, admiration for the quality of the organisation.

Africa has never known peace and stability. First because of colonial wars, then because of wars of liberation from colonialism, and even now that the post-colonial phase is consolidated, there is still no peace and stability. And where the situation is consolidated, it is often not democratic.

Following the West's gradual disengagement, China and Russia (through tens of thousands of mercenaries formerly known as the Wagner Group and now the Africa Corps) have filled the vacuum alongside militant Islam.

Moderate democratic values are no longer defended by the West, which is always afraid of being accused of having a 'colonialist spirit'. The only 'moderate' bastion is the DUA parties, but they receive little help and are rarely mentioned, perhaps because, in the oversimplification of our media, they are considered 'centre-right parties'. 

Neither the Chinese nor the Russians nor the jihadists care about public opinion. While Tanzania's authoritarian regime is not averse to the use of violence, it seems less drastic than other governments on the continent at the moment. We will continue to follow Tundu Lissu's story and his unjustified detention on death row. Through his story, we will try to shine a light on the whole of Africa, a continent that is far too often overlooked. Recently, Hands Off Cain made positive comments about the abolition of the death penalty in Zimbabwe, the commutation of some death sentences in Congo and Gambia, the ruling by the African Court of Human Rights that Tanzania should remove certain automatic provisions from its capital punishment law, and the activities of Prawa, a Nigerian NGO that campaigns against the death penalty. However, none of this positive news was reported on Italian primetime television news programmes.

In memoriam of Marco Cochi, our great Africa expert, who would have written this article much better than I have. Valerio Fioravanti