Violence-racked Tanzania entered a new phase of uncertainty on Saturday as President Samia Suluhu Hassan secured an overwhelming victory in an election marred by protests, bloodshed and allegations of widespread fraud. Official results handed her 98 per cent of the vote, even as opposition groups and diplomats warned that the turmoil has already claimed hundreds of lives.
The electoral commission announced that nearly all of the 32 million ballots cast in Wednesday’s poll had gone in favour of Samia, extending the long reign of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, which has never lost a national election since independence. Electoral chief Jacobs Mwambegele told reporters, “I hereby announce Samia Suluhu Hassan as the winner of the presidential election under the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party.”
International monitors raised concerns over transparency and the sweeping internet shutdown imposed during the vote, which has made verifying casualty figures nearly impossible. Opposition activists estimate that “around 700” people have been killed in clashes with security forces, according to a spokesperson of the Chadema party. A diplomatic source ifformed that there was “credible evidence” of at least 500 deaths.
Government officials, however, dismissed the crisis as exaggerated. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Kombo Thabit described the unrest as “a few isolated pockets of incidents here and there” and insisted that “security forces acted very swiftly and decisively to address the situation”.
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Protestors, many of them young Tanzanians, continued to fill the streets on Friday in Dar es Salaam and several regional cities. Demonstrators tore down posters of Samia and attacked police and polling stations despite stern warnings from the military. Opposition groups accuse the government of suppressing rivals, pointing to one leading contender jailed on treason charges, which he denies, and another barred from contesting on technical grounds.
The unrest has been particularly volatile in Zanzibar, Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago. There, CCM’s incumbent president Hussein Mwinyi secured nearly 80 per cent of the vote. Opposition leaders denounced what the AP news agency called “massive fraud”, further fuelling anger in a region with its own turbulent electoral history.
Rights groups had warned before polling day that the political climate had deteriorated drastically. Amnesty International cited a “wave of terror” involving enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings targeting opposition figures. The government rejected the accusations and maintained that the election would be free and fair.
Samia, who became Tanzania’s first female president in 2021 following the death of John Magufuli, now faces the task of trying to stabilise a nation convulsed by its most violent election in decades. With distrust running deep and the official death toll still obscured by the ongoing internet blockade, the scale of the crisis may only fully emerge in the weeks ahead.
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