Once hailed for its relative stability in an otherwise politically volatile East Africa, Tanzania has exploded into violence and political protest following the controversial reelection of President Samia Suluhu Hassan. Once labeled as a potential political reformer, Suluhu has increasingly employed authoritarian tactics to ensure her grasp on power remains strong. In the months leading up to the October 2025 presidential election, Suluhu and her administration disabled the ability of the opposition to contest her actions through assault, harassment, abduction, and torture. Two leading opposition candidates were removed from the ballot, with challenger Tundu Lissu imprisoned for his election reform advocacy. Further, riots in major cities, started in response to these subversions of democratic norms, were indiscriminately and violently suppressed by the military. Tanzania’s “contingent renewal accountability mechanism”, described by Przeworski as key to vertical accountability, has been subverted, and Suluhu has rendered her constituents unable to participate in free and fair elections. The breaking of electoral norms in a previously democratic nation illustrates the lengths incumbent leaders, in this case Suluhu and her CCM party, will allow democracy to erode to maintain power and the heavy societal cost of democratic erosion.

Lead-up to the Elections

            Although Tanzania has primarily been a one-party dominant state since its inception in 1961, liberalization since the 1990s has opened the opportunity for opposition to join the CCM in government decision-making. However, Tanzania’s path to democratization was damaged in 2015, when John Magufuli (Suluhu’s predecessor) won the presidency. Magufuli, billed as an anti-corruption candidate, displayed autocratic tendencies early in his tenure through crackdowns on protestors and restrictions on minority and LGBTQ+ rights. Magufuli fully revealed his acceptance of democratic backsliding in the 2020 presidential election, where widespread allegations of voter fraud and election violence brought the freedom and fairness of the election into question. Magufuli and Suluhu, his running mate, sanctioned restrictions on internet access and the right to assembly, empowering the CCM to win key parliamentary seats and increase their control of Tanzanian politics. Soon after winning the election, Magufuli died in office and Suluhu became the first female president of Tanzania.

Upon her ascendancy to office, supporters of Suluhu pointed to her calm, calculated demeanor and past advocacy for liberalization as a positive sign for the country’s democracy. However, her critics did not forget the role she played in Magufuli’s abuses of the democratic process and warned of her potential to continue the CCM’s legacy of electoral misconduct. Nonetheless, Suluhu showed early promise as a reformer, approving large public works projects to bring clean water and energy, opening dialogue with the repressed political opposition, and reversing Magufuli’s denialist stance on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Unfortunately, Suluhu’s promise as an agent of democratization soon faded. She took steps soon after her election to install loyalists in her cabinet and in key government roles and hardened her stance on permitting political dissent. Suluhu’s administration arrested 400 members of leading opposition party Chadema throughout 2023 and 2024, including presidential hopeful and party chairman Freedom Mbowe. To justify these arrests, Suluhu invoked rule of law rhetoric and blamed the opposition for ignoring bans on protests, a strategy cited by Ozan Varol as a key stealth authoritarian practice used to ignore the preferences of the electorate. Additionally, in early 2024 Suluhu displaced 100,000 members of the Maasai community for protesting forced Maasai evictions to create a game reserve in the Ngorongoro crater. Despite Suluhu increasing female political participation within Tanzania, misogynistic criticism in Tanzanian media continued to call her leadership into question. This, compounded with CCM resistance to the opposition inclusion she had previously allowed, made it necessary for Suluhu to demonstrate the strength of her hold over Tanzanian politics. It became clear that Suluhu, like Magufuli before her, was succumbing to the pressure associated with increased citizen participation in government. External resistance from the Tanzanian populace and internal CCM questions about her capacity to lead the country pushed Suluhu to further condone democratic backsliding. Faced with a tense political environment and growing concerns about CCM’s disregard for democracy, Tanzania’s outlook for the 2025 presidential elections was grim.

2025 Tanzanian Presidential Crisis

For the first time in many years, charismatic political opposition in Tanzania threatened the CCM’s grasp on power and Suluhu took repressive steps to curb the influence these figures could have in the 2025 presidential elections. Leading opposition figure Tundu Lissu, whose platform centered around electoral reforms, was arrested and accused of treason (a crime punishable by death) for organizing electoral protests. In response to international organizations’ concerns over the arrest, Suluhu threatened violent government reprisal against those who questioned CCM actions. Suluhu followed through on these threats with the arrest and torture of Kenyan human rights activists, sending a clear, oppressive message to potential challengers to the CCM. This, in addition to Mbowe’s aforementioned arrest, prevented the two leading opposition candidates from participating in the elections, essentially allowing Suluhu to run unopposed for reelection. Further, the unfairness of the elections extended down-ballot, with the entirety of these candidates’ parties being barred from participating in the elections at the legislative level. The threat the opposition posed to the CCM’s power forced Suluhu to act, illustrating how incumbents intent on keeping power often turn to democratically unacceptable methods when reelection is not inevitable.

Suluhu’s actions did not go unaddressed by the public and media, prompting further crackdown on civil liberties by the CCM and an explosion of protests and retribution. During and after the voting period in Tanzania, hundreds of demonstrators marched on those certifying election results in the country’s capital and called for a recount. Protests soon spread throughout the country and became violent, putting pressure on Suluhu’s administration to act. The government responded brutally, enforcing a nationwide curfew, disabling internet access, and deploying military personnel (leading to ten deaths in the capital). These crackdowns only further eroded trust in the electoral process, escalating to alleged mass killings and the disposal of hundreds of bodies of those involved in protests. Suluhu’s response to the protests further illustrated authoritarianism in the indiscriminate restriction of civil liberties by CCM supporters in civilian clothes. Those arbitrarily suspected of resisting Suluhu’s reelection have been abducted, abused, and killed by people unaffiliated with the military or police. Despite early coverage, media have been intimidated into not covering the protests in their aftermath. The sharing of images and videos deemed to be disrupting the peace has been outlawed, and international political NGOs have found themselves unable to gather information about the specifics of the situation. The ability of the Tanzanian people to ensure free and fair elections was fundamentally disabled, and Suluhu’s reelection was allowed to proceed under invalid conditions.

Aftermath and Future Outlook

The cost of violent protest is much higher than peaceful demonstration, according to Chenoweth and Stephan, and the violent escalation of Tanzanian protests ultimately led to their end on November 3^rd 2025. Suluhu was sworn into office on the same day, and the CCM had once again manipulated the electoral process to stay in power. However, Suluhu’s turn to authoritarianism brings with it deep political consequences. The breaking of democratic norms in the country has brought international attention and sanctions, with the loss of crucial funding from international financial institutions threatening Tanzania’s economic outlook. Further, international attention means election monitoring groups will follow Tanzania closely, undermining the ability of the CCM to repeat sloppy election-day fraud. The violence associated with Suluhu and the CCM turning to democratic backsliding has damaged the capacity for and credibility of vertical accountability in Tanzania and shown the democratic cost of authoritarian power grabs. Suluhu’s reputation as a reformer is definitively gone, and it remains to be seen if and how Tanzanian political and civil society will hold their new autocrat accountable.