In Tanzania, something snapped this year. Protests followed the 29 October 2025 elections. They are unprecedented in their scale, national breadth and political content since the country’s independence in 1961.
But the repression unleashed by newly re-elected President Samia Suluhu Hassan has also been unprecedented. She has gone further than her autocratic predecessors in closing off the political space and silencing opposition figures.
By putting her main rival Tundu Lissu on trial for treason and barring others from contesting the presidency, Hassan has crossed autocratic thresholds that other leaders have not. Activists have been arrested, brutalised or disappeared.
