Fully Authoritarian
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Population
HRF classifies Tanzania as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The United Republic of Tanzania is a unitary state formed by the union of Tanganyika and the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago. The Head of State, Samia Suluhu Hassan, assumed the presidency in March 2021 following the death of President John Magufuli. Following independence in 1961, mainland Tanganyika was ruled by the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) until 1977, when TANU formally merged with Zanzibar’s Afro-Shirazi Party to form Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Despite formally transitioning the country to a multi-party democracy in 1992, CCM has largely maintained the one-party state institutional and legal framework to maintain absolute dominance of the political landscape. Since 2015, Tanzania has experienced an acceleration of CCM’s authoritarian power consolidation.
Elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime has unfairly barred a mainstream opposition party and candidate from competing in elections, seriously undermined independent electoral oversight, skewed the electoral playing field so much so that it won with a very high vote share, engaged in significant voting irregularities and electoral fraud, and hindered a mainstream opposition party and candidate’s electoral campaign.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime enforces an arsenal of draconian laws dating from the era of formal one-party rule, as well as more restrictive legislation from the Magufuli era, to stifle dissent. It suspends or bans major dissenting organizations, manipulates media coverage in its favor, seriously intimidates regime critics, unfairly represses dissenting protests, and abuses vague laws to silence dissent. Opposition figures and critics have suffered arbitrary detentions, abductions, beatings, and deaths.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. In Tanzania’s political system, an imperial presidency tops a powerful executive, which subordinates the other branches of government, and with CCM’s decades of entrenchment in control of all state institutions, there is no meaningful check to executive power. While Tanzanian courts have occasionally ruled on challenges to executive action, their interventions have been narrow, inconsistently enforced, and ultimately insufficient to prevent the regime from repressing criticism, undermining electoral competition, or weakening accountability mechanisms.
Elections in Tanzania are a sham to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. Since the advent of multi-party democracy in 1992, elections have not been competitive, with the ruling CCM claiming victory by wide margins in all seven consecutive general elections. The regime has systematically undermined electoral competition by disqualifying key rivals, suppressing opposition campaigns through arrests and assembly restrictions, partisan electoral oversight, and hindering independent monitors, leading to opposition boycotts.
The ruling CCM party has repeatedly and unfairly barred a mainstream opposition party and candidates from competing in elections by using legal and administrative barriers to exclude key rivals. In April 2025, opposition leader Tundu Lissu was effectively barred from participating in the electoral process through arrest and treason charges for advocating for electoral reforms. Additionally, the Independent National Election Commission (INEC), which is subservient to CCM, banned his party, the Party for Democracy and Development (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo: CHADEMA), from the ballot after CHADEMA refused to sign an unfair and restrictive electoral code of conduct. Weeks before the September 2025 election, the regime disqualified Luhaga Mpina of ACT-Wazalendo for alleged procedural noncompliance with the nomination process. This continued a pattern from the Magufuli era: in the 2020 election, the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) disqualified 57 legislative aspirants and 642 local council candidates from the main opposition party, CHADEMA, for alleged irregularities in their nomination forms.
Authorities have unfairly and significantly hindered a real, mainstream opposition party and candidates’ electoral campaign through the arrest and prosecution of opposition leaders and candidates, restrictions on assembly and rallies, and the selective enforcement of public order and electoral laws. Since 2016, when President Magufuli imposed an effective ban on opposition rallies, restrictions on opposition campaigns have continued under the current president, who has violently suppressed CHADEMA political meetings, arrested its leaders, and publicly urged the military in January 2024 to prepare for possible intervention in the 2025 elections. Ahead of the 2025 election, authorities arrested and detained at least 107 CHADEMA party leaders, including senior figures like Tundu Lissu, during a crackdown on planned political meetings and rallies, as police arbitrarily halted opposition assemblies under public-order laws.
The regime has seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. CCM exerts overwhelming partisan control of electoral oversight through executive dominance over the INEC electoral management agency, restrictions on domestic and international observers, and the absence of effective judicial review of presidential election results. For example, the President has the discretion to appoint the President and Vice President of INEC, and in February 2024, CCM lawmakers passed a new measure allowing the President to appoint five out of nine INEC commissioners. Another measure allows the appointment of presidentially appointed district executive directors as poll supervisors, effectively giving the President influence over the entire election process. Article 41(7) of the constitution blocks any legal challenges to presidential election results released by the INEC, effectively precluding any judicial review of the INEC’s determinations. In 2025, the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) operated under restrictions imposed by the regime, and opposition party agents were barred from entering polling stations to observe opening procedures. Observers were also prevented from monitoring the closing and counting of votes. During the 2020 election, the INEC refused to grant some independent NGOs permission to observe the elections and conduct voter education.
Moreover, the ruling party has engaged in significant voting irregularities and electoral fraud. The 2025 general election was blatantly manipulated through ballot stuffing and tally inconsistencies. For example, the AUEOM directly observed several irregularities, including ballot stuffing at multiple polling stations, instances where voters were permitted to vote more than once without proper verification, and inconsistencies in vote tallying. The 2020 and 2025 elections are widely regarded as the most blatantly fraudulent in the country’s history.
In all of the country’s multi-party polls since 1992, the ruling party has skewed the electoral playing field to such an extent that it has consistently claimed victory with a very high vote share, exceeding 70%. In the 2025 election, INEC coronated President Samia Suluhu Hassan with an implausible 97.66% of the votes. It claimed that the ruling party swept 270 out of 272 directly elected parliamentary seats. Official results claimed that President Samia received a historic record of 31.9 million votes despite opposition boycotts and observer-reported low voter turnout nationwide. In the 2020 election, which occurred in an atmosphere of fear and violent repression, CCM incumbent Magufuli claimed 84% of the presidential vote while the party claimed 256 of 264 directly elected parliamentary seats.
Since 2015, the main opposition party, CHADEMA, has threatened or boycotted elections to protest the lack of free and fair competition, highlighting issues such as the absence of electoral reforms, an electoral field and framework overwhelmingly skewed in favor of CCM, and repression of the opposition. For example, in the lead-up to 2025, the opposition steadily escalated its “no reform, no election” position, ultimately resorting to non-participation once exclusion and disqualification of its candidate and political party rendered meaningful competition impossible. Similarly, in 2019, CHADEMA boycotted the local government elections, citing the unfair mass disqualification of its candidates.
The regime attempted to systematically disenfranchise a specific group of voters through deregistration and denying overseas voter registration or voting. For example, in August 2024, the regime issued a government notice attempting to delist 11 wards, 25 villages, and 96 sub-villages in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the voter registers, thereby removing voting eligibility from dissenting Maasai indigenous communities who had been actively mobilising and contesting state policy in Ngorongoro. Despite a High Court suspension, “soft” disenfranchisement persisted, as the INEC shifted the registration of roughly 40,000 Ngorongoro voters to Msomera, over 370 miles away, rather than restoring local voting access. In parallel, the regime maintains a ban on overseas voting, which effectively excludes a politically outspoken diaspora widely associated with opposition activism and dissent.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Regime authorities deploy restrictive legal and regulatory frameworks, including administrative suspensions, deregistration, account freezes, licensing threats, and punitive compliance enforcement, while exercising discretionary control over media and digital spaces through content bans, platform disruptions, and internet shutdowns. It relies on arrests, prosecutions, and prolonged pre-trial detention to intimidate critics, uses public-order and security laws to ban assemblies, criminalize protest activity, and carry out mass arrests, and employs abductions, torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances against dissidents.
Authorities have unfairly shut down major independent, dissenting organizations by deploying an arsenal of draconian laws, most notably the 2019 Non-Governmental Organisations (Amendments) Regulation and the 2016 Media Services Act (MSA), and enforcing them through blanket bans, administrative suspensions, account freezes, deregistration, and compliance measures. For example, the regime banned the independent newspaper Mawio from 2017 to 2022 under the Media Services Act after it reported on two former presidents’ alleged links to mining misconduct. In 2020, the bank accounts of the Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition were frozen for alleged noncompliance with government reporting requirements, forcing the organization to suspend its election observation activities. In June 2025, the regime, through the Registrar of Societies, revoked the registration and ordered the closure of Glory of Christ Church and its more than 2000 affiliated branches, following public criticism of human rights abuses by its leader, politician Josephat Gwajima.
The regime has systematically used regulatory censorship and draconian laws to suppress critical media and online content. For example, the Media Services Act grants the executive cabinet sweeping authority to summarily ban media content, and imposes prison terms of up to six years and fines for various offenses, such as publishing false news, distributing seditious content, and publishing false information likely to cause alarm or disturb the peace. In September 2021, the regime enforced a law to slap a month-long suspension on the private newspaper Raia Mwema for critical coverage of authorities. This followed a series of publication bans on newspapers dating back to the Magufuli era, notably a five-year ban on Mawio newspaper imposed in 2017 for its reporting on two former presidents’ alleged links to mining misconduct. The regime also enforced the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content Regulations), which gave the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) sweeping licensing powers over online content. In October 2024, TCRA temporarily banned the online editions of three major newspapers—The Citizen, Mwananchi, and Mwanaspoti—for publishing an animation critical of the president, which highlighted rising cases of abductions and disappearances in the country. In September 2025, TCRA blocked access to online discussion community JamiiForums and suspended its licence, accusing the platform of publishing content that “misleads the public,” “defames” the president, and undermines national unity.
In addition, the regime seriously intimidates political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public. In September 2024, the police assaulted and detained eight journalists for covering a banned protest, and a 2024 survey found that half of journalists in Tanzania had been threatened, harassed, or assaulted by authorities. Similarly, senior opposition leaders such as Tundu Lissu, Freeman Mbowe, Zitto Kabwe, and John Heche have been repeatedly arrested, detained, and prosecuted on politically motivated charges—including treason and terrorism—and subjected to lengthy pre-trial detention. In 2023, lawyer Boniface Mwabukusi and activist Mdude Nyagali—later joined by diplomat Willibrod Slaa—were arrested and charged with treason after criticizing a Tanzania–UAE port deal.
The regime seriously and unfairly represses dissenting protests by using public order and security laws to ban dissenting demonstrations, criminalize protest activity, and violently crack down on and arrest protesters, with repression intensifying pre- and post-elections. In late 2024, authorities sharply escalated repression of peaceful assembly, as at least 375 senior leaders and supporters of the main opposition party CHADEMA, including Freeman Mbowe and Tundu Lissu, were arbitrarily detained. Subsequently, President Samia Suluhu Hassan publicly warned that demonstrations would not be tolerated, after which the same leaders and other party members were re-arrested to prevent a planned protest against alleged killings and enforced disappearances. This intensified further in the 2025 post-election period, when security forces detained more than 2000 protesters and charged at least 240 individuals with treason.
The regime seriously and unfairly censors dissenting speech. Public figures and ordinary citizens who criticize the regime or express dissent are frequently detained, prosecuted, and imprisoned. For example, in November 2025, authorities imprisoned pastor Godfrey Malisa on treason charges over his publication on his YouTube channel of a video calling for the resignation of President Samia for overseeing security forces’ killing of protesters after the election. In July 2024, portrait artist Shadrack Chaula was convicted of spreading false information and fined for posting a viral video in which he burned a portrait ofthe president. Political blogger Japhet Matarra was released from prison in July 2024 after serving more than a year of a five-year sentence over posts on X on the alleged personal fortunes of former Tanzanian presidents. In May 2025, authorities blocked access to X following widespread online criticism of extrajudicial actions and human rights violations. They later imposed a five-day nationwide internet shutdown during the general election. They had previously restricted access during the 2020 election by deliberately disrupting Twitter, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
Authorities have forcibly disappeared dissidents or attempted to do so through abductions and enforced disappearances. A pattern of abductions, enforced disappearances carried out by plainclothes security agents often identifying as police officers, has targeted CHADEMA political activists, regime critics, and journalists. For example, in June 2024, regime agents abducted Edgar Mwakabela (known as Sativa), a social media influencer and activist. He was found alive but severely tortured with a head gunshot wound. In May 2025, regime agents abducted and tortured Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire and Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi. Multiple survivors of abductions identified senior police official Faustine Mafwele as responsible for their kidnapping and torture. Human rights activists have documented over 200 cases of enforced disappearance between 2019 and 2025.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have systematically contributed to the killing of dissidents or attempted to commit these crimes. In May 2025, unknown assailants attempted to murder Tanzanian Catholic Church leader Charles Kitima over his public condemnations of escalating repression of political dissent ahead of the October presidential elections. In September 2024, senior CHADEMA figure Ally Kibao was found dead with signs of torture after having been abducted. President Samia publicly condemned the murder, but no investigation was ever carried out, adding to a culture of impunity for violence against regime opponents. In August 2017, a bomb exploded at the office of Fatma Karume, a lawyer of Tundu Lissu, after she publicly criticized Magufuli. A few days later, unknown gunmen shot CHADEMA leader Tundu Lissu 17 times weeks after he publicly called Magufuli “a petty dictator.”
The regime has systematically engaged in, or enabled, transnational repression against dissidents abroad. In July 2025, Tanzanian security forces detained, tortured, and deported Kenyan activist Mwabili Mwagodi in cross-border collusion with Kenyan authorities. In January 2025, Kenya-based Tanzanian activist Maria Sarungi escaped from a brief abduction by Kenyan police officers seeking to forcefully return her to Tanzania. In November 2025, Tanzanian Attorney General Hamza Johari announced the regime’s intent to seek to extradite prominent U.S.-based activist Mangi Kimambi.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. In Tanzania’s political system, an imperial presidency tops a powerful executive, which subordinates the other branches of government, and with CCM’s decades of entrenchment in control of all state institutions, there is no meaningful check to executive power. Despite occasionally entertaining challenges to executive action, Tanzanian courts have largely failed to check the regime’s efforts to undermine electoral competition, uphold restrictive election laws, and dismiss petitions on voter suppression, opposition harassment, and candidate disqualification.
Courts systematically and unfairly failed to check the regime’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition. Article 41(7) of Tanzania’s constitution strips courts of the power to review or overturn a presidential election, shielding the executive from any legal contestation of presidential poll results. Courts have systematically failed to check the regime on electoral matters. For example, in October 2025, the High Court dismissed opposition leader Luhaga Mpina’s petition seeking to overturn INEC’s disqualification of his presidential candidacy. In 2019, the Court of Appeal upheld the appointment of presidentially-appointed District Executive Directors as Returning Officers in elections, ruling against a petition filed by human rights activist Bob Chacha Wangwe. For example, the High Court, in June 2025, issued a 14-day injunction prohibiting CHADEMA from campaigning amid an internal dispute partially orchestrated by the ruling CCM’s efforts to weaken CHADEMA. The High Court dismissed a petition by three citizens contesting the regime’s decision to assign the supervision of the November 2024 local government elections to the Minister of State in the President’s Office for Regional Administration and Local Government instead of the constitutionally mandated INEC.
Courts systematically and unfairly fail to check or enable the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Courts have overwhelmingly dismissed civil society’s strategic litigation against repressive legislation passed in the Magufuli era. For example, in 2017, the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the constitutionality of Sections 32 and 38 of the Cybercrimes Act, which gave police unlimited, warrantless power of search and seizure. In January 2019, the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content Regulations), which gave the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) sweeping licensing powers over online content.
Judges have systematically allowed public prosecutors to charge regime opponents and critics with politically-motivated capital offenses such as treason and terrorism or other non-bailable offenses such as money laundering for peaceful exercise of freedom of speech or assembly, while failing to check the executive on violations of the accused’s rights to a fair trial. Victims of abusive prosecutions and prolonged pre-trial detention include leading prominent journalist Erick Kabendera—who endured seven months of incarceration on remand on baseless charges of money laundering in retaliation for his investigations on public corruption involving late President Magufuli—and former CHADEMA leader Freeman Mbowe—who was held on remand for eight months on politically-motivated terrorism financing charges for calling for constitutional reforms. More recently, in January 2024, retired diplomat Willibrod Slaa was held on remand for 49 days on baseless charges of treason for criticizing a Tanzania-UAE port deal. Since April 2025, the High Court’s ongoing trial of Tundu Lissu has been marked by prolonged delays. The Court has failed to remedy violations of Lissu’s rights to a fair trial, such as prison authorities’ denying him privacy in his meetings with his lawyers.
The regime has systematically undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the regime are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. Courts have so overwhelmingly dismissed legal challenges to laws and policies favoring the regime that citizens and civil society have resorted to seeking redress in international and regional courts in Tanzania, including the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) and the East African Court of Justice (EACJ). In March 2019, the EACJ ruled that the Media Services Act of 2016 was unconstitutional, but the regime ignored the ruling. Later that year, in November, Tanzania withdrew from the AfCHPR, blocking citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) from accessing the court for human rights grievances.
Members of the judicial branch, who act contrary to governing authority interests, or who are perceived as a threat to the governing authority, faced governing authority retaliation. The regime holds sway over the judiciary through executive control of its budget, presidential authority to appoint judges to the High Court and Court of Appeal, and the power to dismiss the Chief Justice at will. Ironically, in July 2023, the High Court ruled against a petition arguing that giving the president such powers undermines judicial independence.
HRF classifies Tanzania as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The United Republic of Tanzania is a unitary state formed by the union of Tanganyika and the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago. The Head of State, Samia Suluhu Hassan, assumed the presidency in March 2021 following the death of President John Magufuli. Following independence in 1961, mainland Tanganyika was ruled by the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) until 1977, when TANU formally merged with Zanzibar’s Afro-Shirazi Party to form Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Despite formally transitioning the country to a multi-party democracy in 1992, CCM has largely maintained the one-party state institutional and legal framework to maintain absolute dominance of the political landscape. Since 2015, Tanzania has experienced an acceleration of CCM’s authoritarian power consolidation.
Elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime has unfairly barred a mainstream opposition party and candidate from competing in elections, seriously undermined independent electoral oversight, skewed the electoral playing field so much so that it won with a very high vote share, engaged in significant voting irregularities and electoral fraud, and hindered a mainstream opposition party and candidate’s electoral campaign.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime enforces an arsenal of draconian laws dating from the era of formal one-party rule, as well as more restrictive legislation from the Magufuli era, to stifle dissent. It suspends or bans major dissenting organizations, manipulates media coverage in its favor, seriously intimidates regime critics, unfairly represses dissenting protests, and abuses vague laws to silence dissent. Opposition figures and critics have suffered arbitrary detentions, abductions, beatings, and deaths.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. In Tanzania’s political system, an imperial presidency tops a powerful executive, which subordinates the other branches of government, and with CCM’s decades of entrenchment in control of all state institutions, there is no meaningful check to executive power. While Tanzanian courts have occasionally ruled on challenges to executive action, their interventions have been narrow, inconsistently enforced, and ultimately insufficient to prevent the regime from repressing criticism, undermining electoral competition, or weakening accountability mechanisms.
Elections in Tanzania are a sham to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. Since the advent of multi-party democracy in 1992, elections have not been competitive, with the ruling CCM claiming victory by wide margins in all seven consecutive general elections. The regime has systematically undermined electoral competition by disqualifying key rivals, suppressing opposition campaigns through arrests and assembly restrictions, partisan electoral oversight, and hindering independent monitors, leading to opposition boycotts.
The ruling CCM party has repeatedly and unfairly barred a mainstream opposition party and candidates from competing in elections by using legal and administrative barriers to exclude key rivals. In April 2025, opposition leader Tundu Lissu was effectively barred from participating in the electoral process through arrest and treason charges for advocating for electoral reforms. Additionally, the Independent National Election Commission (INEC), which is subservient to CCM, banned his party, the Party for Democracy and Development (Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo: CHADEMA), from the ballot after CHADEMA refused to sign an unfair and restrictive electoral code of conduct. Weeks before the September 2025 election, the regime disqualified Luhaga Mpina of ACT-Wazalendo for alleged procedural noncompliance with the nomination process. This continued a pattern from the Magufuli era: in the 2020 election, the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) disqualified 57 legislative aspirants and 642 local council candidates from the main opposition party, CHADEMA, for alleged irregularities in their nomination forms.
Authorities have unfairly and significantly hindered a real, mainstream opposition party and candidates’ electoral campaign through the arrest and prosecution of opposition leaders and candidates, restrictions on assembly and rallies, and the selective enforcement of public order and electoral laws. Since 2016, when President Magufuli imposed an effective ban on opposition rallies, restrictions on opposition campaigns have continued under the current president, who has violently suppressed CHADEMA political meetings, arrested its leaders, and publicly urged the military in January 2024 to prepare for possible intervention in the 2025 elections. Ahead of the 2025 election, authorities arrested and detained at least 107 CHADEMA party leaders, including senior figures like Tundu Lissu, during a crackdown on planned political meetings and rallies, as police arbitrarily halted opposition assemblies under public-order laws.
The regime has seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. CCM exerts overwhelming partisan control of electoral oversight through executive dominance over the INEC electoral management agency, restrictions on domestic and international observers, and the absence of effective judicial review of presidential election results. For example, the President has the discretion to appoint the President and Vice President of INEC, and in February 2024, CCM lawmakers passed a new measure allowing the President to appoint five out of nine INEC commissioners. Another measure allows the appointment of presidentially appointed district executive directors as poll supervisors, effectively giving the President influence over the entire election process. Article 41(7) of the constitution blocks any legal challenges to presidential election results released by the INEC, effectively precluding any judicial review of the INEC’s determinations. In 2025, the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) operated under restrictions imposed by the regime, and opposition party agents were barred from entering polling stations to observe opening procedures. Observers were also prevented from monitoring the closing and counting of votes. During the 2020 election, the INEC refused to grant some independent NGOs permission to observe the elections and conduct voter education.
Moreover, the ruling party has engaged in significant voting irregularities and electoral fraud. The 2025 general election was blatantly manipulated through ballot stuffing and tally inconsistencies. For example, the AUEOM directly observed several irregularities, including ballot stuffing at multiple polling stations, instances where voters were permitted to vote more than once without proper verification, and inconsistencies in vote tallying. The 2020 and 2025 elections are widely regarded as the most blatantly fraudulent in the country’s history.
In all of the country’s multi-party polls since 1992, the ruling party has skewed the electoral playing field to such an extent that it has consistently claimed victory with a very high vote share, exceeding 70%. In the 2025 election, INEC coronated President Samia Suluhu Hassan with an implausible 97.66% of the votes. It claimed that the ruling party swept 270 out of 272 directly elected parliamentary seats. Official results claimed that President Samia received a historic record of 31.9 million votes despite opposition boycotts and observer-reported low voter turnout nationwide. In the 2020 election, which occurred in an atmosphere of fear and violent repression, CCM incumbent Magufuli claimed 84% of the presidential vote while the party claimed 256 of 264 directly elected parliamentary seats.
Since 2015, the main opposition party, CHADEMA, has threatened or boycotted elections to protest the lack of free and fair competition, highlighting issues such as the absence of electoral reforms, an electoral field and framework overwhelmingly skewed in favor of CCM, and repression of the opposition. For example, in the lead-up to 2025, the opposition steadily escalated its “no reform, no election” position, ultimately resorting to non-participation once exclusion and disqualification of its candidate and political party rendered meaningful competition impossible. Similarly, in 2019, CHADEMA boycotted the local government elections, citing the unfair mass disqualification of its candidates.
The regime attempted to systematically disenfranchise a specific group of voters through deregistration and denying overseas voter registration or voting. For example, in August 2024, the regime issued a government notice attempting to delist 11 wards, 25 villages, and 96 sub-villages in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the voter registers, thereby removing voting eligibility from dissenting Maasai indigenous communities who had been actively mobilising and contesting state policy in Ngorongoro. Despite a High Court suspension, “soft” disenfranchisement persisted, as the INEC shifted the registration of roughly 40,000 Ngorongoro voters to Msomera, over 370 miles away, rather than restoring local voting access. In parallel, the regime maintains a ban on overseas voting, which effectively excludes a politically outspoken diaspora widely associated with opposition activism and dissent.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Regime authorities deploy restrictive legal and regulatory frameworks, including administrative suspensions, deregistration, account freezes, licensing threats, and punitive compliance enforcement, while exercising discretionary control over media and digital spaces through content bans, platform disruptions, and internet shutdowns. It relies on arrests, prosecutions, and prolonged pre-trial detention to intimidate critics, uses public-order and security laws to ban assemblies, criminalize protest activity, and carry out mass arrests, and employs abductions, torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances against dissidents.
Authorities have unfairly shut down major independent, dissenting organizations by deploying an arsenal of draconian laws, most notably the 2019 Non-Governmental Organisations (Amendments) Regulation and the 2016 Media Services Act (MSA), and enforcing them through blanket bans, administrative suspensions, account freezes, deregistration, and compliance measures. For example, the regime banned the independent newspaper Mawio from 2017 to 2022 under the Media Services Act after it reported on two former presidents’ alleged links to mining misconduct. In 2020, the bank accounts of the Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition were frozen for alleged noncompliance with government reporting requirements, forcing the organization to suspend its election observation activities. In June 2025, the regime, through the Registrar of Societies, revoked the registration and ordered the closure of Glory of Christ Church and its more than 2000 affiliated branches, following public criticism of human rights abuses by its leader, politician Josephat Gwajima.
The regime has systematically used regulatory censorship and draconian laws to suppress critical media and online content. For example, the Media Services Act grants the executive cabinet sweeping authority to summarily ban media content, and imposes prison terms of up to six years and fines for various offenses, such as publishing false news, distributing seditious content, and publishing false information likely to cause alarm or disturb the peace. In September 2021, the regime enforced a law to slap a month-long suspension on the private newspaper Raia Mwema for critical coverage of authorities. This followed a series of publication bans on newspapers dating back to the Magufuli era, notably a five-year ban on Mawio newspaper imposed in 2017 for its reporting on two former presidents’ alleged links to mining misconduct. The regime also enforced the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content Regulations), which gave the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) sweeping licensing powers over online content. In October 2024, TCRA temporarily banned the online editions of three major newspapers—The Citizen, Mwananchi, and Mwanaspoti—for publishing an animation critical of the president, which highlighted rising cases of abductions and disappearances in the country. In September 2025, TCRA blocked access to online discussion community JamiiForums and suspended its licence, accusing the platform of publishing content that “misleads the public,” “defames” the president, and undermines national unity.
In addition, the regime seriously intimidates political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public. In September 2024, the police assaulted and detained eight journalists for covering a banned protest, and a 2024 survey found that half of journalists in Tanzania had been threatened, harassed, or assaulted by authorities. Similarly, senior opposition leaders such as Tundu Lissu, Freeman Mbowe, Zitto Kabwe, and John Heche have been repeatedly arrested, detained, and prosecuted on politically motivated charges—including treason and terrorism—and subjected to lengthy pre-trial detention. In 2023, lawyer Boniface Mwabukusi and activist Mdude Nyagali—later joined by diplomat Willibrod Slaa—were arrested and charged with treason after criticizing a Tanzania–UAE port deal.
The regime seriously and unfairly represses dissenting protests by using public order and security laws to ban dissenting demonstrations, criminalize protest activity, and violently crack down on and arrest protesters, with repression intensifying pre- and post-elections. In late 2024, authorities sharply escalated repression of peaceful assembly, as at least 375 senior leaders and supporters of the main opposition party CHADEMA, including Freeman Mbowe and Tundu Lissu, were arbitrarily detained. Subsequently, President Samia Suluhu Hassan publicly warned that demonstrations would not be tolerated, after which the same leaders and other party members were re-arrested to prevent a planned protest against alleged killings and enforced disappearances. This intensified further in the 2025 post-election period, when security forces detained more than 2000 protesters and charged at least 240 individuals with treason.
The regime seriously and unfairly censors dissenting speech. Public figures and ordinary citizens who criticize the regime or express dissent are frequently detained, prosecuted, and imprisoned. For example, in November 2025, authorities imprisoned pastor Godfrey Malisa on treason charges over his publication on his YouTube channel of a video calling for the resignation of President Samia for overseeing security forces’ killing of protesters after the election. In July 2024, portrait artist Shadrack Chaula was convicted of spreading false information and fined for posting a viral video in which he burned a portrait ofthe president. Political blogger Japhet Matarra was released from prison in July 2024 after serving more than a year of a five-year sentence over posts on X on the alleged personal fortunes of former Tanzanian presidents. In May 2025, authorities blocked access to X following widespread online criticism of extrajudicial actions and human rights violations. They later imposed a five-day nationwide internet shutdown during the general election. They had previously restricted access during the 2020 election by deliberately disrupting Twitter, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
Authorities have forcibly disappeared dissidents or attempted to do so through abductions and enforced disappearances. A pattern of abductions, enforced disappearances carried out by plainclothes security agents often identifying as police officers, has targeted CHADEMA political activists, regime critics, and journalists. For example, in June 2024, regime agents abducted Edgar Mwakabela (known as Sativa), a social media influencer and activist. He was found alive but severely tortured with a head gunshot wound. In May 2025, regime agents abducted and tortured Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire and Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi. Multiple survivors of abductions identified senior police official Faustine Mafwele as responsible for their kidnapping and torture. Human rights activists have documented over 200 cases of enforced disappearance between 2019 and 2025.
Non-state actors with ties to the regime have systematically contributed to the killing of dissidents or attempted to commit these crimes. In May 2025, unknown assailants attempted to murder Tanzanian Catholic Church leader Charles Kitima over his public condemnations of escalating repression of political dissent ahead of the October presidential elections. In September 2024, senior CHADEMA figure Ally Kibao was found dead with signs of torture after having been abducted. President Samia publicly condemned the murder, but no investigation was ever carried out, adding to a culture of impunity for violence against regime opponents. In August 2017, a bomb exploded at the office of Fatma Karume, a lawyer of Tundu Lissu, after she publicly criticized Magufuli. A few days later, unknown gunmen shot CHADEMA leader Tundu Lissu 17 times weeks after he publicly called Magufuli “a petty dictator.”
The regime has systematically engaged in, or enabled, transnational repression against dissidents abroad. In July 2025, Tanzanian security forces detained, tortured, and deported Kenyan activist Mwabili Mwagodi in cross-border collusion with Kenyan authorities. In January 2025, Kenya-based Tanzanian activist Maria Sarungi escaped from a brief abduction by Kenyan police officers seeking to forcefully return her to Tanzania. In November 2025, Tanzanian Attorney General Hamza Johari announced the regime’s intent to seek to extradite prominent U.S.-based activist Mangi Kimambi.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. In Tanzania’s political system, an imperial presidency tops a powerful executive, which subordinates the other branches of government, and with CCM’s decades of entrenchment in control of all state institutions, there is no meaningful check to executive power. Despite occasionally entertaining challenges to executive action, Tanzanian courts have largely failed to check the regime’s efforts to undermine electoral competition, uphold restrictive election laws, and dismiss petitions on voter suppression, opposition harassment, and candidate disqualification.
Courts systematically and unfairly failed to check the regime’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition. Article 41(7) of Tanzania’s constitution strips courts of the power to review or overturn a presidential election, shielding the executive from any legal contestation of presidential poll results. Courts have systematically failed to check the regime on electoral matters. For example, in October 2025, the High Court dismissed opposition leader Luhaga Mpina’s petition seeking to overturn INEC’s disqualification of his presidential candidacy. In 2019, the Court of Appeal upheld the appointment of presidentially-appointed District Executive Directors as Returning Officers in elections, ruling against a petition filed by human rights activist Bob Chacha Wangwe. For example, the High Court, in June 2025, issued a 14-day injunction prohibiting CHADEMA from campaigning amid an internal dispute partially orchestrated by the ruling CCM’s efforts to weaken CHADEMA. The High Court dismissed a petition by three citizens contesting the regime’s decision to assign the supervision of the November 2024 local government elections to the Minister of State in the President’s Office for Regional Administration and Local Government instead of the constitutionally mandated INEC.
Courts systematically and unfairly fail to check or enable the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Courts have overwhelmingly dismissed civil society’s strategic litigation against repressive legislation passed in the Magufuli era. For example, in 2017, the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the constitutionality of Sections 32 and 38 of the Cybercrimes Act, which gave police unlimited, warrantless power of search and seizure. In January 2019, the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content Regulations), which gave the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) sweeping licensing powers over online content.
Judges have systematically allowed public prosecutors to charge regime opponents and critics with politically-motivated capital offenses such as treason and terrorism or other non-bailable offenses such as money laundering for peaceful exercise of freedom of speech or assembly, while failing to check the executive on violations of the accused’s rights to a fair trial. Victims of abusive prosecutions and prolonged pre-trial detention include leading prominent journalist Erick Kabendera—who endured seven months of incarceration on remand on baseless charges of money laundering in retaliation for his investigations on public corruption involving late President Magufuli—and former CHADEMA leader Freeman Mbowe—who was held on remand for eight months on politically-motivated terrorism financing charges for calling for constitutional reforms. More recently, in January 2024, retired diplomat Willibrod Slaa was held on remand for 49 days on baseless charges of treason for criticizing a Tanzania-UAE port deal. Since April 2025, the High Court’s ongoing trial of Tundu Lissu has been marked by prolonged delays. The Court has failed to remedy violations of Lissu’s rights to a fair trial, such as prison authorities’ denying him privacy in his meetings with his lawyers.
The regime has systematically undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the regime are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. Courts have so overwhelmingly dismissed legal challenges to laws and policies favoring the regime that citizens and civil society have resorted to seeking redress in international and regional courts in Tanzania, including the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) and the East African Court of Justice (EACJ). In March 2019, the EACJ ruled that the Media Services Act of 2016 was unconstitutional, but the regime ignored the ruling. Later that year, in November, Tanzania withdrew from the AfCHPR, blocking citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) from accessing the court for human rights grievances.
Members of the judicial branch, who act contrary to governing authority interests, or who are perceived as a threat to the governing authority, faced governing authority retaliation. The regime holds sway over the judiciary through executive control of its budget, presidential authority to appoint judges to the High Court and Court of Appeal, and the power to dismiss the Chief Justice at will. Ironically, in July 2023, the High Court ruled against a petition arguing that giving the president such powers undermines judicial independence.
