By. Isaac Christopher Lubogo (Sui Generis)
Prelude: The Return of the Bayonet in the Ballot Box
In the long arc of Tanzania’s political evolution, the 2025 presidential election stands as a moral crossroad — a referendum, not on candidates, but on the survival of Nyerere’s conscience in a republic now tempted by command politics.
The old liberator’s moral code — that power must serve, not subdue — is now being tested by an electoral atmosphere where the state’s machinery breathes heavier than the people’s will. The election has become less a contest of ideas and more a choreography of control; less a dialogue between citizens and more a monologue of incumbency.
This is not simply politics; it is the reconfiguration of Nyerere’s moral democracy into a security-managed order.
1. Samia Suluhu Hassan: The Continuity Candidate in a Security Cage
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, the flag bearer of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), stands today as the embodiment of what I earlier described as the managerial mode of governance — where stability is sold as democracy’s substitute.
Her rhetoric of utulivu, umoja na maendeleo (peace, unity, and development) echoes the post-Nyerere tradition of political paternalism — the state as caretaker, the citizen as child. Yet beneath that motherly posture lies a tightly woven security web that defines who may speak, who may organize, and who may compete.
Her administration’s approval by the National Electoral Commission while key opposition figures were disqualified or detained signals not merely incumbency advantage, but institutional capture — the militarization of legality.
The visible deployment of police and military during rallies and nomination days embodies the “security rationality” of the modern Tanzanian state: that order must precede freedom, and that controlled peace is better than noisy democracy.
Samia is, in effect, the civilian face of a securitized democracy — a system where moral legitimacy once grounded in Ujamaa has been replaced by managerial legitimacy grounded in control.
2. The Silencing of the Counter-Voice: The Opposition as the New Enemy
The exclusion of Tundu Lissu (CHADEMA) and Luhaga Mpina (ACT-Wazalendo) from the electoral race reveals the other side of this militarization.
When dissenters are not debated but detained, and when opposition becomes a crime of courage, the state has traded persuasion for intimidation.
This pattern perfectly fits what I earlier called “epistemic capture” — where even the language of law and order is bent to serve political consolidation.
CHADEMA’s disqualification under “procedural irregularities” masks a deliberate institutional strategy to eliminate unpredictable rivals.
Mpina’s removal on nomination technicalities illustrates how legalism becomes the camouflage of repression.
Lissu’s detention under treason charges completes the trinity of suppression: silence, exclusion, incarceration.
Thus, while the ballots will be counted, the voices were already discounted.
3. The Spirit of Nyerere and the Betrayal of His Republic
To decode this election through the moral lens of Mwalimu Nyerere is to confront a profound irony.
Nyerere built Tanzania on moral legitimacy, not fear. His rule was anchored on civic discipline through conscience, not compliance through command. He taught that a true republic is one where leadership listens before it orders.
Today, the opposite reigns: the government listens less, surveils more, and equates critique with subversion.
The seeds Nyerere planted — civic education, voluntary unity, ethical leadership — are being overshadowed by a governance culture that sanctifies stability even when it silences.
If Nyerere’s democracy was built on trust in the people, the new dispensation is built on distrust of the people — an ontological reversal of his moral project.
4. The Institutional Drift: CCM’s Long Shadow
The 2025 election is not about individuals alone; it is about a 60-year-old institution confronting its own mortality.
CCM, born of TANU’s liberation struggle, has mutated from a moral movement into a machinery of retention. Its relationship with the security apparatus is symbiotic — both thrive on control, both fear unpredictability.
This structural entanglement explains why Tanzania, despite its formal democracy, exhibits authoritarian reflexes:
The army and police are not neutral referees but guardians of continuity.
The legal system functions as an instrument of exclusion, ensuring political sanitization before competition.
The media and civil society, though freer under Samia than her predecessor, still operate within invisible fences of fear.
In short, CCM’s institutional DNA — once moral and developmental — has mutated into a doctrine of dominance disguised as stability.
5. Militarization as Political Philosophy
The militarization we observe is not only a tactical election strategy; it is now a philosophy of governance.
Its underlying creed is simple yet dangerous:
Order precedes liberty; power is the parent of peace.
This is the ideological reversal of Nyerere’s foundational wisdom that “without freedom, there is no true peace.”
The Tanzanian political class now seems convinced that democracy is too chaotic for development — that uniformed discipline must guide national destiny. It is an argument as seductive as it is fatal, for it replaces the citizen with the soldier, and the ballot with the baton.
6. Tanzania’s Democratic Mirror: The African Reflection
Tanzania’s election is not a local event; it is a continental parable.
It tells of a broader African paradox — where the liberators of yesterday have become the regulators of today. Across the continent, from Kampala to Kigali, from Luanda to Harare, liberation movements have evolved into instruments of security states.
They share the same logic: political continuity justified by the fear of instability.
And thus, militarization is not an accident — it is the last ideology of the liberation elite.
In Tanzania, the story unfolds with greater subtlety: no coups, no guns in the parliament, yet the quiet suffocation of civic space through bureaucratic control and selective legality — the “polite militarism” of the twenty-first century.
7. The Tanzanian People: Between Silence and Sentience
Yet amidst this choreography of control, the Tanzanian people remain awake. The youth, particularly, are growing restless. They are the generation that reads Nyerere’s speeches online but lives in a republic that does not reflect them.
They sense the irony of a state that preaches peace but fears participation; that venerates Nyerere yet violates his values.
Their silence, though strategic, is not consent. It is the patience of a people whose moral endurance is being tested by institutional arrogance.
When this patience runs out — as it did in Sudan, Senegal, and Burkina Faso — Tanzania’s political managers will learn that fear is not stability; it is only silence waiting to erupt.
8. The Philosophical Verdict: From Nyerere’s Light to the Shadow of Control
The Tanzanian 2025 election is therefore not merely a contest for power — it is a referendum on the soul of African democracy.
Will the continent follow Nyerere’s path of moral leadership grounded in civic virtue, or the path of militarized continuity grounded in fear?
The ruling party’s insistence on control represents the fear of losing moral legitimacy. The opposition’s suppression represents the failure of institutional neutrality. And the people’s muted voice represents democracy’s unfinished business — the distance between the governed and the government.
If this pattern consolidates, Tanzania will no longer be the moral compass of Africa but its cautionary tale.
9. The Way Forward: Rekindling the Flame
To return to Nyerere’s republic, Tanzania must demilitarize its democracy — not by disbanding its army, but by reawakening its civic spirit.
Let the security forces protect rights, not regulate them.
Let the law serve liberty, not legality of control.
Let CCM rediscover moral legitimacy through reform, not repression.
Let citizenship reclaim its voice, for the silence of the governed is the music of tyranny.
Africa’s future will not be secured by uniforms but by conscience.
10. Epilogue: Between the Uniform and the Voice
If Nyerere’s ghost could walk through the streets of Dar es Salaam today, he might smile at the peace but weep at its price.
For what he built through moral persuasion is now being maintained through institutional intimidation.
The Tanzanian election of 2025 will thus be remembered not for who won, but for what was lost — the sacred equilibrium between power and people, between the soldier and the citizen, between order and freedom.
And when history writes this chapter, it may ask:
“Did Tanzania guard its peace — or did it imprison it?”
For in the end, democracy dies not when soldiers march, but when citizens forget that their silence can be mistaken for consent.
