Nyerere must be turning in his grave over situation in Tanzania

Monday, May 19, 2025, will forever be etched in my memory. Not because of violence or chaos but because of the cold, quiet efficiency of repression. On that day, I was detained and subsequently deported from Tanzania alongside Chief Justice Emeritus Willy Mutunga and fellow activist Hanifa Adan. We had travelled there to stand in solidarity with human rights lawyers and to witness first-hand the struggles of those fighting for expansion of democratic space in the region. Instead, we were swept into the tightening grip of authoritarianism under President Samia Suluhu.

From the moment we were detained, we were treated as enemies of the state. No reason was given. No explanation offered. Just silent instructions from unseen powers. Our phones were eyed suspiciously. At one point, an officer warned me against filming and threatened to confiscate my device to delete the images and videos I had captured. I looked him straight in the eye and told him, “Dare do that. You will know I’m Kenyan, not Tanzanian.” He backed off and walked away. That moment spoke volumes. Not about me but about the silent, simmering tension between a people yearning for freedom and a regime desperate to silence even the whispers of dissent.

Yet, amidst the repression, we encountered humanity. The immigration officers who held us at the airport treated us with respect. They apologised repeatedly for what was happening. They offered us tea, not once but multiple times, in a gesture of politeness that tugged at the heart. We declined respectfully, unsure of the safety of anything we consumed under such opaque circumstances. They understood and in their eyes we saw the shame of men and women carrying out orders they did not believe in.

After hours of waiting, detained but never charged, isolated but never explained to, we were finally told we were being deported. “Our country is not yet at a place of open governance like Kenya,” one officer confided. “Here, we dare not speak of our president negatively, let alone throw a shoe at her.” It was a statement of resignation, of fear but also of hope because in the same breath, they admitted, “We know we have a long way to go. The world is changing, and we must not be left behind.” In the spirit of the East African Jumuiya, they acknowledged the need to catch up.

How tragic it is then, that Tanzania, the land once synonymous with freedom, has come to this?

Under Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Tanzania was a sanctuary for the oppressed. In the 1960s and '70s, the country welcomed liberation fighters from across Africa. It offered refuge to Robert Mugabe during the struggle for Zimbabwe’s independence. It was a temporary home for Nelson Mandela and the ANC in exile. It gave shelter to Kenya’s own Prof Alamin Mazrui when he was hounded by the Moi regime for demanding democratic reforms. University of Dar es Salaam, where the likes of Willy Mutunga, Miguna Miguna and Issa Shivji pursued legal studies, was the ideological training ground for revolutionaries determined to end tyranny in their homelands.

Today, that same Tanzania is unrecognisable.

Opposition leader Tundu Lissu, a man who has already survived an assassination attempt, is now facing the maximum penalty - death. His crime? Daring to challenge the ruling elite. Speaking truth to power. Asking uncomfortable questions. That this is even possible in 2025 speaks volumes about the decay in Tanzania’s democratic institutions.

But the rot does not stop at Tanzania’s borders. Across East Africa, we are witnessing the coordinated rise of state sanctioned authoritarianism. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni continues to crush dissent with iron-fisted brutality. Opposition figures like Bobi Wine, Stella Nyanzi and Kizza Besigye have continuously faced arrest, torture and exile. Civil liberties are but a memory. In Kenya, the facade of democracy is wearing thin. Opposition politicians like Peter Salasya and Rigathi Gachagua are hunted daily and threatened with or taken to court. Human rights defenders are increasingly targeted through court cases loaded with trumped-up charges. Arrests, surveillance and threats have become routine tools to silence dissenting voices.

In all these countries, the tactics are disturbingly similar: Enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, trumped up charges, media gagging and the stifling of civil society.

But what is perhaps more heartbreaking than the brutality itself is the apathy that follows it.

When people are abducted or killed for speaking up, when activists vanish without a trace, when courtrooms become political battlegrounds, the reaction from those in power is chilling. In Tanzania, Suluhu’s response to the disappearance and brutal killing of 69-year-old Mohamed Aly Kibao in September 2024 was infamously dismissive. She commented, “People die every day.” As though justice was optional. As though life was disposable. As though voices crying out for dignity were mere noises to be ignored.

How did we get here? How did the birthplace of regional liberation stoop so low?

The answer lies not in the people of Tanzania whom I found to be among the most dignified, calm and respectful individuals but in the leadership that has forgotten its roots. Leaders who act as if they own the country, not serve it. Leaders who forget that power, in a true democracy, is borrowed, not inherited.

And so, we must raise our voices. We must shout loudly and without apology.

As East Africans, if we can raise our voices for Palestine, for Myanmar, for Sudan and for Congo, we must raise them even louder when one of our own are being oppressed. Silence, in the face of tyranny, is complicity.

This is not just about Tanzania. It is about the soul of East Africa. It is about whether we choose fear or freedom, repression or resistance, silence or solidarity.

Mwalimu Nyerere must be turning in his grave. But his legacy is not dead—it is only waiting to be reignited.

And so, we resist. Not out of bitterness but out of hope. Not because we are enemies of the state but because we are friends of freedom.

Let history remember that we spoke. Let it remember that we stood. Let it remember that even when we were told to leave, we did not walk away quietly. The clutches of authoritarianism may tighten but so too does our resolve.