DM168

MAGUFULI DICTATORSHIP

Tundu Lissu flees amid Tanzania turmoil

Tundu Lissu flees amid Tanzania turmoil
Tundu Lissu (Photo:Edge)

Opposition leader ‘kicked out’ as Magafuli’s ruling party moves to dispense with term limits.

First published in DM168

On Tuesday the Tanzanian opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, boarded a plane to Addis Ababa en route to Belgium and slipped back into exile. In just a few brief months he had galvanised Tanzania in an electric campaign that had taken him from one end of the country to the other, only to see the election stolen in an act of brazen theft.

With security forces on his tail and fearing for his life, he sought refuge in the German Embassy from where he negotiated an exit to return to Belgium.

Now, back where he had started three months before, a defiant Lissu told Daily Maverick 168: “I didn’t lose the election; I was literally kicked out of the competition!”

Tanzania’s other opposition leaders were counting the costs of taking part in a Tanzanian-style democratic process. Many were on the run or in jail.

Former MP Godbless Lema sought asylum in Kenya with his family. Ismail Jussa, the genial and hard-working frontman for the ACT-Wazalendo party in Zanzibar, was in hospital in Nairobi having his broken shoulder, leg and other broken bones operated on.

His colleague, Ahmed Nassor Mazrui, deputy secretary-general of the party, was reported to have “disappeared”.

 

Photos: Tundu Lisu on the campaign trail (Photos supplied)

Reports surfaced of an offer to release him if the party would accept the rigged results and join a government of national unity with the islands as junior partner.

Fatma Karume, the human rights lawyer disbarred by the government and granddaughter of one of the co-founders of Tanzania, wrote that using Mazrui as ransom showed that “we are dealing with people who are evil to the very core of their beings”.

In the final act of returning Tanzania to a one-party state, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, which allegedly won 98% of the seats in parliament, appeared to be moving to dispense with term limits that could install President John Pombe Magufuli as president for life.

Magufuli will be relieved that he has exiled the troublesome Lissu – for the second time.

Before the election campaign, Lissu had spent more than two years in Belgium undergoing multiple operations and recovering from 17 bullet wounds that pierced his body when he returned to his home from parliament in Dodoma one September day in 2017.

Belgium may be a cold exile but not as unwelcoming as it might seem.

Thanks to its African diaspora communities, Belgian society is changing. A quarter of the players in the national soccer team are of African descent and stars like Romelu Lukaku allowed Belgium to reach the semifinals of the Fifa World Cup in 2018.

A square in central Brussels has been renamed Patrice Lumumba, after the Congolese leader murdered in 1961 with the connivance of Belgian officials. Statues of King Leopold II, whose genocidal colonial reign led to the death of millions in the Congo, have been daubed with graffiti and removed from public display throughout Belgium.

And Lissu is now only a few hours by train away from The Hague, seat of the International Criminal Court.

It is here where he plans to continue his campaign against the human rights abuses of Magafuli’s government.

“We have to tell the world what happened – and what to do,” said Lissu. “Things are going to get much worse. Magufuli will be encouraged by the turn of events, so we have to prepare for a long slog.”

The demise of democracy in Tanzania happened without objection from any of its African neighbours or regional bodies, which did not want to be seen as trampling on Tanzanian sovereignty.

The East African Community (EAC) observer mission put out an anodyne statement that made the point that the elections were peaceful. Well, of course they were, because Tanzanians took the process seriously and believed that someone was going to count their votes. It was only in the aftermath that security force violence was unleashed.

SADC’s mission likewise ducked the main problem of massive vote rigging.

The African Union (AU) observer mission under former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has so far not uttered a word. Lissu says that members of the AU mission had told him that Jonathan, who had stepped down as president after he lost the 2015 election, was appalled what he had witnessed.

“We had three meetings with them. They were disappointed by what they saw and with the EAC mission’s statement, as they had witnessed the cheating together.”

Lissu said members of the AU mission had shown him pictures of boxes overflowing with marked ballots before polling started.

The regional organisations did not just turn a blind eye to the subversion of the democratic process: they actively helped cover it up.

In so doing they handed impunity to what amounts to an increasingly lawless regime.

Lissu says the several months in which he campaigned across the country allowed him to observe and listen to people who told him of atrocities that had not been reported on because they happened in Tanzania’s deep rural areas or because of the outlawing of independent journalism and social media.

He is especially concerned about what he describes as the targeted killings of hundreds of people across the Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika Basins where harsh restrictions have been imposed on local fishermen that have destroyed the livelihoods of whole communities. He also has information on killings in the areas adjoining the national parks, especially the western Serengeti, where dozens of people in pastoral communities bordering the park have been shot because their cattle were found grazing in the park.

He has also gathered information on how the regime uses the legal system to rob business people. “They use the charges of economic crimes, which are non-bailable offences, to extort people: if you pay up you can go free.

“The government is operating like a criminal mafia protection racket.”

Lissu is obviously deeply disappointed, even traumatised, by the process. He had returned to Tanzania despite ongoing threats against his life because he believed the country should be given a chance at democratic change. He has no doubt that he won the election overwhelmingly.

Even now he does not believe the space for political action has been completely closed. “We need to support civil society.” He now wants to do what he can to get the international community to take this seriously.

“Tanzania should not be left to go the way of Zimbabwe. The implications not only to the country and its people – but to the entire Great Lakes region – [are] horrendous.

“Our friends in and outside Africa have to take a position against this criminal regime.” DM168

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