Tanzania’s president claims to have won 98 per cent of the vote in an election six weeks ago but she is so worried about popular unrest that she called off Independence Day this week.
Who fears to speak of 98?
Tanzania’s government cancelled official Independence Day events on Tuesday and journalists described the streets of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam as largely deserted apart from a heavy presence of police and soldiers. The government’s warning that any protest would be treated as a coup attempt helped to ensure that there were no major demonstrations.
The opposition have good reason to be afraid after a brutal crackdown on dissent surrounding presidential and parliamentary elections on October 29th that saw president Samia Suluhu Hassan re-elected with almost 98 per cent of the vote. United Nations human rights experts said at least 700 people were victims of extrajudicial killings but opposition activists say that the police and intelligence services’ shoot-to-kill policy may have killed more than 3,000.
In the months leading up to the election, opposition leaders and government critics were arrested, abducted by police or disappeared. Tundu Lissu, the leader of the main opposition party Chadema, has been in jail since April facing a treason charge that could carry the death penalty.
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Ireland was among the first countries to back calls for an independent inquiry into the violence surrounding the elections and the European Parliament passed a non-binding motion to suspend €156 million in European Union aid to Tanzania. The United States said last week that the Tanzanian government’s actions raised “grave concerns about the direction of our bilateral relationship” and Tanzania’s reliability as a partner.
At a meeting in Dar es Salaam last week, Hassan dismissed the widespread disaffection with her government among young Tanzanians, describing the hundreds of thousands of young protesters as unpatriotic and misled by foreign actors. And she brushed off criticism from Europe and the US.
“Do they still think they’re still our masters, our colonisers? Why, because of the little money they give us?” she said.
Those who have questioned October’s elections include the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union, and the presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa stayed away from Hassan’s inauguration. But Tanzania’s close ties to China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates among others mean that Hassan has other options if the western powers go cold on her.
The relationship with China has been close since the early 1960s, first as a defence partner and now as the country’s largest trading partner and the biggest single provider of foreign direct investment. Tanzania has huge deposits of nickel, cobalt, graphite, uranium and rare earth minerals, as well as gold, diamonds, coal and natural gas.
The US and the EU have been promoting the Lobito Corridor as a route to transport minerals from Central Africa to Angola’s Atlantic coast. But China is expanding its investment in rail links from the central copper belt through Tanzania to the port of Dar es Salaam as a route to the Indian Ocean.
Western companies maintain huge interests in Tanzania, and Norway’s Equinor, Dutch-based Shell and the US oil giant Exxon-Mobil are finalising a $42 billion (€36 billion) deal with Hassan to exploit vast natural gas reserves off the southern coast. And the competition for mineral resources that is driving a 21st century scramble for Africa gives a resource-rich country like Tanzania more strategic importance than ever.
But Hassan faces a young, increasingly well-educated and independent-minded population in Tanzania that is impatient for social justice, opportunity and a share of the benefits of the country’s resources. Her police and soldiers made sure these young people could not raise their voices on Independence Day this week but they are unlikely to remain silent for long.
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