DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania
Tanzanian authorities have put opposition leader Tundu Lissu on trial for treason, a charge that carries the death penalty — but it is not the first time that the country’s apparatus of repression has tried to kill him.
During a visit to a Tanzanian game park last year, an official pointed out an unruly lion to President Samia Hassan. “Does this troublesome animal have a name?” she asked. “If not, we should call him Tundu Lissu.”
It is doubtful that Samia had in mind the phrase uttered by the English King Henry II in 1170 – “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” – which led a group of knights to storm Canterbury Cathedral and murder Archbishop Thomas Beckett during evening vespers.
After all, that was one of history’s most infamous incitements to political assassination, the plot of TS Eliot’s celebrated drama, Murder in the Cathedral.
Lissu is the leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema).
Samia was also probably unaware that Lissu’s family, pastoralists from the Singida region of north-central Tanzania, have a long history of keeping lions away from their cattle.
Lissu’s great-grandfather, Mughwai Murro Munyangu, even killed a lion with a spear and, years later, his father, Lissu Mughwai, shot a lion with a locally made gun.
But, fair enough: for many Tanzanians, especially the youth, Tundu Lissu has the heart of a lion.
He is a fearless champion for justice, democracy and the underdog.
He will be back in court this week in Dar es Salaam, facing charges of treason, a capital crime, accused of obstructing the elections that will be held in October.
Lissu is not alone in facing political repression in what was once one of Africa’s better democracies, but which spiralled downward after the election of “The Bulldozer” John Pombe Magufuli a decade ago.
Jeff Smith, executive director of pro-democracy non-profit Vanguard Africa based in Washington, DC, says that while Lissu’s case has a high profile, people outside the country have not come to terms with the level of repression in Tanzania.
“Opposition members can’t hold private meetings in their homes,” he says. “And when it does happen, attendees are beaten unconscious, they’re hunted down by authorities, they’re arrested on frivolous charges.
“It really seems all steps are being taken to muzzle the opposition ahead of the October election. The regime knows they can’t win fairly and are doing everything in their power to steal the election before it happens.”
A smaller opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, is still running in the 28 October election and has nominated a CCM defector, Luhaga Mpina, as its presidential candidate. ACT-Wazalendo is particularly strong in Zanzibar.
But the alliance of intelligence services and law enforcement operating under the aegis of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) has focused special attention on Lissu, who has suffered years of criminal prosecution, beatings and incarceration.
They have gone to such lengths to get him out of the way, not only because he is a popular figure, but because he cannot be bought.
This is seen as a fundamental threat to the CCM, which has been in power since independence in December 1961, the longest unbroken run in Africa.
Like others that have been in power too long, the CCM stands accused of having become a patronage machine captured by wealthy businesspeople and foreign money.
In September 2017, Lissu, then the opposition’s justice spokesperson, was shot at his residence inside the parliamentary compound in Dodoma.
He had 16 AK-47 bullets pumped into him by masked assailants who left him for dead. The attack was never properly investigated and the culprits were never found.
Lissu spent several years on his back and in operating theatres, many of them in Leuven, Belgium.
Still limping and on crutches, he flew back to Dar in 2020 to challenge Magufuli for the presidency – an act of such immense courage that it earned him the respect not just of millions of Tanzanians, but of people throughout the world.
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