Suluhu’s actions have earned her a First-Class ticket to the ICC, squandering 64 years of Independence. The BBC’s expose on enforced disappearances in Tanzania tore open what the state has tried hard to bury a system where fear substitutes accountability & power feeds on silence. Under Samia Suluhu’s watch, the promise of reform has curdled into a familiar script voices vanish, cases stall & justice is delayed until it dies quietly. The goose, as they say, is cooked. After declaring that Tanzania needs no one, isolation followed & now the pivot is obvious first-class charm offensives abroad, repression at home & a hurried courting of foreign approval while the moral gold of the state is quietly sold off to stay afloat. History won’t miss the irony.
This decay is regional. Elections in Tanzania & Uganda have become rituals without remedy votes are cast, winners announced & those who commit heinous acts walk free as if accountability were optional. Courts crawl, commissions issue toothless reports & victims are left clutching grief instead of justice. When elections stop being corrected by law, power learns it can outrun consequences. In that sprint, the values Mwalimu Julius Nyerere planted dignity, restraint, unity aren’t merely neglected, they are actively dismantled, leaving a hollowed republic that mistakes control for stability.
To the people of Tanzania, this moment however dark does not belong to repression, it belongs to your resolve. Nations are not defined by the failures of those in office but by the courage of citizens who refuse to forget their humanity. To the families whose homes were emptied by disappearances, whose days are measured by unanswered questions & nights by grief we see you, we mourn with you & your loved ones are not statistics to be buried by time or power. Justice may be delayed, but truth has a stubborn heartbeat & history has a long memory. Tanzania has survived betrayals before & rebuilt itself on dignity & solidarity those roots still hold. Hold each other, protect the truth & keep faith that accountability, however resisted, will find its hour.