Killing of opposition politician in Tanzania casts shadow over upcoming elections

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

A senior member of Tanzania’s opposition has been found dead on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam after being abducted from a bus by armed men, his party said, in an incident likely to mar the democratic credentials of the country’s president ahead of local and general elections.

Ally Kibao, a member of the secretariat of the main opposition Chadema party, had been “severely beaten” and had “acid poured on his face”, Chadema chair Freeman Mbowe told journalists late on Sunday.

Kibao’s body was found on Saturday morning, a day after he was seized from a bus travelling from Dar es Salaam, the country’s commercial capital, to the north-eastern port city of Tanga, said Mbowe.

“It is obvious that Ally Kibao has been killed,” he said. A full autopsy report would be completed this week, he added.

The killing over the weekend is seen by observers and local politicians as a stain on President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s purported democratic credentials following years of state repression under her predecessor.

Her Chama Cha Mapinduzi party is facing local polls in December and general elections next year.

The president condemned the “assassination” on Sunday, saying on X: “I have ordered investigative authorities to provide me with a detailed report on this heinous incident.” She added: “Our country is democratic and every citizen has the right to live. The government I lead does not tolerate such brutal acts.”

But Chadema’s secretary-general John Mnyika alleged that the Tanzania Intelligence and Security Service (TISS) was “the main suspect” in the killing and said Suluhu Hassan was “the sponsor of the TISS”. He added that it was “not easy for the police to investigate TISS” and called for an independent probe.

Since taking office three years ago following the sudden death of then-President John Magufuli, Suluhu Hassan has moved away from her predecessor’s hardline policies and embarked on political reforms, hinting at charting a more democratic course for Tanzania.

Last year, she lifted a ban on opposition rallies imposed in 2016 by Magufuli, prompting the return from exile of former presidential candidate, Tundu Lissu.

But last month police rounded up several hundred supporters, including Lissu, as they set off for a planned rally calling for independent oversight of Tanzania’s upcoming electoral process. The demonstration followed a wave of anti-government protests in neighbouring Kenya in June and July.

In recent months, Tanzania’s opposition has decried the disappearance of several of its figures. Lissu complained in a message to Suluhu Hassan that Deus Soka, Chadema’s leader in the district of Temeke, had disappeared in August. “After many threats, your people have kidnapped him, his whereabouts are unknown,” he said.

A month ago, The Tanganyika Law Society, the bar association for Tanzania’s mainland, named 83 individuals who had gone missing in recent months.

It described the “acts of arbitrary arrest, capture and torture of citizens that continue in the country without the relevant government agencies being properly accountable”, adding that some of the victims had been found dead or seriously injured.

“The mass arrests and arbitrary detention of figures from the Chadema party . . . is a deeply worrying sign in the run-up to local government elections,” Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for east and southern Africa, said last month.