Tundu Lissu
In Tanzania, Tundu Lissu was acquitted of trumped-up treason charges, though found guilty of trumped-up incitement charges.
I’ve followed events in Tanzania from afar, since having had the privilege of working with Chadema for six months with the 2015 election. It always remain a meaningful campaign. The Tanzanians were all greatly dedicated, incredibly courageous, and politically savvy.
In 2015, the one party socialist state, after fifty years in control, had gradually reformed to create viable elections. Chadema was on the cusp of taking power. However, the night of the election, half the campaign was arrested, including a hundred or so students manning phone centers to get direct vote counts from the polling places. This would have provided an alternative count to the state's manipulated numbers.
From then on, it all went downhill for Chadema. Its members beaten, jailed, and lives destroyed. In 2016, Member of Parliament Lissu survived an assassination attempt that riddled him with sixteen bullets. He ran for the presidency in 2020 and was jailed in 2025 before the election. Last week’s verdicts came after his year long imprisonment.
“We are satisfied that through his statements, the accused intended to disrupt elections and instigate violence,” one judge told a courtroom packed with Lissu’s supporters.
'We sentence you to four years in prison, but the doors are open for appeal,' the judge added.
"Lissu, who heads the main opposition party, Chadema, responded that the trial was 'political persecution', accusing the judges of following orders from the government of President Samia Suluhu Hassan.
"'Excuses were created to imprison me,' he told the court."
President Hassan claimed 98% of the vote in last year's election.
I didn’t work closely with Lissu in 2015. He was out around the capital, Dodoma. I met him a number of times though, always with that big smile stretched across his face.
I can say without hesitation the idea of either Lissu or Chadema inciting violence is simply ludicrous. Chadema was completely about democracy. All functioning democracy is nonviolent. I can also say, Freeman Mbowe, who helped build the party and who I knew much better, was the most dedicated democrat, organizationally gifted, and dismissive of political violence as any person I’ve known.
With the verdict on the lesser charge, people are hopeful of Lissu's release on bail for the appeal process. That would at least be a very small step in the direction of justice.
"The truth is an offense but not a sin"