By Adonis Byemelwa
Dar es Salaam — Tanzania is approaching this year’s International Day of Democracy with a political argument that reaches beyond the next election or another constitutional amendment. The deeper question is whether the country can repair institutional credibility before rewriting the rules under which power is exercised.
The International Day of Democracy is observed on September 15 after the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 62/7 in 2007, following an initiative promoted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The date recalls the IPU’s Universal Declaration on Democracy, adopted in Cairo in 1997, which links democracy to participation, human rights and the rule of law.
That international reminder comes at a sensitive moment for Tanzania. A national conference convened by the Tanzania Centre for Democracy on September 7 and 8 brought political parties, civil society groups, and diplomats together to assess the 2025 election and discuss the country’s democratic direction.
A striking moment came when retired Prime Minister and former First Vice-President Judge Joseph Sinde Warioba collapsed while addressing the gathering. Warioba, 86, was speaking about Tanzania’s political challenges when he warned that political competition must not divide citizens. He also delivered the line that quickly became the conference’s most memorable:
“You cannot use guns to bring peace!” Warioba said he had collapsed because of fatigue and that he was recovering at home, removing speculation about a more serious medical cause. The significance is not that Warioba’s collapse proves Tanzania is in crisis.
His warning captured a central democratic dilemma: whether political stability can endure when citizens believe disagreement is managed through coercion rather than dialogue, lawful institutions and political accommodation.
That dilemma had already surfaced at the Tanzania Democracy Forum organised by the Tanganyika Law Society on August 28. TLS President Boniface Mwabukusi argued that Tanzania should not rush into a comprehensive new Constitution before addressing political wounds and divisions. He called for reconciliation and national healing first, warning that constitutional reform without social and political repair could deepen rather than resolve the country’s problems.
A Constitution can redistribute executive powers, strengthen rights, improve electoral arrangements and clarify institutional checks. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission would pursue a different task: documenting grievances, hearing victims, examining responsibility and creating a public record. One addresses institutional design; the other addresses unresolved political experience.
Mwabukusi’s position was reinforced at the forum by other speakers, including activist Deus Kibamba, academic Professor Ichumbaki and former minister Professor Anna Tibaijuka.
Their interventions raised concerns about political freedoms, accountability and unresolved grievances. Those concerns deserve scrutiny, but allegations must be distinguished from established findings, with institutions accused of wrongdoing given an opportunity to respond.
There is substantial evidence that the concerns are not merely abstract. A joint statement by Tanzanian civil-society organisations after the October 2025 election documented reports of killings, unlawful arrests, abductions, enforced disappearances, suppression of media freedoms and an internet shutdown.
Human Rights Watch separately documented lethal force, arbitrary arrests and internet restrictions following election-day protests, while the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights expressed concern over the nationwide internet outage.
In August 2024, police detained Chadema leaders including Tundu Lissu, John Mnyika and Joseph Mbilinyi during a crackdown around a planned youth gathering in Mbeya; party chairman Freeman Mbowe was later arrested at Songwe Airport.
Police said the authorities were enforcing orders intended to maintain security and public order, while Chadema and rights organisations criticised the arrests as excessive restrictions on political activity.
The 2025 election period produced an even larger test. Human Rights Watch reported that Tundu Lissu was arrested in April 2025 and remained detained while facing treason charges. Chadema was subsequently barred from participating in the election after failing to sign the electoral code of conduct by the deadline.
These events do not by themselves establish political persecution, but they explain why equal political competition, due process and institutional independence are central to the debate.
That makes the sequencing of reform the central political question now. The government and ruling CCM offer a different reading. At the TCD conference, CCM Mainland Vice Chairman Stephen Wasira argued that the Union’s stability and benefits should be protected through honest dialogue and constitutional clarity.
His remarks did not amount to a rejection of reform; they placed stability and the Union within the discussion about Tanzania’s political future. The debate should not be reduced to democracy versus anti-democracy.
Reform advocates argue that unresolved grievances must be confronted before a new constitutional settlement. Those favouring continuity worry that portraying every political dispute as evidence of institutional collapse could produce instability and weaken institutions that still have to function.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan has repeatedly framed Tanzania’s political development as a process that should be shaped through national institutions and dialogue. That position creates a legitimate question for reform advocates: if reform is to be nationally owned, how can the process become sufficiently inclusive to include government critics, opposition parties, civil society and citizens who distrust existing institutions?
The case of Chadema Vice Chairman John Heche adds another dimension. Heche faces criminal proceedings that his political supporters describe as politically motivated, while the authorities maintain that criminal allegations belong in court. Neither position should be accepted merely because it comes from a political camp. The democratic test is whether the proceedings are fair, transparent and open to credible judicial scrutiny.
The same standard should apply to allegations of abductions, arbitrary detention and digital restrictions. The 2025 internet shutdown is no longer simply an opposition claim: the African Commission, civil-society organisations and international rights monitors documented the outage. That does not settle every allegation surrounding the election, but it establishes that restrictions on access to information were a real democratic concern.
Young Tanzanians are also becoming an important part of this debate. Online communities and grassroots networks such as Wachokonozi provide spaces where younger citizens question official narratives about peace, stability and political participation. They cannot represent an entire generation, but their activism illustrates concern about whether young citizens can disagree with authority without being treated as a security problem.
This brings the argument back to the Constitution. Tanzania’s constitutional debate is not simply about producing a new document. It concerns executive authority, electoral institutions, separation of powers, political rights, judicial safeguards and mechanisms for holding public officeholders accountable. These are practical questions about how power is acquired, exercised and challenged.
Yet constitutional text has limits. A carefully drafted Constitution cannot by itself create impartial policing, independent courts, credible elections or political restraint. Those depend on institutional conduct. Reconciliation also has limits: acknowledging grievances without changing the structures that produced them could leave the causes of conflict intact.
The better choice may therefore be sequencing rather than substitution. Tanzania could pursue a credible reconciliation process while beginning an inclusive constitutional dialogue, allowing evidence from past conflicts to inform institutional reform.
Alternatively, constitutional reform could proceed alongside truth, accountability and national-healing mechanisms. Either route would require independence, transparency and participation from competing political forces.
That is the real test raised by Warioba’s warning. Tanzania does not merely need order; it needs institutions capable of preserving order while allowing disagreement. It needs courts whose decisions can withstand political scrutiny, police whose authority is exercised within the law, elections whose rules command broad confidence, and political leaders prepared to accept competition without treating opponents as enemies of the state.
As September 15 is celebrated, the most consequential question is therefore not whether Tanzania can produce a new Constitution by 2030. It is whether the country can build the institutional credibility needed to make constitutional reform meaningful. A new legal framework may change the rules, but only democratic conduct can make those rules work.
