From a Tanzania Death Row Prison Cell, Tundu Lissu Battles Treason Charges Alone

By Adonis Byemelwa

In a courtroom packed with tension and streamed live across social media platforms on June 16, 2025, Tundu Lissu, the embattled leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party Chadema, made a dramatic stand.

Faced with what he described as a cascade of human rights violations, Lissu declared that he would now represent himself in the court of law, abandoning his formidable team of over 30 lawyers. It was a moment both defiant and desperate, accentuating the gravity of his current predicament.

Lissu, a veteran politician and lawyer known for his razor-sharp critiques of state power, stood not just as a defendant, but as a man stripped of his most basic liberties.

For 68 days, he told the Kisutu Magistrate’s Court, he had been held in the death row section of Ukonga Prison, despite not having been convicted of any crime. His voice, calm but heavy, carried the weight of prolonged isolation. "I am not a convict," he told the court, “Yet the state has decided to keep me on death row."

But the walls that isolate are not merely physical. Lissu spoke of repeated denial of his right to worship—no church services, no communal prayer, even on the most sacred Christian holidays like Easter.

On Good Friday, he pleaded with prison authorities to let him pray. They refused. Again, on Easter Sunday. Again, denied. Week after week, he asked. Week after week, he was told no. For a man of deep Christian faith, this spiritual blockade compounded the emotional and psychological toll of solitary confinement.

Just as jarring is the fact that his legal team has been unable to meet with him privately. Visits from his lawyers, he said, were reduced to conversations across a glass wall, monitored by prison officers. No confidential exchanges. No chance to strategize freely. This, in his view, eroded the very essence of the right to a fair defense.

“They come to see me, but they are not allowed to talk to me in private. Always under surveillance,” he explained. The court heard how his legal voice was muted before it ever reached the courtroom.

These claims, laid out plainly by Lissu himself before Magistrate Franco Kiswaga, drew visible unease in the room. The prosecution said they had not been granted a formal opportunity to respond, but the magistrate noted the gravity of the allegations, promising that they would be handled through administrative review.

Yet beneath the procedural wrangling lies a deeper, darker undertone. Lissu’s arrest on April 9 followed a fiery political rally where he demanded sweeping electoral reforms—a stance his party has crystallized into the slogan: No Reforms, No Election. The charges? Treason and publishing false information online—both heavy-handed and politically explosive. Treason, in Tanzania, carries the death penalty.

The broader context casts an even starker light on the trial. As Tanzania inches toward the October 2025 general elections, Lissu’s prosecution has become a lightning rod for criticism from human rights groups worldwide.

 Amnesty International and other organizations have condemned his treatment, calling it part of a broader crackdown on dissent. His ordeal, they argue, is not just a legal matter, but a chilling signal to anyone who dares question the status quo.

Even the logistics of his detention seem tailored to suppress his influence. After his initial confinement in Dar es Salaam, he was quietly moved to Ukonga Prison, raising alarms among supporters who briefly lost contact with him.

For a man whose political journey has already seen him survive an assassination attempt in 2017, this trial feels less like justice and more like an attritional war.

Still, Lissu remains defiant. By choosing to represent himself, he has transformed the courtroom into a political theater—one where he now speaks directly to the judge, the public, and an international audience glued to livestreams and real-time updates. It’s not just legal survival; it’s a calculated act of political resistance.

His next appearance is set for July 1, and with each passing day, the eyes of the world grow more focused on a case that increasingly looks less like a trial and more like a test—of Tanzania’s democracy, of judicial independence, and of how far a state will go to silence one of its loudest voices. This is more than a courtroom battle. It's a reckoning.