By Adonis Byemelwa
Tanzania’s Commission of Inquiry just bought 21 more days, citing a “testimony deluge” and forensic needs. While framed as procedural due diligence, this latest delay smells like a stall tactic to a sceptical public. Without hard data or firm deadlines, the move further widens an already gaping trust deficit.
Launched in November 2025 by President Samia Suluhu Hassan, this inquiry was tasked with probing the violence following October’s elections. That volatile landscape, scarred by contested participation and rampant abuse allegations, demands absolute clarity; instead, the public receives only delays and opaque updates.
The government’s view is still poorly articulated. As authorities speak only of due process and witness protection, there is scant explanation of the allegations documented by groups, including the United Nations; no accountability (or serious explanations) from security agencies about conduct under scrutiny.
Public sentiment, invoked and rarely evidenced, is stripped to generalities. Citations of debate on JamiiForums gesture at national disquietude, but the absence of trackable voices or data points leaves the depiction of civic reaction impressionistic rather than confirmation-based.
The commission’s lack of transparency in operations has only heightened scepticism. Its decision to exclude the media from hearings, combined with a broadcaster’s suspension close to a reporting deadline, also reinforces impressions that the process is being controlled as much politically as procedurally.
And into this atmosphere has now entered legal scrutiny, decisively. The High Court in Dar es Salaam approved activists’ request to challenge the commission but also refused to stop it, highlighting the tension between urgency and public interest.
This Deputy Registrar, Hussein Mushi, on behalf of Justice Hussein Mtembwa, was unambiguous: “While the court has the discretion to either grant or deny the petition, we find that it is inappropriate to suspend the work of a Commission at this moment.” The ruling upholds momentum while alluding to unanswered legal questions.
The case, filed by Rosemary Mwakitwange and advocates Edward Heche and Deogratius Mahinyila, targets both the Attorney General’s office and a commission whose members include top state officials and legal authorities. That scope alone signals the stakes of the dispute.
Court arguments reflect a more fundamental divide. Petitioners maintain there is a serious constitutional question that needs to be answered urgently, while government counsel calls the claims chronically opinion-driven and lacking in legal substance, a schism that reflects the wider national divide.
Even those who support the ruling do so cautiously.” (The Tanganyika Law Society welcomed the decision as a win for oversight, but the fact that judicial intervention was needed at this stage raises its own questions about institutional confidence in the commission’s independence.)
Critics have been less restrained. Activist Maria Tsheai Sarungi gave a direct warning, offering a metaphor: “When the trees get slippery in the forest, that situation forebodes deaths of many monkeys,” meaning instability on the commission could have dire costs.
She went on, arguing that a competent body would have communicated delays in the information it had proactively rather than reactively. The failure to announce an earlier postponement notice, she suggested, is indicative of a lack of complexity and productive compassion in favour of ineptitude and weak leadership at a key national moment.
It is no longer just a matter of timing at its core, but credibility. The lengthy deferment, lack of openness and increasing legal threats could transform what had been posed as a truth-seeking mission into an extended pressure test on public patience.
The law grants the executive the ability to withhold or postpone publication of the final report, a detail now hanging over it. In a country that is still grappling with the legacy of political violence, the question ultimately changes focus from not when the commission report will be released but whether it ever finds meaningful expression.
