Tanzania's Crisis: Why President Samia's Moves Will Fail
An Intelligence Assessment on Why Post-Election Manoeuvres Will Not Prevent Regime Instability
Ujasusi Blog’s East Africa Monitoring Team | 16 November 2025 | 0000 GMT
I. Executive Summary: The President’s Pyrrhic Victory
Assessment: President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s declaration of a 97-98% landslide victory in the October 2025 general election was not a demonstration of strength but a terminal strategic miscalculation. By engineering an autocratic victory so blatant, President Hassan has unilaterally shattered her own reformist “4R” agenda (Reconciliation, Resilience, Rebuilding, and Reform). In doing so, she has traded the regime’s dwindling veneer of democratic legitimacy for a profound and unmanageable state-level crisis.
Core Stance: The president’s subsequent crisis-management manoeuvres—chiefly the announcement of a domestic commission of inquiry into election-related killings and a call for “motherly” leniency for some protesters charged with treason—are cosmetic, diversionary tactics. This assessment argues these manoeuvres will buy her a short, volatile period of time, but are structurally incapable of saving her regime from the three deep-seated forces her actions have unleashed.
Structural Threats: These manoeuvres fail because they are aimed at the wrong targets. They represent 20th-century authoritarian tactics deployed against 21st-century threats. The regime’s stability is now compromised by:
A Mobilised Gen Z: A new, decentralised, digitally-native protest movement. This cohort is animated not only by the stolen election but by deep-seated economic grievances, including massive youth unemployment.
A Fractured Elite: A critical loss of cohesion within her own ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party. The president’s pre-election campaign of repression was not only aimed at the opposition but also at internal critics, revealing profound vulnerabilities within the party structure.
An Isolated State: Accelerating international and economic isolation. This is exemplified by an unprecedented and unified regional condemnation from the African Union (AU) and SADC, and a crippling new Level 3: “Reconsider Travel” advisory from the United States, which threatens Tanzania’s vital tourism sector.
Strategic Outlook: The regime has not resolved the crisis; it has merely delayed its next, and likely more severe, phase. The president’s gambit is failing, and the long-term stability of Tanzania is now assessed as highly volatile.