Dar es Salaam. Two leading opposition parties in Tanzania came out Thursday to demand President Samia Suluhu Hassan rein in the police in the East African nation, end forced disappearance incidents associated with the law enforcement agency, and deliver free and fair civic and general elections due in November and 2025, respectively.
Police have distanced themselves from the widely reported cases of forced disappearances, and the Head of State has directed authorities to rump up interventions to bring them to an end. But speaking at separate press conferences on Thursday, leaders of CHADEMA and ACT-Wazalendo indicated dissatisfaction with the efforts taken, calling for tougher stances on the issue.
CHADEMA national chairperson Freeman Mbowe claimed at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Mikocheni in the city that police in Dar es Salaam run a special task force that behaves extrajudicially in its operations, which include kidnapping and torturing suspected government critics and opposition parties’ members and activists. The Chanzo sought comment from the Dar es Salaam Special Zone Police Commander, Jumanne Muliro, about this allegation but received no response.
Mr Mbowe, whose party has lost several of its members in forced disappearance manners, revealed that sources from within the Police Force informed the centre-right party that the task force has its base at the Chang’ombe Police Post in Temeke, where hundreds of suspected government critics are sent to be tortured before they’re killed and dumped at a site that he said would be revealed at another occasion.
“First, [police] would deliver bodies of people they just killed at the city hospitals’ mortuaries,” Mr Mbowe told journalists, referring to the information insiders from within law enforcement authorities fed CHADEMA. “But then they thought the strategy wasn’t so effective and started to just dispose of the bodies at this specific site that we’ll reveal at the opportune time.”
Several families, especially whose members police suspected of belonging to the notorious group of criminal marauders, Panya Road, picked up the bodies of their loved ones at the mortuaries after looking for them for days without any success. On April 6, 2023, The Chanzo documented stories of some of these families that lost their loved ones to what they believe are police extrajudicial measures.
Judicial inquiries
“We demand that these extrajudicial measures cease immediately,” Mr Mbowe said during the press conference also attended by relatives of some of the alleged victims of forced disappearances. “We call on President Samia to form a judicial commission of inquiries to investigate all alleged cases of forced disappearances and ensure justice to all the victims.”
This is not the first time a leading opposition figure has called for the formation of a judicial commission of inquiries to investigate incidents of forced disappearances and other police extrajudicial measures. Former ACT-Wazalendo party leader Zitto Kabwe has repeatedly made a similar suggestion. Mr Mbowe says the move is “unavoidable because the practices have to stop, and the police cannot be allowed to investigate themselves.”
One of the CHADEMA members and activists whose disappearances are blamed on law enforcement authorities is Deusdedith Soka, the chairperson of the party’s youth wing BAVICHA, in Temeke, who unidentified men reportedly kidnapped on August 18, 2024, alongside two other men, Jacob Godwin Mlay and Frank Mbise. They’ve not been found since, and the police deny holding them.
Dioniz Kipanya, CHADEMA’s publicity secretary in Sumbawanga, disappeared on July 26, 2024, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Police in Tanga also detained a CHADEMA member, Kombo Twaha Mbwana, for a month without informing his family. On July 14, 2024, regional police confirmed detaining the 29-year-old Mbwana over “social media abuse.”
Fears
These developments and the perceived lack of accountability that accompanies them fill some with fear of the role police can play in the upcoming elections, expressing doubts about whether the law enforcement agency would ensure a smooth undertaking of the democratic processes.
Among those pessimistic about this is the ACT-Wazalendo national chairperson Othman Masoud Othman, who told a press conference in Zanzibar on Thursday that without reforms within the Police Force, there’s little hope that what happened during the 2020 elections will not repeat itself.
In Zanzibar, as elsewhere in the country, police played a critical role in preventing elections from happening freely and fairly, behaving extrajudicially in treating opposition parties and their members and candidates. This included but was not limited to the beating and illegal detention of dozens of opposition figures during and after the elections.
“Based on what is currently happening, we in ACT-Wazalendo don’t see that the 2025 elections will be of any difference compared with those of 2020,” Othman, also the First Vice President of the Zanzibar Government of National Unity, told journalists. “Maybe the only difference is that those who violate the 2025 elections will do so while holding tasbih in their hands.”
Tasbih are Islamic prayer beads Muslims use to count the number of times a particular religious word or sentence is said after prayers. It is possible that Othman used the phrase to describe the reform agenda that President Samia announced immediately after coming to power, which many observers think has hit a dead-end.
“We urge President Samia to expedite the implementation of the recommendations contained in the report by the Presidential Commission on Criminal Justice,” Mr Othman, a lawyer, said.
“We believe the step would necessitate reforms within the Police Force before the elections,” he added. “Reforms within the force, whose role in elections cannot be overemphasised, will ensure that elections are free and fair and prevent what occurred in 2020 from recurring.”
