Good morning! The Chanzo is here with a rundown of major news stories reported in Tanzania on August 26, 2025.
Tanzania’s Registrar of Political Parties Nullifies ACT Wazalendo’s Presidential Nominee Luhaga Mpina
The Office of the Registrar of Political Parties in Tanzania on Tuesday nullified the nomination of Luhaga Mpina as a presidential candidate through the ACT Wazalendo ticket for the 2025 General Election after identifying a violation of the party’s procedures in the process.
The Registrar of Political Parties’ action comes following complaints presented to the office by a member of ACT Wazalendo, Monalisa Ndala, who submitted them on August 22, 2025, complaining about the violation of the party’s rules in the process of nominating Mpina.
Mpina, a long-time member of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the outgoing Member of Parliament for Kisesa, joined the opposition ACT Wazalendo party on August 5, 2025. He was then nominated as its presidential candidate for the October 29, 2025, General Election at the party’s General Convention on August 7, 2025.
The politician joined ACT Wazalendo shortly after CCM’s sessions omitted his name from the internal process to select the party’s parliamentary candidate for the Kisesa constituency in the 2025 General Election—a situation many attributed to his public criticism of President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government.
However, shortly after the convention endorsed Mpina, long-time party member Ndala wrote to Secretary-General Ado Shaibu on August 16, 2025. In her letter, she raised concerns that the nomination process violated party procedures and urged the leadership to take appropriate action.
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CHADEMA: No Reforms, No Election is a Fight for Fairness, Not a Boycott
The opposition party CHADEMA has clarified that its ‘No Reforms, No Election’ stance is not an election boycott, but rather a call for Tanzanians to demand polls be held in an environment of freedom and justice.
CHADEMA’s Acting Deputy Secretary-General (Tanzania Mainland), Amani Golugwa, made this emphasis during an exclusive interview with this publication on Tuesday, explaining in detail the difference between leading a movement for change and the act of boycotting an election.
“The word ‘boycott,’ for the most part, involves someone who has given up, foregone, and is sitting idle,” Mr Golugwa says in the interview available to watch here.
“We have not said we have ‘let it go,’ that we should just sit,” he added. “[That] we are surrendering. We are in a fight, and that is why we refrain from using the word ‘boycott.’ To boycott is to say, ‘let’s leave them to it,’ and then you fold your arms. We have not said we should leave them to it and fold our arms. We have said we will fight until the last drop of blood.”
This statement from the senior CHADEMA leader comes at a time when there are exactly two months left before Tanzanians go to the polls to elect a President, MPs, and councillors in the General Election expected to be held on October 29, 2025.
On the side of Zanzibar, the citizens on the islands will also participate in this election, which for them will start earlier, on October 28, 2025, due to its controversial two-day voting procedure. Apart from electing the President of Tanzania and MPs, Zanzibaris will also elect the President of Zanzibar and members of the House of Representatives for the semi-autonomous archipelago.
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Instagram Emerges as Tanzania’s New Political Battleground Amid X Shutdown?
Recently, there has been a sharp increase in political content debates and campaign messages appearing on Instagram, a trend that was once more associated with X, formerly Twitter, to the point where it became known as the “Twitter Republic.”
On Instagram, two major political campaigns have witnessed gaining momentum in an unprecedented way, even affecting some well-known users of the platform. Many have found themselves drawn into the campaigns or forced to adjust their page settings to control the flood of political content and debates.
The two notable campaigns fueling this shift are CHADEMA’s “No Reform, No Election” and CCM’s “Oktoba Tunatiki.” These campaigns have significantly changed the nature of Instagram, which had largely been a space for personal lifestyle photos, entertainment, and sports content.
In previous years, such campaigns and heated debates would have been expected on X, whose structure is designed for conversations. In Tanzania, that has long been the case: most national political debates started on X before spreading to other platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
In the past, X whose users referred to themselves as the ‘Twitter Republic’ was even recognized by political leaders as a hub of political discourse. On July 5, 2022, during a reception for the under-17 Serengeti Girls football team, the President of United Republic of Tanzania Samia Suluhu Hassan mentioned: “Out there on social media, there is a Twitter Republic.”
Yet, despite the surge of political content on Instagram, some experts argue it cannot replace X.
Speaking to The Chanzo, Asha Abinallah, Director of TMC and a digital rights activist, said Instagram cannot take the place of X. Instead, the current wave of political content simply reflects citizens’ feelings about ongoing events.
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