Dar es Salaam — Three recent High Court decisions involving CHADEMA members or its national chairperson’s lawyers have given the opposition party a series of legal gains, although the rulings concern separate cases and do not resolve the wider terrorism and treason prosecutions facing its figures.
CHADEMA’s legal and human-rights director, Gaston Shundo Garubindi, said the party had prevailed in three rulings issued between October 9 and October 16.
They include the quashing of a conviction and an immediate release order for George Mapuli Bukingi, a Morogoro ruling on prosecution evidence in Lucia Simon Shayo’s case, and an order protecting confidential consultations between Tundu Lissu and his lawyers at Ukonga Prison.
The clearest substantive outcome is the October 16 Musoma judgment in George Mapuli Bukingi v Republic, which quashed Bukingi’s conviction for causing grievous harm and set aside his sentence. Justice E. E. Kakolaki ordered that Bukingi be released forthwith unless he was otherwise lawfully held.
The case arose from violence in Bunda on October 30, 2025, during which a police corporal was seriously injured near Delight Hotel and Bunda Teachers College. Garubindi said Bukingi, known as Tolu, had been the only person convicted in a case involving 30 defendants after the October 2025 unrest.
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The High Court found material contradictions in the prosecution evidence over where the officer was attacked, who injured him and how Bukingi was identified.
The judge said the discrepancies “cannot be ignored as they go to the root of the case as to who perpetrated the crime,” and concluded that the prosecution had not proved Bukingi caused or participated in causing the harm beyond the required standard.
That finding is narrower than an assessment of the broader political events surrounding the case. It addresses the reliability of evidence against Bukingi in that particular grievous-harm prosecution, not whether other alleged offences during the unrest occurred or whether any other defendant bears responsibility.
In Morogoro, Garubindi said the High Court on October 9 allowed Criminal Revision No. 12322 of 2026, Lucia Simon Shayo v Republic, and struck out a prosecution notice that had been accepted by the District Court.
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According to his account, the notice sought to add witnesses and exhibits to Shayo’s pending case, but Justice Ebrahim Rose held that it did not follow the law and was unreasonable.
The effect, Garubindi said, is that the proposed additional witnesses and exhibits cannot form part of the evidence against Shayo. The High Court ruling removes that notice; it does not, on the information publicly available, dismiss Shayo’s substantive case or decide her guilt or innocence.
Unlike the Bukingi appeal, the Shayo decision was not located in the TanzLII judgments database during searches on October 19. The details of its reasoning and the underlying charge should, therefore, be treated as CHADEMA’s account pending publication of the order or judgment.
The third outcome came in Constitutional Case No. 7300 of 2026, brought by advocates Maduhu, Nashon Nkungu and Paul Kisabo over conditions for consulting Lissu at Ukonga Prison. Lissu is on remand while awaiting judgment in his separate treason case.
On October 16, the three-judge panel led by Justice Amir Mruma directed Ukonga Prison to allow Lissu to consult lawyers and legal advisers without officers listening, while permitting security staff to observe from a distance.
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The court held that listening to Lissu’s conversations with counsel breached Regulation 13 of the Prisons Management Regulations, 1968, according to news reports.
The court also found no sufficient reason for refusing one of Lissu’s lawyers entry merely because the advocate was absent from a prison visitors’ list. The ruling regulates prison access and lawyer-client confidentiality; it neither determines Lissu’s treason case nor orders his release.
The rulings arrive after the July 7 Saba Saba demonstrations, following which 23 people were charged with terrorism in Mwanza and CHADEMA later said 51 of its members had been arrested and charged in several zones.
Home Affairs Minister Patrobass Katambi rejected claims that authorities were targeting a group, saying enforcement concerned criminal conduct rather than a person or institution. None of the three rulings, however, decides the legality of that broader wave of terrorism cases.
