Arusha – It was close to 9 p.m. on October 8 when The Chanzo arrived at Alute Mughwai Lissu’s home on Fire Street in Arusha. Dressed in a blue tracksuit over a white polo shirt, and seated in a wooden armchair, he began a conversation that ran for three hours and 23 minutes, into the early hours of the next day.
Lissu had been unwell and was continuing treatment, including regular dialysis, but was cheerful through the evening. He had agreed to speak, he said, after satisfying himself that The Chanzo was made up of “serious people.” He discussed his continuing treatment at the start of the interview.
His young son and daughter stayed awake for the conversation, the latter taking photographs as it unfolded. When The Chanzo’s Khalifa Said, who did the interview, joked that she could become a journalist, her father replied that the decision would be hers to make.
The exchange was prompted by the treason trial of his younger brother, CHADEMA national chairperson Tundu Lissu. But its subject was larger: the life of an advocate who has worked in courtrooms for more than four decades, remains a CCM member despite deep criticism of its present direction, and sees public legal education as essential to citizenship.
The legal life
Alute Mughwai Lissu traces his family’s origins to Mahambe village in Ikungi District, Singida. In the interview, he described himself as the second of ten children born to Lissu Mhitwa Alute and Alu Alute, in a family of farmers and livestock keepers; Tundu, he said, was the seventh-born and is 13 years younger.
His father, he said, began work as a clerk to a chief’s council under colonial rule in 1950, later served the post-independence state and became a councillor after retirement. The parents’ insistence on education, he said, helped produce four lawyers among their children.
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He attended Mwenge Secondary School and Mirambo High School before national service at Oljoro, then worked at Kilimanjaro International Airport from 1977 to 1979. He joined the University of Dar es Salaam’s Faculty of Law in 1979 and completed his degree in 1982. He says a reading of Issa Shivji’s The Silent Class Struggles in Tanzania at Mirambo first made him want to study law.
After graduation, Lissu said, he worked in the Attorney General’s office in Arusha until 1989, handling prosecutions and civil matters for the government. He left because the work no longer offered sufficient professional challenge, and began independent practice in 1990.
Parts of that long career are independently visible in public records. A 2014 Court of Appeal ruling, for example, records him as counsel for respondents in a dispute between NBC Ltd and Sahib Bus Services Ltd.
His regional legal work also appears in an East African Court of Justice record, which identifies him as one of three East African Law Society representatives who sought, and were granted, leave to assist the court as amicus curiae, or friend of the court, in 2009, corroborating the broad public-law career described in the interview.
Lissu’s account of his practice returns repeatedly to constitutional access and state accountability. He recalled representing a Maasai livestock keeper whose cattle had been seized after theft trials reportedly ended near his homestead, and said the Court of Appeal later invalidated the requirement that a person first obtain the Attorney General’s consent before suing the government.
The conviction he expresses most clearly is that legal literacy cannot be left to specialists. “Governments, especially repressive governments, do not like to teach law,” he said, because people would know their rights and “raise their voices” about how they are governed. His proposed remedy is to introduce basic law and human-rights education in schools and beyond law faculties.
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That belief also shapes his critique of the courts. He argued that judicial selection should be more transparent and merit-based, drawing on the public application and vetting process used in Kenya, while acknowledging that some judges have served with integrity. This is his proposed model for reform, backed by many others in the country.
His assessment of judicial independence is an opinion, not an established finding about the judiciary. But it comes from a lawyer who has worked for both the State and private clients, and who says institutional design matters as much as individual courage.
CCM, still
There is another feature of Lissu’s public identity that complicates a simple opposition-versus-government reading of the family. He told The Chanzo that he joined CCM in 1976 and was a founding member when the party was formed in 1977, adding that he had never left it.
“I am a CCM member of Nyerere,” he said. “This one of today gives me some difficulties.” He nevertheless rejected the idea that multiparty politics requires CCM to disappear.
For him, the purpose of plural politics is not to replace one monopoly with another. It is to create institutions in which citizens can question leaders, public appointments are made transparently, courts can decide without improper pressure, and political parties can meet the people they seek to represent.
His language can be sharp. At one point, he said people had become too occupied with celebrity news and too little with public decision-making, leaving the country with leaders who reflected that failure of civic scrutiny.
Yet the recurring tone was hopeful rather than fatalistic. “I must live with hope,” he said, linking that hope to the idea that Tanzanians have the same claim to democratic government and human rights as people elsewhere. He treats the demand for rights as a civic obligation, not a favour granted by those in power.
His brother
That outlook explains why the discussion repeatedly returned to Tundu Lissu. The younger Lissu was arrested in Mbinga on April 9, 2025, six days after remarks at a CHADEMA aspirants’ meeting in Dar es Salaam that prosecutors later relied on in a treason count. (The trial’s detailed chronology is here).
The case is brought under Section 39(2)(d) of the Penal Code, which covers an alleged intention to intimidate the Executive, Legislature or Judiciary, manifested through a publication or an overt act or deed. The law provides a death sentence on conviction, but the charge itself is an allegation which the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt.
The State argued that the testimony of 17 witnesses established that Tundu Lissu intended to incite the public to intimidate the Executive, and that oral testimony could establish publication of the disputed words through Jambo TV even though video evidence was not admitted at trial. The prosecution asked the High Court to convict.
Tundu Lissu, who represented himself, countered that the charge and evidence were legally insufficient, that he had not published the material and that the State had not proved treasonous intent. He asked the three-judge panel to acquit him if it found the criminal standard had not been met.
Alute Lissu’s analysis is unmistakably familial as well as legal. He said the case was built on words rather than the overt acts, secret meetings and concrete preparations he associated with historic treason prosecutions, and he urged the court to decide on the evidence and the law.
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Those are his arguments, not a judicial conclusion. The High Court has reserved judgment for November 6, and Tundu Lissu remains on remand at Ukonga Prison; an October ruling on confidential legal consultations did not determine the treason charge. The current procedural position remains unchanged.
Alute said a senior government official approached him in December 2025 about the possibility of the family seeking a humanitarian withdrawal of the case. He did not name the official, and the account has not been independently verified; he said the family did not submit such a letter because he could not accept that his brother had committed treason.
“I know this man is a patriot,” he said of his younger brother Tundu. The person he has known since childhood, he added, is “the same person today”: candid, courageous and willing to state what he believes even when others consider it unwise.
The profile he draws is not of a predestined dissident. He said Tundu had been an ordinary village child who respected his parents and did not, in his memory, display some special destiny.
That restraint is notable because Alute also says he has effectively been a parental figure to his younger brother. At a 2025 hearing, Tundu Lissu described “Elder Alute” as someone who “literally raised me” and took the place of their father. The remark offered a glimpse of why the case has weighed so heavily on the older brother.
The measure
As the interview ended, Lissu pointed to certificates recognising his work with the Tanganyika Law Society’s Arusha chapter. He did not present them as the central measure of a life in law, saying instead that he hoped younger advocates would see a way to become capable, respected and humble professionals.
“I am not a person of show,” he said. “I am a respectable person.” His preferred legacy, he told The Chanzo, is not wealth or status but work that leaves a visible example for those who follow.
By the end of the night, the argument had returned to its starting point: whether institutions can make room for citizens who disagree, and whether a lawyer’s duty is to preserve that room.
From Fire Street, Alute Lissu’s answer was consistent, if not uncomplicated: read the law, speak honestly and retain hope.
