Police have fired gunshots on the streets of Tanzania’s largest city during protests after a tumultuous presidential election.
In Dar-es-Salaam, a city of more than seven million people, protesters who defied a curfew on Thursday in the Mbagala, Gongo la Mboto and Kiluvya neighbourhoods were met with tear gas and the sounds of gunfire on the day after the election.
Internet access remained down across the city, where hundreds had set polling stations alight and chanted their discontent on election day.
“We have been silent for so long,” one protester shouted in a video posted to TikTok and verified by Al Jazeera. “What have we been doing?”
Wednesday’s election saw President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s two biggest challengers excluded from the race, infuriating citizens and rights groups who have also decried an intensifying crackdown against opposition members, activists and journalists.
Despite the internet blackout, protesters continued to organise on the Zello app, discussing possible marches on government buildings. But roads across the country, including the main road leading to Dar-es-Salaam’s Julius Nyerere International Airport, were blocked, the United States embassy said in a security alert.
Hassan took office in 2021 when her predecessor John Magufuli died in office and has faced rising criticism for what the United Nations has called a pattern of “escalating” attacks, disappearances and torture of critics.
It’s the latest election this month in Africa to fuel deep-seated anger among citizens after longtime leaders in the Ivory Coast and Cameroon also sought to cling onto power.
Only minor opposition figures were eligible to compete against Hassan in the election after the Independent National Electoral Commission disqualified Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chadema, in April for refusing to sign an electoral code of conduct.
The move came days after party leader Tundu Lissu was arrested at a rally where he called for electoral reforms and was charged with treason.
The commission also barred Luhaga Mpina, the candidate for the second largest opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, after an objection from the attorney general.
Local and international watchdogs have sounded alarms over election-related violence and repression for months.
In June, a panel of nine UN experts called the government’s actions “unacceptable” and said they had tallied more than 200 disappearances since 2019.
And in September, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it had documented at least 10 recent instances of politically motivated assault, harassment, abduction and torture as well as “extensive restrictions” on media and civil society organisations.
Nomathamsanqa Masiko-Mpaka, HRW’s Africa researcher, warned at the time that Tanzania’s October elections were at “great risk”.
“The authorities need to stop muzzling dissenting voices and the media and instead engage in meaningful reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections,” Masiko-Mpaka added.
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