When Tanzania’s electoral commission announced that President Samia Suluhu Hassan had won 98 per cent of the vote, the continent sighed in disbelief. Numbers that high do not speak of triumph. They whisper of fear. Behind the percentage lies a deeper story about Africa’s oldest ruling parties and their uneasy marriage with democracy.
By Solo Musaigwa
Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) is not just another political organisation. It is the living ancestor of our own liberation history. The party that sheltered guerrilla fighters from ZANU and ZAPU, that opened its borders and its heart to those who dreamt of a free Zimbabwe. Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania was the moral compass of African independence, the school where our revolutionaries studied the language of freedom.
But history has a cruel habit of devouring its heroes. The liberation movements that once stood for resistance have become, in many places, the custodians of repression. CCM’s overwhelming “victory,” stained by reports of mass killings and an internet blackout, recalls not the glory of Uhuru but the panic of power. We in Zimbabwe should recognise this melody. We have danced to it before.
In 2008, when our own elections tipped toward change, the ballot quickly gave way to the baton. Citizens who had hoped for renewal met the cold logic of a state unwilling to loosen its grip. What began as a celebration of independence decades earlier had hardened into a struggle to protect the fruits of that same independence from its own gardeners.
Liberation movements across Africa share a tragic paradox: they freed nations but often forgot to free the political imagination. Their legitimacy rests on history, not performance; on sacrifice remembered, not service delivered. They speak the language of the past while their citizens cry in the vocabulary of the present.
Kenya once walked that same edge in 2007-08, when electoral dispute descended into ethnic chaos. Yet out of the ashes, Kenya embarked on constitutional reform and institutional renewal. It was not perfect, but it was progress. Proof that Africa can reinvent its democracy without losing its soul. Tanzania and Zimbabwe can do the same, if they find the courage to look in the mirror.
Today, young Tanzanians fill the streets of Dar es Salaam and Arusha, chanting for freedom from the very revolution that birthed their republic. Their defiance is not treachery; it is continuity. They are, unknowingly, echoing the same call our comrades made in the bush: that power must serve the people, not rule them. The philosopher Frantz Fanon warned that every revolution carries the seed of its own betrayal. When yesterday’s liberators forget to liberate themselves from the intoxication of authority.
Zimbabwe’s leaders should take heed. The temptation to confuse order with justice is seductive but fatal. The rhetoric of “stability” that silences dissent may secure the present, but it mortgages the future. Our region’s greatest danger is not coups or protests; it is the slow suffocation of civic space under the banner of patriotism.
What is happening in Tanzania is not merely an East African crisis. It is an African reflection. It forces all liberation parties from Harare to Pretoria to confront an uncomfortable truth: history cannot be eaten. Citizens may honour the past, but they live in the present. If governments cannot deliver dignity, opportunity, and fairness, no monument or liberation song will drown out the discontent.
We in Zimbabwe should feel an echo of recognition when we see Tanzanian soldiers patrolling their streets as “unknown men” hunt protesters in dark vans. It is the familiar choreography of fear. The old playbook of power preservation masquerading as patriotism. Yet every suppression plants the seed of its own resistance. You can silence voices but not hunger. You can cut the internet, but not the idea of freedom.
Africa stands at a crossroads where liberation history must evolve into liberation responsibility. The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that true revolution is not about the seizure of power but the creation of freedom. If our post-independence states cannot translate sovereignty into genuine democracy, then the meaning of independence itself becomes hollow.
Zimbabwe and Tanzania share more than memories; they share a destiny. Both stood at the frontlines of African emancipation. Both now risk becoming exhibits in the museum of faded revolutions. But there is still time. The courage that once toppled empires can also reform institutions. The same patriotism that built the struggle can now defend the constitution.
As blood stains Tanzania’s streets and its president claims near-divine victory, Africa must remember that liberation was never meant to produce monarchies in khaki. The true test of freedom is not how many enemies are defeated, but how many citizens can disagree without dying.
For Zimbabwe, watching Tanzania today should feel like watching our own reflection in a cracked mirror. Familiar, haunting, and instructive. The lesson is simple yet profound. No government, however historic, can forever borrow legitimacy from its past. Eventually, the people will demand receipts.