The month of November began with watershed moments across the African Continent. In the previous month, the continent was ravaged by democratic backslides that saw unrests in Kenya, Madagascar and other nations.
Tanzania held its election on the 29th of October 2025, with results announced shortly thereafter. However, what followed was not a celebration of democracy in action, but rather a grim illustration of the authoritarian trajectory that has been the hallmarks of so many of the continent’s once-vaunted liberation movements. We observed scenes reminiscent to a Hollywood thriller unfolding in Tanzania and reactions from a typical Mr Bean mime by fellow former liberation movements.
The election was characterised by the appearance of democratic process rather than genuine competition. President Samia Suluhu Hassan secured 98 percent of the vote, a figure that would be implausible even in less contentious contexts than Tanzania.
This overwhelming margin resulted from the systematic exclusion of meaningful opposition. Chadema, the leading opposition party, was barred from participating due to alleged irregularities in its administration.
Its leader, Tundu Lissu, was imprisoned on treason charges for advocating electoral reforms. The other principal challenger, Luhaga Mpina of ACT-Wazalendo, was also prohibited from standing. In their absence, Hassan faced only nominal challengers, if any, rendering the election an acclamation rather than a contest.
The aftermath of the election results exposed the underlying character of the electoral process. Large numbers of Tanzanians – denied meaningful participation – protested in the streets. Security forces responded with live ammunition and teargas, rather than restraint.
Opposition parties reported over 800 fatalities, while diplomatic sources suggested the number could reach into the thousands. The Government imposed internet blackouts, pursued opposition leaders, and filed treason charges against more than 250 protesters and activists. These actions reflected a government deeply insecure about its legitimacy.
Remarkably, the most striking feature of this unfolding tragedy was not the violence itself, but the deafening silence emanating from Africa's supposed custodians of democracy, such as the African Union, and from liberation movements like the African National Congress (ANC) that claim stewardship over the continent's progressive future.
The African Union issued a preliminary statement calling the election "not conducive to the peaceful conduct and acceptance of electoral outcomes." Yet this mild language scarcely captured the scale of the democratic catastrophe. More troubling still, was the response of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and, most conspicuously, South Africa’s ANC.
The ANC's position was, if anything, even more remarkable for its absence. Here was a party born from struggle against authoritarian rule, now content to watch a fellow liberation movement crush their own population with barely a murmur of protest.
The ANC, which had only months earlier hosted the Liberation Movements Summit in July 2025 – a gathering supposedly dedicated to "defending the liberation gains" and "advancing socio-economic development" – offered no meaningful critique of the developments in Tanzania.
Instead, its silence suggested complicity, or at the very least, an understanding among these parties that challenging one's peers risks inviting scrutiny on one's own increasingly precarious grip on power.
This silence is not accidental. Rather, it flows from a fundamental contradiction at the heart of contemporary liberation movements in southern Africa. These parties – the ANC, ZANU-PF, CCM, FRELIMO, MPLA and SWAPO – have evolved into something their founders would scarcely recognise: mechanisms for perpetuating elite power rather than vehicles for democratic transformation.
They retain legitimacy through a mythologised history of struggle, but increasingly govern through patronage networks, constitutional manipulation, and when necessary, raw coercion. To condemn Tanzania would be to invite similar scrutiny of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia, each of which exhibits troubling democratic deficits.
It is in this context that these movements have developed a convenient narrative to explain their popular decline: imperialism. The rhetoric is well-worn. The ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula speaks of "external manipulation and interference." President Ramaphosa himself, whilst acknowledging "internal" challenges including corruption and patronage, immediately pivots to blaming "foreign interference" and the "reassertion of imperialism."
Similarly, when Tanzanian protests erupted, the government swiftly attributed them to foreign agitation, claiming that even "foreign agitators" had been arrested. No substantive evidence was produced – none was necessary. The accusation itself serves a rhetorical function, absolving these movements of responsibility for their failures.
Yet the evidence for systematic Western meddling in Tanzania's 2025 election is remarkably thin. What is abundantly clear, by contrast, is that the CCM government acted alone in its decision to bar opposition parties, arrest opposition leaders, oversee a rigged electoral process, and use violence to suppress dissent.
These were not decisions imposed by Washington or orchestrated by NATO intelligence services. They were the autonomous choices of a ruling party seeking to maintain its monopoly on power by any means necessary.
The tragedy lies in how this anti-imperialist rhetoric, deployed to legitimise authoritarianism, simultaneously disempowers the very populations these movements claim to represent. When failures of governance – unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, declining public services – are attributed to external forces, citizens are effectively told that change is impossible, that resistance is futile because the real enemy lies beyond their borders and their rulers' reach. It is, in effect, a counsel of despair, offered by movements that once inspired hope.
What the silence of the ANC and its peers reveals are their exhaustion as vehicles for progressive change. Having consolidated power, they have lost the ideological coherence and moral clarity that once defined them.
The disconnect between their founding narratives and present realities has become unbridgeable. Younger Tanzanians taking to the streets, younger South Africans increasingly turning away from the ANC, and young people across the region demanding accountability – these citizens are not fooled by platitudes about imperialism or reminiscences about struggle.
They are living the consequences of liberation movements that have become obstacles to liberation.
The path forward requires a reckoning that these movements seem unwilling to undertake. They must move beyond nostalgia and confront the uncomfortable truth: that many of their internal problems flow not from foreign interference, but from authoritarian impulses, corrupt elites, and an unwillingness to distribute power democratically.
They must, in President Ramaphosa's own words from the Liberation Movements Summit, "institutionalise mechanisms for mutual accountability" and "hold each other to higher standards." Yet even as these words were being spoken, the violence in Mozambique (post-elections) was unfolding, and the movements chose silence over substance.
Until the liberation movements demonstrate that they value democratic norms more than the solidarity of shared authoritarianism, they will continue their decline. And until the ANC, in particular, begins to hold its peers accountable – not just rhetorically but through concrete measures – its own moral authority will continue to erode.
The people of Tanzania deserve more than condolences from regional bodies. They deserve solidarity with their democratic aspirations. The question is whether their liberation movements will provide it.
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