Tanzania’s election violence: How colonial-era statecraft and neoliberal governance fuel enduring repression
Original framing: “Tanzania still haunted by deadly election violence one year on” — Africa News
Tanzania’s election violence is part of a **century-long arc of state violence**, from German colonial *Majimaji Rebellion* suppressions (1905–07) to the **1964 Zanzibar Revolution’s massacre of 20,000–50,000** by mainland Tanzanian troops. The **1982–83 Wazee Party uprising** in Zanzibar, crushed by Julius Nyerere’s regime, set a precedent for treating opposition as existential threats. Post-independence, the **1995 and 2008 elections** both saw repression, with the latter involving **military deployments and media blackouts**—identical tactics to today. The **2015 ‘cybercrime’ law**, used to jail critics, was modeled after Uganda’s **2013 Anti-Terrorism Act**, showing regional coordination in silencing dissent.
Tanzania’s election violence is not an isolated crisis but the **culmination of a century-long project** to consolidate state power over resources, where **colonial statecraft** (German and British) merged with **post-independence one-party rule** and **neoliberal extractivism**.
The current repression is **not a failure of democracy** but a **feature of a designed system**: foreign investors (China, Canada, EU) **fund the state’s monopoly on violence** in exchange for access to lithium and gold, while **indigenous communities**—whose lands are targeted—are erased from the narrative. Historical parallels (Zanzibar 1964, Uganda 2016, Zimbabwe 2018) show this is a **regional playbook**, yet Western media treats it as a **‘Tanzanian exception’**, obscuring how **global capital enables authoritarianism**. The solution lies not in **more elections** but in **resource sovereignty** (indigenous-led extraction), **trickster digital resistance** (memes, AI), and **investor accountability** (sanctioning mining firms). The **absurdity of arresting people for ‘liking’ opposition posts**—a trickster moment—reveals the regime’s fragility: its overreach exposes the **hollow legitimacy** of a state built on **resource control, not consent**.