It's election day again in Tanzania. It's Wednesday, the ballot boxes open like metal flowers, but the air smells more of fear than democracy. The ballots fall into transparent containers, and with them an illusion: that one can choose freely, when the candidates have already been chosen by others.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, 65, former deputy to the late John Magufuli – the man with the iron fist and the steely smile – is determined to win, and to win well. Not so much against the opposition, which is now almost a distant memory, but against the ghosts within her own party, the old Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the CCM that has ruled Tanzania since the dawn of the revolutionary era.
Samia, the first woman to lead the country, started out with an aura of hope. A leader from Zanzibar, the island of commerce and utopias, who at first seemed to want to breathe new life and dignity into the political debate. She had given space to the newspapers, removed some gag orders, smiled at her critics. Then, slowly, the light went out. Or perhaps it was extinguished by those in the corridors of power who do not like open windows.
Zanzibar, where the international press was able to witness the opening of the polling stations, remains an exception: a small laboratory of freedom in a country where, on the mainland, foreign journalists are not allowed to set foot. “Orders from above”, they say. And in Africa, orders from above weigh like stones.
Amnesty International speaks of a ‘wave of terror’: disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings. Human Rights Watch confirms: the opposition repressed, the media stifled, the electoral commission anything but independent. Tundu Lissu, Hassan's main challenger, is on trial for treason — an ancient word that still sounds like a sentence in Africa. His party, Chadema, has been excluded from the polls. The only other “serious” candidate, Luhaga Mpina of ACT-Wazalendo, has been disqualified for “technical reasons”.
But fear is not only among the opposition. Even within the CCM, people are trembling. Humphrey Polepole, former party spokesman and ambassador to Cuba, dared to criticise the president. Then he disappeared. Bloodstains were found in his home, they say. The Tanganyika Law Society reports 83 kidnappings since Samia came to power. Twenty in the last few weeks alone.
Analysts in Dar es Salaam whisper that Hassan never really dismantled the security apparatus left by Magufuli. “She kept the thugs,” they say. And the widespread control of dissent has returned to being the “new normal”.
Meanwhile, the country is growing. By 5.5% according to the World Bank. Agriculture, tourism, mining: the economy feeds those who don't want to know too much. In Africa, stability often takes the form of silence. Samia promises roads, hospitals and universal health insurance. And the people, who are hungry for everything, still believe her.
Except that in Tanzania, the ballot boxes do not count how many crosses are placed in them. They count who has the power to make them count.
And so, between a rally and a preventive arrest, the president smiles in front of the microphones and reassures the country: “There will be no threats to security”. As if to say: don't worry, we've already thought of everything. Even democracy.