On the evening of September 7, 2017, Tundu Lissu was approaching his home in the Tuwangoma residential area of Dodoma — Tanzania’s administrative capital — when gunmen opened fire. He was shot sixteen times. By any measure, he should not have survived.
Lissu, then serving as a member of parliament for the Singida East constituency and as President of the Tanganyika Law Society, was airlifted to Nairobi for emergency surgery before eventually seeking medical treatment in Belgium. For three years, he recovered in exile — stripped of his parliamentary seat on absenteeism grounds even as he fought for his life, denied statutory medical benefits by the very government whose agents are widely believed to have ordered the attack.
A Target Long Before the Bullets
The attempt on Lissu’s life did not come out of nowhere. In the twelve months before the shooting, he had been arrested eight times on various politically motivated charges, including incitement. His crime, as far as the Magufuli government was concerned, was speaking truth about an increasingly authoritarian state.
Lissu had been a fierce and effective critic of the ruling CCM party for years — as a lawyer, as a parliamentarian, and as an opposition voice in a country where opposition voices were increasingly dangerous to hold. He had represented activists, documented abuses, and stood before packed rallies of Tanzanians who saw in him the possibility of genuine change.
The government called the shooting an ordinary crime. No perpetrators have ever been identified. No investigation has produced results. President Magufuli expressed “shock” on Twitter. The police, in a country where security forces are omnipresent in the residences of politicians, were nowhere to be seen when the attack took place. Lissu himself has stated plainly and on the record that he believes the government was responsible.
Return, Resistance, and the 2020 Election
In July 2020, Tundu Lissu returned to Tanzania. He had been stripped of his parliamentary seat. His party’s headquarters had been firebombed. A sedition case was pending against him, scheduled — not coincidentally — for the same day he was due to register as a presidential candidate. The courts, under political pressure, moved the hearing at the last moment.
Lissu ran for president. He drew enormous crowds at rallies across the country — tens of thousands of Tanzanians who came to hear a man who had survived sixteen bullets tell them that their country could be different. His campaign slogan, Sera Mbadala — Alternative Policies — offered a vision of constitutional reform, press freedom, and free and fair elections.
The election of October 28, 2020 was a catastrophe for democracy. Internet services were shut down the night before. Opposition polling agents were denied entry to stations. Ballot boxes were stuffed. At least thirty CHADEMA polling agents were arrested as they headed to perform their electoral duties. Civilians were killed in Zanzibar. Independent observers were barred. The official results — giving Magufuli over 84% of the vote — were condemned internationally as fraudulent.
The International Legal Effort Begins
Amsterdam & Partners LLP, retained as international legal counsel to CHADEMA and to Tundu Lissu personally, has pursued every available avenue to hold the perpetrators of this sustained campaign of persecution to account.
“The attempt to assassinate Tundu Lissu, the theft of the 2020 election, the mass arrests of opposition supporters, and the systematic suppression of civic space in Tanzania are not isolated incidents,” said Robert Amsterdam, the firm’s founding partner. “They are the deliberate strategy of a regime determined to remain in power regardless of the will of the Tanzanian people.”
The campaign continues. Lissu continues. And the international community is being asked to choose which side of history it stands on.
“Citizens must not sit idly while their rights, hopes, and dreams are eviscerated by a political party determined to stay in power at any cost. Tanzania — that price is too high. Stand up.” — Robert Amsterdam, Amsterdam & Partners LLP