Tanzania under Samia Suluhu Hassan: Tundu Lissu feels betrayed by lack of reform

Other billboards, including in the largest city Dar es Salaam, show her with other opposition leaders, depicting her intention to unite people across the political divide.

They appear to be campaign advertisements ahead of local government elections next month and presidential and parliamentary elections a year later.

The elections will be her first real test. She was Magufuli’s deputy, and inherited the presidency following his sudden death during the coronavirus pandemic.

Like Magufuli, she belongs to the CCM party, which has won every election it has contested since independence from Britain in 1961.

According to the second-biggest opposition party, ACT-Wazalendo, Samia’s reform drive may have been stymied by the CCM’s fear that it may lose elections.

“We have heard a CCM bigwig saying that if she had maintained that pace which she came in with, she would lose the country to the opposition,” party leader Dorothy Semu told the BBC.

“So maybe she absorbed that fear that if you reform, you will eventually end giving in to the opposition,” she added.

But Semu feels the political climate is better than during the Magufuli era, even if government officials sometimes acted like “they are doing us a favour”.

“We have now a more open civic space. We can talk about politics freely. We can discuss as political parties. We can take part in political rallies. We can organise meetings,” she told the BBC.

Semu added that as elections approach, “we are hopeful, but we not assured everything is going to be OK”.

Lawyer and activist Fatma Karume told the BBC that genuine reform hinged on overhauling the country’s laws so that the president has less power.

“In Tanzania we have something called an imperial presidency,” she said.

“All we have is a head of state who is less oppressive… let’s say, not as comfortable as Magufuli in using the oppressive powers of the state.”