“A dictator is a dictator — male or female. Power wears no gender.”
The Mirage of Progress
They said it was a new dawn.
A woman at the helm. A symbol of progress, inclusion, and hope.
The world applauded; the headlines rejoiced:
“Tanzania’s First Female President — A New Era Begins.”
But history loves irony.
Beneath the applause, beneath the bright fabric of symbolism, the old machine was already humming — the same politics of fear, the same appetite for control.
Only the mask had changed.
The Dictator Has No Gender
Power is not a moral compass.
It does not soften because the hand that holds it is female.
To assume that gender alone delivers justice is naïve — and dangerous.
Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania’s first woman president, was heralded as the embodiment of reform. Yet under her watch, the prisons filled, the newspapers closed, and the voices of dissent were buried under “national unity.”
Gender equality without political freedom is not liberation — it is camouflage.
The Party That Never Left
Samia did not inherit democracy; she inherited a machine — Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), the “Party of the Revolution.”
Since 1977, CCM has ruled Tanzania uninterrupted. Its ideology has long since dissolved, leaving behind a single obsession: to remain in power.
Surrounded by retired generals, businessmen, and political ghosts from every previous regime, Samia faced a choice:
Fight the old order and risk exile — or join it and stay president.
She chose the latter.
By 2024, media crackdowns and arrests had returned. The illusion of reform faded.
The woman who promised change became the custodian of continuity.
The Machinery of Silence
The statistics are chilling.
Over 500 arrests in a single day.
Eighty-three disappearances documented by the Tanganyika Law Society.
Opposition leader Tundu Lissu, shot sixteen times in 2017, now facing a death penalty for calling for electoral reform.
When The Citizen newspaper dared to publish an animated short about families of the disappeared, the entire outlet was suspended for “threatening national unity.”
In Tanzania today, the truth is an act of rebellion.
The West’s Hypocrisy
And yet — where are the champions of democracy now?
The same Western diplomats who cheered the rise of Tanzania’s “first female leader” now avert their gaze.
Gender empowerment makes for good press; state repression does not.
They will attend conferences, toast “African female leadership,” and praise her “moderation” — even as journalists rot in cells.
“A woman who silences her people is not a feminist victory.
She is the mirror of the patriarchy she replaced.”
The Spark of Defiance
Still, resistance breathes.
In October 2025, a video spread like wildfire — Captain John Charles Tesha, an Air Force instructor, appeared in uniform, accusing the government of theft and betrayal.
He called for a military uprising — the first open challenge to the regime in 60 years.
Within days, he vanished. But his message remained.
Across East Africa, young people are watching — learning that a camera can be stronger than a gun when used collectively.
At the Kenya-Tanzania border, when opposition deputy chairman John Eche was detained, hundreds of citizens gathered peacefully. Their cameras live-streamed everything.
Within six hours, the authorities released him.
Six hours — not six decades — to reclaim dignity. That is the new battlefield.
Beyond the Gender Veil
Criticizing a female autocrat is not sexism.
It is justice.
True feminism is not about replacing one tyrant with another in a headscarf — it is about dismantling the systems that make tyranny possible.
The Tanzanian people deserve real freedom, not symbolic gestures.
Samia Suluhu Hassan will not be remembered for being the first woman in power — but for what she did with power once she had it.
The Lesson for All Nations
Tanzania’s story is not an isolated tragedy — it is a mirror for every nation that confuses representation with revolution.
Symbolism without substance is the enemy of progress.
When the world stops asking questions because it is too enchanted by the optics of “change,” oppression thrives — whether in heels, boots, or robes.
True liberation lives in the courage of ordinary citizens who refuse to be silent —
the poets, journalists, students, and mothers who keep speaking even as the walls close in.
“When the monkey’s day to die comes, all the trees become slippery.”
— Swahili proverb
Tanzania, the world is watching.
And history, as always, keeps its receipts.