Tanzania’s election fraud triggers mass protests with army deployed

Kipchumba Ochieng

The largest anti-government mobilisations since Tanzania’s independence have erupted in the wake of Wednesday’s elections. From Dar es Salaam to Arusha, thousands of workers, youth, and the urban poor have taken to the streets to denounce the vote engineered to secure victory for President Samia Suluhu Hassan and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of the Revolution—CCM).

The vote for president, the 400-seat parliament, and lawmakers of the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago was stage-managed to guarantee Hassan’s victory. The government ensured that no genuine opposition could compete. Tundu Lissu, leader of the pro-business CHADEMA (Party for Democracy and Progress) was arrested in April on farcical treason charges. He faces the possibility of a death sentence. The other major challenger, Luhaga Mpina of the ACT-Wazalendo party, was disqualified on legal technicalities.

People protest in the streets of Arusha, Tanzania, on election day October 29, 2025 [AP Photo/str]

Hassan’s CCM traces its origins to Julius Nyerere’s Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), the petty-bourgeois pan-Africanist movement that led the struggle for independence from Britain in 1961. CCM inherited TANU’s one-party apparatus and has maintained power ever since.

In the end, only sixteen minor and regionally based parties with no national support were permitted to stand against Hassan. Official results are expected in the following days.

The election has become what many protesters have dubbed “the coronation of Hassan.” She came to power initially in 2021 following the sudden death from Covid-19 of Covid-denier President John Magufuli, when she assumed office without an electoral mandate.

In the days leading up to the vote, Hassan unleashed a wave of terror. Over the weekend, dozens were arrested across the country and at least 20 people have been abducted, with 83 abductions confirmed since Hassan assumed power. Humphrey Polepole, a former CCM spokesperson and ambassador to Cuba, disappeared from his home after publicly criticising Hassan. His family discovered blood stains inside his residence.

By Wednesday morning, tanks and armoured vehicles were patrolling major cities, with heavy deployments around Dar es Salaam, the country’s commercial hub and largest metropolis with 8.5 million inhabitants. On the day of the vote, mass anger erupted. According to reports and videos posted on social media, thousands of demonstrators have filled the streets of Kimara and Ubungo neighbourhoods of Dar es Salaam. The working-class districts of Magomeni, Kinondoni, and Tandale saw barricades erected, clashes with the police and tyres burned — a common scene in neighbouring Kenya, but new to Tanzania. A bus and a petrol station were set ablaze. In Mbeya, polling stations were vandalised and in Arusha, the diplomatic hub and one of Tanzania’s largest cities, protestors set a police station on fire.

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Videos show youth chanting “We want our country!” and “we don’t want CCM” as protestors coordinated through the Zello app which transforms smartphones into walkie-talkies.

The military has been deployed in Dar es Salaam, Dodoma—the country’s capital, Zanzibar island, and several regional centres. Internet access has been disrupted across the country and social media platforms including X, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have been blocked as protestors mobilised using hashtags such as #SuluhuMustGo, #MO29, and #NoElection.

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By Wednesday evening, Tanzania had been brought to a standstill. Major transport operators cancelled all intercity travel for the first time in the country’s history, and ferry routes from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar were suspended.

Tito Magoti, a human rights activist, reported that at least five people have been killed so far. But a diplomatic source told Reuters that the death toll in Dar es Salaam alone may be as high as ten.

Today, the government ordered all public servants to work from home and deployed troops across the capital. The curfew remains in force and state television have announced that schools would close.

The shockwaves of Tanzania’s protests have not stopped at the colonial borders carved by imperialism. In the south, at the Kyela crossing in Mbeya Region, protesters from neighbouring Malawi confronted Tanzanian border security, forcing officials to flee as dozens of youth crossed into Tanzania to join the demonstrations. In the north, Kenyan media reported that security forces blocked groups of young Kenyans at the Namanga crossing who attempted to enter Tanzania in solidarity.

These incidents are deeply significant. Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, backed by US and European imperialism, collaborate to kidnap and extradite opposition figures and activists across their borders, Now workers and youth are beginning to organise cross border opposition. Indeed, the protest is part of a growing wave of youth-led uprisings against the ossified post-independence order that has dominated the African continent. From FRELIMO in Mozambique to the MPLA in Angola, from Paul Biya’s 92-year-old autocracy in Cameroon to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI throne, to the discredited African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, once synonymous with national liberation, and the tribalised capitalist factions of Kenya’s ruling elite, a new generation is turning against these governments. In Madagascar, protestors ousted the president who fled to France as the military took over.

Decades after independence, millions of young Africans remain excluded from the wealth they create. They face mass unemployment, poverty wages, and the denial of basic rights such as education and healthcare, while being ruled by elites who serve the same capitalist and imperialist interests as their colonial predecessors.

These protests have erupted on the same soil where Julius Nyerere, one of the figures most associated with Pan-Africanism after Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, once sought to chart a “third way” between capitalism and socialism. Nyerere’s project of Ujamaa was presented as a model of African socialism, promising equality, collective ownership, and self-reliance. Beneath his rhetoric, however, Ujamaa remained a pro-capitalist programme that sought state-led development based on manoeuvres with imperialism.

Nyerere’s insistence that “social classes do not exist” in Africa has been completely refuted. Serving to mask the real social forces at work in newly independent states, he idealised pre-colonial communal traditions: “In our traditional African society we were individuals within a community. We took care of the community, and the community took care of us. We neither needed nor wished to exploit our fellow men. We neither had capitalists nor feudalists.”

Today, despite annual growth of over 5 percent, fueled by foreign investment in mining, energy, and infrastructure, the majority of Tanzanians remain mired in poverty. The country has 43 percent still living below the international poverty line of $2.15 per day, despite being one of Africa’s top gold producers, with offshore natural gas reserves, and boasting rare minerals like tanzanite, alongside substantial deposits of diamonds, nickel, coal, and uranium. Over 65 percent of the population is employed in agriculture, overwhelmingly in informal or subsistence conditions. Meanwhile, the working class, concentrated in the service, mining, and construction sectors, faces chronic underemployment, low wages, and precarious conditions.

At the other end of society, Tanzania is dominated by oligarchs such as Mohammed Dewji, the CEO of Mohammed Enterprises Tanzania Limited, whose fortune is estimated at $2.2 billion, and Rostam Aziz, worth around $700 million. Foreign multinationals extract billions of dollars in profits each year from the country’s mines, gas fields, and plantations, while the state receives a pittance in royalties that are then bitterly fought over by rival factions within the CCM.

The main opposition party, CHADEMA, offers no alternative. It represents a faction of the same ruling elite, made up largely of former CCM figures who resent being excluded from the plunder. Its programme is pro-business, calling for cutting corporate tax from 25 percent to between 15 and 20 percent and for creating what it describes as a “conducive environment for investors” in the mining, oil, and gas sectors. CHADEMA’s proposed reforms include the privatisation of the energy industry and the drive to make state-owned enterprises more “efficient”, a euphemism for selling them off to private capital.

€377 billion for weapons–Germany’s most extensive rearmament programme since Hitler

Johannes Stern

Speaking to the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung over the weekend, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union—CDU) once again confirmed his goal that Germany should build “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” A few days later, Politico published a Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) procurement list showing what this means in concrete terms: rearmament on a historic scale, surpassing anything seen since Hitler.

German Leopard tanks practice in Grafenwöhr [Photo by 7th Army Training Command / flickr / CC BY 2.0]

According to the list—also reported on by Die Welt—the planned spending across land, air, sea, space and cyber domains total €377 billion [$US436 billion]. This colossal rearmament programme includes hundreds of projects, from new tanks and artillery systems to drones, fighter jets, space satellites and cruise missiles.

At its core is the creation of an army capable of waging war against Russia. The Bundeswehr plans to acquire 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of over 2,000 kilometres. These missiles can reach deep into the Russian heartland—the distance from Berlin to Moscow is around 1,600 kilometres. Germany is thus preparing for offensive operations that would form part of a devastating Third World War.

This madness is being financed through a massive increase in military spending. The Merz government—a coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats (SPD), with the support of the Left Party and the Greens—has permanently exempted rearmament from the constitutionally enshrined debt brake, thereby freeing up war credits totaling one trillion euros. While billions flow into weapons, ammunition and satellite systems, social budgets are being frozen, Bürgergeld (basic welfare support) abolished, and pensions and health spending cut. The working class is to bear the cost—as cannon fodder at the front and through social devastation at home.

The main profiteers of this new German war economy are the same corporations that armed Hitler’s military (Wehrmacht) during the Second World War.

According to Die Welt, Rheinmetall is the biggest winner of the €377 billion plan. The company appears in 53 project entries worth over €88 billion, with another €56 billion flowing to subsidiaries and joint ventures. By 2035, almost 700 new Puma infantry fighting vehicles are to be delivered, along with hundreds of Skyranger systems for drone defence.

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger boasted openly in a recent interview with finance daily Handelsblatt about the company’s profit outlook: the order backlog already stands at €65 billion and could rise to €120 billion by mid-next year. Revenue is expected to grow to between €40 and €50 billion by 2030—with a profit margin of 20 percent.

Other major beneficiaries include Diehl Defence, manufacturer of the Iris-T missile family, and Hensoldt, which according to broadcaster n-tv is “swimming in orders.” These war profits reflect an expanding armaments bubble that is growing alongside the rearmament drive and forging an ever-closer integration of the state, military and big business.

The creation of a war economy is not limited to Germany. German imperialism is building a network of military-industrial outposts across Europe.

On October 28, Rheinmetall announced the founding of a joint venture with Bulgaria. The facility in question, scheduled for completion within 14 months, will produce gunpowder and 155-millimetre artillery shells worth over €1 billion. “Bulgaria is moving faster than ever before,” Papperger boasted, adding that the company was creating “one of the best factories in Europe.”

Further east, German arms manufacturers are expanding directly into Ukraine itself. As Handelsblatt reports, new production and development sites for German companies are being established there. “Customer and supplier are becoming partners,” the paper writes. CDU Economics Minister Katherina Reiche declared during a recent visit to Kyiv: “Ukraine is no longer merely a recipient of aid. There is huge potential here for cooperation, synergies and growth.”

Eighty years after the war of extermination against the Soviet Union, German imperialism is once again systematically organising war in the East—this time under the pretext of “defending democracy”—while pursuing the same imperialist objectives: domination of the continent, control over Ukraine and all Eastern Europe and ultimately the subjugation of Russia.

To build the “strongest army in Europe” and enforce these aims by force, the government plans a military restructuring of the entire country.

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) announced plans to build barracks “on an assembly line.” On Monday, the Defence Ministry declared that 187 previously decommissioned sites would be returned to military use, with another 13 locations—including the former Berlin-Tegel airport—to be retained rather than released for civilian use.

While tank depots, munitions factories and satellite centres are being built, civilian life is being destroyed. Education, healthcare and social infrastructure are being undermined to free up financial and human resources for war. At the top of the federal government’s agenda are the reintroduction of conscription and the militarisation of universities and schools.

At the start of the week, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union—CSU) told Handelsblatt that schools should be preparing young people for possible wartime conditions. At the upcoming Conference of Interior Ministers in November, he intends to propose that “crisis preparedness” be integrated into the school day—for example through specially designed double lessons.

Behind the militarisation of Germany and Europe lie objective driving forces. As in the 1930s, under the pressure of world crisis and imperialist rivalries, all social resources are being mobilised for war. The ruling class is responding to growing international tensions and internal social conflicts with authoritarian and militarist measures.

The Dutch snap election 2025: A mirror of Europe’s stalemate parliamentary politics

Parwini Zora

The Netherlands went to the polls on October 29, 2025 in a snap parliamentary election that lays bare the deep crisis of bourgeois democracy and the political stalemate produced by capitalist rule across Europe. Far from expressing the urgent interests of the masses, the vote represents a further stage in the reshuffling of power among factions of the ruling elite as they grapple with mounting social, economic and geopolitical turmoil.

Two fundamental truths emerged in the recent Dutch elections: the ruling class in the Netherlands has nothing progressive to offer but war and social misery, and the Dutch working class remains leaderless without its own political vanguard party rooted in its interests and in the history of the international socialist movement.

What is unfolding in the election outcome is not “a renewal of liberal democracy” but a managed reconfiguration of a ruling elite desperate to stabilise a collapsing bourgeois order. The election results underscore the inability of capitalist rule to secure legitimacy through parliamentary means, resorting instead to authoritarian mechanisms. Beneath the rhetoric of “governability,” the ruling class is galvanising behind an aggressive programme of militarisation, austerity, authoritarianism and war—policies shaped by EU diktats, NATO rearmament and the deepening social crisis confronting the working class.

The caretaker regime—remaining in place until the new government is formed—led by Dick Schoof, a former intelligence and counterterrorism chief, stands as a clear expression of this turn. Sustained with royal sanction after Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) withdrew from the governing coalition in June, Schoof’s dwindling caretaker government held just 32 of 150 parliamentary seats by August, making it unprecedentedly undemocratic even by the standards of bourgeois parliamentarism. His appointment as unelected prime minister of the heretofore most far-right government in post-war Dutch history represents the direct rule of the security state, with power consolidated in the hands of unelected intelligence officials, EU and NATO strategists, bankers and affiliated think tanks.

This arrangement exposes the rot of the entire political establishment. The traditional workers’ parties and the nominal left, long integrated into the machinery of capitalist rule, are utterly discredited and incapable of offering any alternative. Their complicity in decades of austerity, NATO militarism in the war against Russia, and tacit support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza has further alienated their social base, leaving a political vacuum exploited by the far right.

The Netherlands mirrors a broader international and European crisis: the hollowing out of democratic forms, the fusion of state and security apparatuses, and the ruling class’s desperate efforts to maintain control amid a deepening breakdown of bourgeois democracy.

In this political backdrop, internationally, the Dutch election was widely portrayed as a “litmus test” for “European coalition stability and the populist surge.” The Guardian framed it as a choice between a “populist breakthrough” or a return to “centrist coalition governance,” while Reuters stressed that the PVV’s initial lead did not guarantee control due to the “cordon sanitaire” imposed by other established parties following the government’s collapse in June. Media pundits and think tanks noted that the Dutch outcome could shape both “European populist momentum” and “EU/NATO alignment.”

Polls in fact revealed extraordinary volatility, with public trust in official politics at an all-time historical low. Up to half the electorate remained undecided in the final days, reflecting the absence of any party advancing an anti-capitalist, anti-profit, anti-nationalist and anti-war programme.

The results in return were considered a last-minute “surprise” outcome, underscoring the extraordinary fragility and volatility of Dutch bourgeois politics: a tie between the so-called “centrist-liberal” Democrats 66 (D66), led by 38-year-old Rob Jetten, and the far-right PVV, led by Geert Wilders. D66 surged unexpectedly and to its own surprise from nine to 26 seats. The PVV lost roughly a third of its votes and won 26 seats, or 17 percent of the vote.

Behind them, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) rebounded to 18 from five seats, profiting from the collapse of its split-off New Social Contract (NSC) that went to zero from 20 seats. The merged “progressive” GroenLinks–Labour Party (GL–PvdA) dropped to 20 from 25; the ex-Maoist Socialist Party (SP) was reduced to three from five; the right-wing liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) to 22 from 24; the agrarian populist Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) to four from seven. The far-right splinters JA21 and Forum for Democracy (FvD) gained nine and seven seats, respectively.

All former coalition parties lost votes and seats compared to 2023. With 76 seats required for a majority, months of backroom coalition talks are expected, though trade unions have appealed for swift cabinet formation to address mounting social discontent. The initial outcomes reveal Dutch politics shifting sharply further to the right, though the unexpected D66 surge among youth and urban workers reflects a counter-vote against fascism.

International commentary stressed that the real test lies not in vote counts but in coalition formation. The negotiations are confined to parties committed to war budgets, austerity, and authoritarian rule, demonstrating that Dutch parliamentary elections, three in five years, function as a management tool for big capital and pandemic-to-war profiteering.

Though an exact demographic breakdown of voting patterns is not yet available, early exit poll data indicates that young workers and first-time voters have primarily driven D66’s unexpected ascent. It is believed that the Generation Z’s (born 1997–2012) vote offset the far right’s earlier anticipated advantage, reducing the PVV’s seats by a third from 37 in 2023. D66 polled strongest in industrial urban centres such as in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, while the PVV’s base remained mostly older and rural. The pattern reflects a broader European and international trend: youth voting for “progressive” but essentially right-wing parties—political jackals in sheepskin—in the absence of any genuine alternative.

All party manifestos revealed a fundamental consensus toward authoritarian and militarist priorities, albeit with differences in technicalities and semantics. D66, while styling itself as “liberal-progressive,” mirrors the PVV’s policies shorn of ethno-supermacist “Dutch-first” rhetoric. On immigration, D66 proposes stricter asylum procedures, offshore pre-screening, and prioritisation of “vulnerable cases,” an echo of the PVV’s mass-deportation agenda. On defence and security, D66 backs the 2 percent GDP military spending, cyber-capability expansion and enhanced domestic surveillance—NATO-aligned militarism under liberal packaging. On social policy, its housing and welfare proposals remain bound by “fiscal discipline,” echoing the PVV’s austerity line. What was once far-right policy has been normalised across the parliamentary playing field, differing only in tone and presentation.

Dutch media and international commentary noted that the triad of housing, healthcare and immigration dominated voter priorities. In the weeks leading up to the elections, over 56 percent of voters ranked housing as their top concern, above immigration at 42 percent—the latter a campaign primarily stoked by the far right in recent years, scapegoating immigrant workers and refugees for the unravelling social crisis.

Ballooning rents, chronic shortages in affordable housing and the link between exaggerated claims of migrant inflows and housing pressure were emphasised by the media, with scant reports from investigative journalists attempting to negate the anti-immigrant narrative—proving that immigrant workers, especially from Eastern Europe, who are chronically underpaid and lack rudimentary labour protection, are in fact disproportionately burdened by higher rents and exploitation by private landlords and businesses alike, while paying millions in taxes in return for meagre incomes.

Healthcare continues to face budget cuts, understaffing, and the lingering pandemic strain shaping voter sentiment across the spectrum. Dutch complicity in the genocide in Gaza through crucial logistics and arms exports also entered the election debate, revealing growing awareness of how Dutch foreign policy connects to domestic policy.

The Netherlands also remains a chief frontline state in NATO’s military build-up against Russia and in support of Israel’s war and occupation in Gaza. The outgoing cabinet increased defence spending beyond 2 percent of GDP and expanded arms exports despite mass anti-war “Red Line” protests. D66 and GroenLinks–PvdA fully embrace NATO’s European security agenda, demonstrating that rhetoric aside, militarism and alignment with European imperialist strategic priorities are bipartisan.

The coalition arithmetic, in whichever constellation, guarantees that no major shift in political orientation will occur. Whether a “centrist” D66–CDA–GL–PvdA–VVD “big tent” government, or a far-right coalition led by a PVV–BBB–CDA–JA21 bloc, both would deepen migration crackdowns, militarism, and severe austerity. Whatever emerges in the coming months will mean tighter borders, restricted social spending, and stepped-up militarisation. D66’s “progressive” sheen, rooted largely in an affluent, “queer-friendly” and “alternative-lifestyle” upper-middle-class milieu, offers no serious opposition to the far-right agenda; it merely repackages and softens it.

The far right’s continued presence is therefore not an aberration but a symptom of the decay of the entire political order. The ruling class, confronted by growing discontent among workers and youth, increasingly relies on authoritarian and fascistic forces to contain political radicalisation. The PVV functions both as battering ram and safety valve. Its possible exclusion from government would not mean its defeat but its continued role in pushing all parties rightward. Meanwhile, though the youth and urban vote has demonstrated a counter-force, it is one contained within the parliamentary system and tied to fragile coalition arithmetic.

In a telling demonstration, Frans Timmermans wasted no time in announcing his resignation as leader of the recently formed GL–PvdA alliance, within hours of the first exit polls showing his bloc falling short of projections and slipping behind Rob Jetten’s D66. His swift departure epitomised the political bankruptcy of the so-called “progressive left” alliance, which had spent years backing NATO militarism and austerity while posturing as the moral counterweight to the rising far right. The vacuum left by its electoral defeat was seized upon by Geert Wilders, who, despite his party’s electoral setback, defiantly told reporters that he is to stay and to “buckle up— we are only getting started.” His words summed up both the emboldenment of the far right at the political treachery of the media-baptised Dutch “centre-left” paving the way for the fascists.