What started as a normal election morning in Tanzania quickly turned into pure political drama. By sunrise on October 29, 2025, voters expected to cast their ballots peacefully but instead, they got tear gas, street fires, and a sudden curfew.
Dar es Salaam, the city that never sleeps, woke up to chaos. Protesters flooded the streets shouting that the election was “already decided” long before the first ballot dropped. Some furious youths tore down posters of President Samia Suluhu Hassan, accusing her government of locking out major opposition figures and running a one-woman show at the polls.
The gossip on the streets? Many believe the game was rigged before kickoff. Major opposition parties were disqualified or sidelined weeks earlier, leaving voters with little more than a list of names they barely recognized. One Twitter user posted - before the internet blackout hit, “How do you vote in a race where only one car is allowed to drive?”
By mid-morning, social media across Tanzania started glitching, and before long, the country went dark online. VPN searches shot up as people scrambled to get updates. Meanwhile, tension on the ground reached boiling point. In Dar es Salaam’s Kimara and Ubungo areas, police fired tear gas to scatter crowds, and witnesses said a police station was set ablaze along Nelson Mandela Road.
As the drama unfolded, the government swooped in with a 6 p.m. curfew, saying it was for “public safety.” But residents whispered a different story, that it was to stop the world from seeing just how bad things had gotten. Military trucks rolled in, the streets went silent, and by nightfall, Dar looked more like a movie set than an election zone.
Up north in Arusha and Mbeya, things weren’t calm either. Reports of vandalized polling stations and confrontations between locals and police spread fast before the blackout cut communications. Opposition supporters said they were just tired of being silenced. “We don’t vote anymore, we just watch,” one angry young man was overheard saying near a polling station.
Human rights groups had already warned that this year’s election would be “anything but free and fair,” and as the smoke cleared, those words seemed hauntingly accurate. Even international observers struggled to monitor events as information vanished behind the digital curtain.
Still, in true Tanzanian fashion, humor found its way into the chaos. Memes began circulating once internet access flickered back; one showed a ballot box with the caption, “Votes counted, results decided, public shocked - same script, new season.”
Whether this was a political crisis or just another chapter in Tanzania’s election drama, one thing’s certain: the people are talking, and they’re not happy. From the broken curfew to the broken trust, this election has everyone asking the same question, who’s really calling the shots?
As dawn broke over Dar es Salaam, one thing was clear: this wasn’t just a vote, it was a showdown between power, patience, and the people’s voice. And if you listen closely, you can still hear the whisper on the streets: “This time, we saw everything.”
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