Dar es Salaam burnt through Wednesday night – its skyline cut by orange fire and tear gas haze.
Smoke rose where streetlights once glowed. Youths hurled stones at armoured trucks. Police answered with gunfire.
The city’s heartbeat – loud, angry, unafraid – pulsed through every alley.
The spark came from an election that many called hollow. Opposition names were missing from the ballot. Ballot boxes vanished from polling stations.
The ruling party’s victory, all but certain, felt less like democracy and more like coronation. By Wednesday evening, frustration found its language in chaos.
From Mbagala to Temeke, streets turned into barricades. Protesters torched Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) banners and stormed petrol stations. A police post went up in flames.
READ ALSO: Tanzania Election: Military Deployed, Curfew Imposed as Violence Escalates
Shopfronts shattered as looters moved through smoke. Videos flooded TikTok and X. Netizens from across East Africa shared shaky clips of crowds chanting, running, and ducking bullets. A chorus of rage and disbelief.
Demonstrators in Tanzania have officially occupied the airport! pic.twitter.com/IdJwqdpmh6
— Billy (@MwangiHub) October 30, 2025
At 6 p.m., the government imposed a curfew. It was meant to restore order. It did the opposite.
Protesters regrouped in the dark, moving through backstreets, whispering directions, and sharing updates on Zello.
“Stay together,” one voice said in a viral clip. “Don’t run. Don’t stop.”
By midnight, army trucks rolled down Morogoro Road. Helicopters circled low. Internet speeds crawled. Still, the crowds refused to vanish.
They surged toward key installations: bus terminals, fuel depots, party offices – testing the reach of the state’s control.
Security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and, witnesses said, live rounds. The air thickened with fear and fury.
By Thursday morning, Dar was a bruised city. Blackened shells of kiosks lined the roads. Soldiers stood at intersections, rifles raised.
Checkpoints sprouted like weeds. The government urged workers and students to stay home. Life paused, held hostage by silence and smoke.
Incumbent Samia Suluhu Hassan has been accused of cracking down on dissenters.
Many lessons Kenyans can learn from Tanzania’s disciplined yet defiant #Maandamano
✅They didn’t wait for results — they withdrew electoral legitimacy
✅Internet shutdowns & curfews don’t scare them
✅No regionalism, tribe/religion
✅ That TZ will never, ever, be the same again! pic.twitter.com/gVumrsM2zi— Stephen Mutoro (@smutoro) October 29, 2025
Repression in Tanzania has worn many faces: arrests, bans, and silences that stretch too long. But this, observers said, felt heavier.
However, a generation raised under surveillance is now learning to resist it.
Voices on social media tell of neighbours taken in the night, of journalists missing, of families cut off by internet blackouts.
“You speak, you vanish,” one user wrote before his account disappeared.
“We will not sit back and watch as Suluhu and her CCM cartel plunder and destroy our country,” said an upcoming Tanzanian commentator on TikTok.
“The chaos in Dar es Salaam is the warning of the things to come. What began as anger over an election now reads like a reckoning. The young people are daring to breathe beneath the boot of control, even if the cost is fire,” read a post on X.
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