Samia Suluhu’s discomfiting revelation: Gender alone does not inoculate one from dictatorship and demagoguery

For a short stint, Magufuli’s iron-fisted rule cast a long shadow—he closed down media outlets on a whim, silencing critics with a curt wave of his hand, and treating COVID-19 as a problem solved by prayer rather than science.

Into the void he left stepped in Samia Suluhu Hassan—a woman many knew merely as Magufuli’s unassuming vice president, always standing quietly at his side, taking notes, offering a gentle nod. Now, she had inherited the highest office.

Suluhu has begun, quite unexpectedly, to rule with an iron fist. Not the gentle, consensus-building hand many had assumed would come with a woman in power, but something far firmer—something that rattled the mahogany podiums of Dodoma.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan, once celebrated as the embodiment of a new era for Tanzanian politics, has quietly drifted into authoritarianism. It is as though a switch has been thrown in the soft-spoken corridors of power—one that many Tanzanians and observers alike scarcely saw coming.

For a generation raised on the notion that female leaders would be more compassionate, more collaborative, Suluhu’s recent turn toward heavy-handed tactics feels like a betrayal of hope itself. When she ascended to the presidency in March 2021, it came with a sense of possibility, hope and even jubilation among many Tanzanians.

She was the first woman ever—and the first Zanzibari—to hold the office, and the assumptions were predictable: surely a woman, many argued, would bring a form of leadership seasoned with empathy.

Throughout the world, from Jacinda Ardern’s deft handling of crisis in New Zealand to Angela Merkel’s quiet, steely resolve in Germany, female heads of state had carved out images of temperate strength—authoritative yet measured, firm yet kind. Suluhu, with her soft voice and disarming smile, seemed cut from that same cloth.

Early on, she spoke of “reconciliation” and “rebuilding,” signalling a departure from her predecessor’s combative, even brash, style. But in the shadow of those initial olive branches lay a political calculus that would soon reveal its sharp talons. Many greeted her ascension as a breath of fresh air. And indeed, at first, she offered glimpses of exactly that: she kissed the boots of civil society groups, reopened shuttered media outlets, and invited opposition leaders to her office—even former rivals such as Tundu Lissu, who, in private, recalled her warmth and jocularity during their meetings.

In those early months, it felt as though Tanzania might pivot toward a more open democracy. Suluhu unveiled what came to be known as the “Four Rs”: Reconciliation, Resilience, Reforms, and Rebuilding. True to the first “R,” she dispensed with the broomed-under-the-carpet brand of politics her predecessor had championed, lifting bans on newspapers and easing social restrictions. “We must listen to each other,” she preached, “even when we disagree.” There were subtle smiles, even subtle jokes—she once quipped in public that she hoped microphones wouldn’t betray her “Swahili proverbs” about unity, as though the old radio mics might blurt out Nogadawa (an often slippery Zanzibari colloquialism).

But the promise of a kinder, gentler era, it turned out, was ephemeral.

To understand how a woman who spoke of unity and a new inclusive politics could morph into an uncompromising leader, one must first see the world she emerged from.

Zanzibar is a small patch of paradise in the Indian Ocean, where coral reefs kiss sugar-white sand and the spice-scented wind drifts daily from ancient plantations inland. Samia was born into a modest family in the mid-1960s, just a few years after the 1964 revolution that merged Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

She grew up alongside her siblings in a narrow, ochre-hued alley in Makunduchi, at the southern tip of Unguja Island. The houses, with their corrugated tin roofs, jostled for space between clove trees and the occasional coconut grove. Each dawn, the call to prayer from the minaret of the nearby mosque would mingle with the cries of street vendors hawking roasted yams.

Her parents, like most in Makunduchi, had roots in fishing and small-scale agriculture—her father was said to have once been a sailor who worked the shallow reef waters, delivering charcoal and coconuts to dhows bound for mainland markets.

Her mother, a homemaker with a laugh like the tinkle of glass beads, took in tailoring orders, hemming sarongs and resewing tattered shirts late into the night. From them, Samia absorbed the rhythms of hard work and community reliance. She would accompany her mother to the town’s modest bazaar, where Indian spice merchants and Omani shopkeepers haggled over sacks of turmeric and cinnamon.

Suluhu, even then, displayed a kind of quiet confidence—listening more than speaking, observing more than interjecting.

School was a mix of rigorous Islamic instruction at the madrasah and public schooling funded by the fledgling Tanzanian government. She excelled in economics, which some of her teachers attributed to the sharp business acumen she displayed when, at twelve, she set up a makeshift roadside stall selling slices of mango in peak season.

She’d learned from her mother the art of profit margins—buy cheaply from the farmer, sell just high enough to make a little gain without alienating her friends who scrambled for the fruit. Stories from old neighbours suggest that when she was fourteen, she once negotiated with a trader from Stone Town to exchange a heavy sack of coconuts for a school uniform. Those around her saw in Samia a budding negotiator, one who balanced firmness with a welcoming smile. She was the ocean greeting the beach.

Her tertiary education took her to the mainland—first to the Open University of Tanzania and later abroad to the University of Manchester, where she completed a postgraduate diploma in economics.

That spirit of curiosity and a touch of worldliness must have set her apart when she entered Zanzibar’s House of Representatives in 2000. As Minister of Labour, then in subsequent portfolios, her star continued to rise. She built a reputation for meticulousness: files colour-coded, reports footnoted, budgets cross-checked.

When Magufuli chose her as his running mate in 2015, it was partly to balance the ticket—Zanzibari inclusion, gender diversity, and some measure of technocratic credibility. Together, they stormed to victory, buoyed by Magufuli’s promise to eradicate corruption and inject “Hapa Kazi tu!”

Work, nothing else!

Suluhu became the first female Vice President of Tanzania, and with that title came the expectation that she would temper her boss’s rough edges. Indeed, during state events, she often stood quietly behind him, making notes, nodding, but rarely interjecting—like a chess grandmaster calculating moves from behind the board.

Yet, in March 2021, the unexpected happened: President Magufuli died, and Samia was suddenly vaulted into the presidency. The nation held its breath. Would she continue Magufuli’s legacy of muscular state control, or would she carve out a new path of openness?

Initially, she did the latter. She reopened independent newspapers, invited foreign epidemiologists back to Dar es Salaam, and re-joined the COVAX program to procure vaccines. Instead of dismissing COVID-19 as a “Western plot,” she rolled up her sleeve and got vaccinated publicly, even encouraging Tanzanians to do the same.

Suluhu was a marionette dancing free of its strings for the first time, delightfully.

And yet, Suluhu’s political instincts were forged in the crucible of CCM, a party that has prided itself on unity and unwavering dominance since Tanganyika’s independence in 1961. Beneath the outward humility, Suluhu was no pushover. She moved quickly to consolidate her base, building alliances with key regional and party elites.

Those who murmured criticisms of her initial media détente soon found themselves reassigned, if not altogether sidelined. By the end of 2022, whispers within the CCM suggested that Samia had grown uncomfortable with the thickening air of liberalization. What began as a genuine musing on inclusivity slowly metastasized into a conviction that dissent was dangerous—too messy, too unpredictable. It was then that the subtle shift became visible. Opposition rallies that had been permitted in early 2023 started triggering police roadblocks. Prominent figures in CHADEMA, the leading opposition party, found themselves hauled before courts on nebulous charges of “inciting public disorder.” In villages across the Great Lakes region, youth organizers reported that meetings about land rights or election fairness were abruptly shuttered; activists went underground or to exile. High-profile lawyers who took up election petitions discovered their phones tapped, their offices visited by plainclothes officers. Even journalists who had returned from exile sensed a tightening noose. One veteran editor joked, though with more bitterness than humour, that his blinking “live” sign in the newsroom now felt like a crosshair.

It’s here, in the murky space between Ella Baker’s grassroots organizing and Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (familyhood) ideal, that Suluhu’s presidency took on a decidedly authoritarian tinge. The country that had once celebrated a woman’s ascendancy to its highest office now watched as that same woman deployed the levers of state to dampen opposition.

It was a dramatic reversal, and yet not entirely unprecedented among female leaders. Though many point to Jacinda Ardern’s empathy or Angela Merkel’s consensus-driven style as templates, history offers examples of women who embraced—and wielded—power in harsh ways. Consider Indira Gandhi, whose 1975–77 Emergency in India saw censorship, imprisonment of political opponents, and a suspension of democracy. Or Spain’s Victoria Eugenie, arguably less directly, but who nonetheless staggered towards the end of monarchy with ruthless political gamesmanship. Even Cleopatra, in her ornate palaces along the Nile, was known to be both beguiling and ruthless, brokering assassinations to secure her throne.

None of this is to suggest that Suluhu intended initially to be a dictator. Rather, power has a way of bending principles to pragmatism. Once the machinery of CCM consolidated behind her, and the cost of dissent rose—imagine that clattering policeman’s baton meeting your abrazo of a gentle explanatory speech—she may have concluded that control was the only reliable currency.

That, of course, has disappointed many who believed women might break the cycle. There is a certain irony: for decades, feminists around the world have championed increased female participation in politics precisely because they assumed women would infuse governance with empathy, compassion and cooperation. But the example of President Suluhu reveals a discomfiting truth: gender alone does not inoculate one from the temptation of absolute power.

For everyday Tanzanians, the transformation in their leader cuts deep. They had hoped that a woman, reared amidst the reverberation of muezzin calls and guided by the gentle hands of “Mama”, her mother, would bring a kinder touch. Instead, some now wonder if she has simply learned, after all these years, that the promise of softness makes for easy opportunity to tighten one’s grip.

What of Suluhu’s own narrative? Some say she was never “soft” at all—only strategic, cultivated to be agreeable so as to survive in the unforgiving game of CCM politics. Others recall how, as Vice President, she quietly manoeuvred behind the scenes, shepherding budgets and personnel shifts without fanfare.

Perhaps that is the paradox of power: a woman who grew up listening to the evening call to prayer, her hands stained with the red dust of tobacco fields, who walked the alleys of Stone Town as a young legislator, was just as susceptible to the intoxicating current of authority as any man, and now has hands stained with the red blood of her compatriots.

In Suluhu’s rise and subsequent consolidation, one sees not only the imprint of her own personality but also the enduring strength of a political structure that prizes unity and control above all. It is a cautionary tale of how, even when a break in the glass ceiling is achieved—shards of hope glinting in the sunlight—the underlying machinery of control can pull a leader back into conformity.