Tanzania back online after politically motivated outage • The Register

The African nation of Tanzania has reconnected to the internet after a five day outage.

As noted by outage-watcher NetBlocks and Cloudflare’s Radar service, traffic to and from Tanzania dropped to near-zero early on October 29th – the date of national elections for a new president.

The poll went ahead despite the government barring opposition candidates from standing.

Bizarrely, Gerson Msigwa, Chief Government Spokesman of Tanzania, instructed civil servants to work from home during the outage, without explaining how they could fulfil their duties.

The election had two outcomes. One was widespread protests in Tanzania, which were met with violence that reportedly led to at least 500 deaths.

The other was re-election of President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who on November 4th was sworn in at a military facility. Tanzania has previously staged swearing-in ceremonies in a stadium.

Internet services became available again in time for Tanzanians to watch the ceremony online, although NetBlocks yesterday posted data that it says shows “widespread restrictions to multiple social media and messaging platforms as Tanzania comes back online after a five-day internet shutdown; the incident continues to limit election transparency and the free flow of information.”

Which is of course the point of imposing an outage on a country at election time.

Writing at The Conversation, University of Sussex assistant professor Dan Paget said Hassan has imposed “unprecedented” repression in Tanzania.

“By putting her main rival Tundu Lissu on trial for treason and barring others from contesting the presidency, Hassan has crossed autocratic thresholds that other leaders have not. Activists have been arrested, brutalised or disappeared.”

But Paget also expressed optimism that recent protests in Tanzania suggest the country, population 65-million plus, may have happier times ahead.

“Protesters have created spaces in which they – rather than the regime – rule, at least temporarily. The footage of protesters making off with ballot boxes, tearing down posters and saying the previously unsayable shows moments that have an air of emancipation,” he wrote.

“Whatever follows, Tanzania has changed almost overnight. One way or another, the change is almost certainly not yet over.”

With or without internet access, it seems. ®