Mpina draws a line in the sand: six hours that redefined Tanzania’s political moment
By Adonis Byemelwa
Luhaga Joelson Mpina’s final address was not a speech in the conventional sense. It was a six-hour political reckoning, carefully constructed, emotionally restrained, and relentlessly detailed, that felt less like a campaign rally and more like a closing argument before history itself.
Delivered on 27 October 2025, the address came immediately after Mpina filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal of Tanzania, challenging his disqualification by INEC from contesting the presidency on the ACT Wazalendo ticket in the 2025 General Election.
The legal battle framed the moment, but it did not define it. Mpina used the platform to speak beyond a personal grievance, widening his focus to the state of governance and political accountability in Tanzania.
Read closely, the speech reflects a reckoning with the ruling establishment, governance norms, and Mpina’s own political journey, shaped by years inside government and years of dissent.
As the Swahili saying goes, “Ukimya nao una sauti.” Silence also speaks, and Mpina made clear he would no longer remain silent.
Mpina spoke as a man who believes he has been pushed to the edge of the system he once served from within, and who has decided, deliberately, to speak without trimming his words.
What made the moment heavier was its timing. Mpina opened by acknowledging that he was speaking at a time when the nations of East Africa were united in deep sorrow and collective mourning, a period marked by grief, reflection, and uncertainty across the region.
That broader context gave his words a sober gravity. This was not triumphal politics. It was politics delivered with the awareness that nations, like people, carry wounds that cannot be ignored.
At the heart of Mpina’s message was a blunt claim: when the Sixth-Phase Government is weighed against its promises, it comes up short. In his telling, Tanzania’s deepening poverty, unemployment, insecurity, and institutional decay are not accidents of fate, but the outcome of deliberate failures.
He framed the country’s current condition as a betrayal of the independence vision, arguing that Tanzania now sits among the world’s poorest nations despite abundant resources.
What made the speech resonate was not just the accusations, but the structure. Mpina moved from the everyday struggles of citizens, high prices, joblessness, and failing services into the machinery of the state itself.
He described a government that, after presiding over widespread hardship, launched a campaign claiming that citizens “are not demanding anything.” For Mpina, that slogan symbolised denial at the highest level. As Mwalimu Nyerere once warned, problems cannot be solved by pretending they do not exist.
He then turned to the conduct of the ruling party’s campaigns, painting a picture of spectacle over substance. Convoys, helicopters, buses ferrying crowds, even students pulled out of classrooms to attend rallies.
The image he offered was unsettling: energy spent on manufacturing approval rather than explaining five years of performance. Promises of fixing old problems in “100 days,” he argued, rang hollow when those same problems were ignored for an entire term.
From there, the speech darkened. Mpina listed what he called unprecedented abuses since independence: abductions, killings, disappearances, suppression of democracy, restrictions on worship, and erosion of the rule of law.
He spoke of institutions hollowed out, where flawed laws are left unreformed, and where favouritism, nepotism, and authoritarianism are no longer hidden, but normalised.
Corruption formed the spine of his critique. Mpina cited estimates that Tanzania loses TZS 54 trillion annually through weak revenue collection and mismanagement of public funds.
Audit reports, he said, are routinely ignored. Oversight systems are deliberately weakened. Technologies meant to track revenue mysteriously disappear. The result, in his words, is a state where public money is “shared like birthday cake,” while accountability evaporates.
The numbers around public debt were delivered with prosecutorial precision. Mpina noted that, within just four years, government debt increased by TZS 47 trillion, nearly three-quarters of the total debt accumulated since independence.
Borrowing beyond parliamentary approval, off-budget spending, and secrecy around loan usage were, to him, not technical lapses but red flags signalling systemic abuse.
He extended the argument into the countryside. Farmers, he said, have been crushed by monopolistic buyers protected by the state, forcing them to sell crops at throwaway prices.
From cotton to pulses and oilseeds, rural producers are losing while a small, connected elite benefits. Add rising prices for fuel, electricity, water, food, and transport, and the picture becomes one of a cost-of-living crisis driven as much by policy failure as by global pressures.
Youth unemployment featured prominently. Mpina accused the government of exporting jobs by favouring foreign firms, undermining local industries, and importing goods that could be produced domestically.
The economy, he argued, exists primarily “on paper,” disconnected from the lived reality of citizens. Sectors that should absorb labour, such as agriculture, fisheries, livestock, forestry, and small industry, remain underpowered.
One of the most controversial sections addressed secretive contracts and public-private partnerships. Mpina alleged that dozens of agreements involving ports, airports, mining, energy, and infrastructure were signed without transparency or parliamentary consent.
He cited massive losses from poorly negotiated projects, delayed payments, and international arbitration cases, framing secrecy itself as a tool for corruption.
As he spoke about leaders implicated in scandals being promoted rather than prosecuted, I found myself thinking of a familiar saying my grandmother used: samaki huanza kuoza kichwani—the fish rots from the head. Mpina’s argument echoed that wisdom. Where accountability at the top collapses, decay spreads everywhere.
Nevertheless, the speech was not only accusatory. Mpina laid out an alternative vision anchored in what he called “Work and Competition, Rebuilding the Nation.” He promised to seal revenue leaks, reform taxation, review contracts, audit public debt, and strengthen oversight institutions.
Proposals included establishing a Senate, empowering the Auditor General, creating a Supreme Court, and setting up a Presidential Delivery Bureau to measure performance across government.
Social policy commitments were expansive: a higher minimum wage, timely pensions, salaries for local leaders, free healthcare for vulnerable groups, forgiveness of student loan arrears, and massive investment in water, transport, and agricultural value addition.
A national youth employment institute would map labour demand and track graduates, while farmers would be protected from price shocks and unfair markets.
Mpina also addressed his own political journey, once a senior figure within CCM, later sidelined, expelled, and now standing with ACT Wazalendo.
He presented himself as consistent, arguing that his principles did not change, only his political home did. Endorsements and acknowledgements from past presidents were invoked not as flattery, but as evidence of competence recognised across administrations.
The legal battle over his disqualification from the presidential race hung over the speech like unfinished business. He framed it as a test not only of his rights, but of Tanzania’s democracy. Support from activists, opposition parties, and citizens at home and abroad was acknowledged, reinforcing the sense that this contest extends beyond one candidate.
By the end, Mpina’s message was unmistakable: the Sixth-Phase Government, in his view, has exhausted its legitimacy, and only electoral removal can restore accountability. He called on citizens to reject CCM at every level in 2025, positioning the election as a referendum on corruption, governance, and national direction.
Whether one agrees with Mpina or not, the speech matters because it crystallises a moment, it captures a widening gap between state narratives and lived experience, between promises and outcomes.
In Kiswahili, we say, penye nia pana njia, where there is will, there is a way. Mpina is betting that enough Tanzanians still believe that, and that belief, once mobilised, can redraw the country’s political map.
