Never shy of controversy, Tundu Lissu in eye of Magufuli health storm

Tanzania Opposition leader Tundu Lissu at a past event. [File, Standard]

Tanzanian Opposition leader Tundu Lissu has drawn fire on Twitter over his updates on the health of President John Magufuli.

No stranger to controversy, Lissu has tweeted that the Tanzanian head of state has been transferred to India after his condition worsened at a Nairobi hospital.

Standard Digital is unable to verify this claim.

Lissu, a fierce critic of the government and later President John Magufuli after he was elected in 2015, describes himself as a brave and fearless man.

The 53-year-old lawyer in 2017 was a victim of a failed assassination attempt after his car was sprayed with 36 bullets, 16 of which hit him with eight being lodged in his body.

He was attacked by two gunmen near his home in the capital, Dodoma shortly after leaving Parliament

Lissu underwent more than 20 operations in Kenya and Belgium in order to recover.

Addressing a press conference in a wheelchair in Nairobi on January 5, 2018, he said of the eight bullets, doctors had removed seven and will not extract the remaining one because it poses no danger to his life.

“This is the time to turn the government of President Magufuli into an international skunk,” said Tundu borrowing words from Nelson Mandela’s description of Apartheid-era South Africa.

He said his shooters had armed themselves with military-grade weapons, trailed him from parliament and opened fire on his car outside his home at 2pm in broad daylight with an intention to kill.

Harassment

Lissu has faced numerous criminal cases against him by the State which he treats it as a badge of honour.

Before the 2017 attack, the former Sigidi East MP said he had been prosecuted once by President Benjamin Mkapa’s government and three times during Jakaya Kikwete’s tenure. He has been in court eight times under the current regime.

“I have been arrested so many times that I have lost count. In all these cases, some in which I am accused of sedition, I have never been convicted. These cases are just used to harass me. They know I cannot be intimidated but just want to waste my time,” he said.

Political career

Born on January 20, 1968, Lissu first became a Chadema party MP in 2010 for a constituency near his birth place.

He says he was initiated into politics in the 1970s after State agents stormed his Mahabe village in Sigidi, demolished homes and drove everybody into Ujamaa socialist villages.

It is during that period as an MP that he quickly established himself as an outspoken voice and a fierce critic of the government even before Magufuli’s reign that begun in 2015.

A case in point, the Opposition leader has little respect for Tanzania’s founding father Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who he accuses of setting up the systems that have killed private enterprises and forced Tanzanians to submit to autocratic governments that have no room for opposing voices.

The politician, who has spent his adult life crusading for democracy, was nominated by CHADEMA, the main opposition party, to run against President John Magufuli in last year’s election but he lost.

The road ahead of that became dangerous as he was arrested but later freed after interrogation by the police.

 He later went to Germany and was granted political asylum.