Tanzania

Training of judges and magistrates is an accepted tool to deal with built-in opinions and prejudices. In the same way, training can also be crucial in highlighting inaccurate preconceptions about gender issues. In her chapter forming part of the new work, Gender, Judging and the Courts in Africa, Juliana Masabo (a Tanzanian high court judge and former academic) takes readers through the difficulties in ensuring training for judges, magistrates and others who play a role in the court processes of Tanzania.

As local and international concern grows over the Tanzanian government’s handling of Covid-19, a major international law firm has written to the Commonwealth Secretariat, suggesting that the time had come to consider expelling Tanzania from the Commonwealth. International human rights specialist firm, Amsterdam & Partners, said this was because, due to the policies of its president, John Magufuli, Tanzania was not living up to its undertakings as a member of the Commonwealth.

Elections in Tanzania at the end of October passed with little comment from outside that country. And since the declaration of John Magufuli as president, Tanzanian politics have been relegated to a non-issue in most other parts of the world. But not for long: disputed aspects of the polls are about to be ventilated in court even though legal challenges to aspects of the election are not allowed in Tanzania’s own courts. Activists have taken their dispute over the way the elections were conducted to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.