The Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu will return to his country on January 25 after five years of exile

14 Jan. (EUROPA PRESS) –

Tanzanian opposition leader and former presidential candidate Tundu Lissu has announced that he will return to his country at the end of the month after more than five years in exile, mainly in Belgium, after he survived an assassination attempt in September 2017.

“It’s official: I will be kissing Tanzanian soil once again on Wednesday, January 25, 2023, at 1:35 p.m. local time,” Lissu announced on his Twitter account.

Lissu has announced her return just three days after the country’s president, Samia Suluhu Hasan, announced this week the lifting of the ban on opposition meetings, imposed by her authoritarian predecessor, John Magufuli, who died in March 2021.

In a previous speech, broadcast through the YouTube platform and picked up by Jeune Afrique, the leader of the Party for Democracy and Progress (Chadema), acknowledged that “you cannot live your whole life in exile.”

“I am optimistic that we will write a new chapter this year 2023, as an important year in the history of our country,” added the opponent, a survivor of an assassination attempt in 2017 after openly criticizing Magufuli.

Now, the opposition believes that the Tanzanian president, through her government and party, has shown that she is ready for a new journey. “We need to show that we are ready for that too,” declared Lissu, whose party will finally take to the streets again in a rally on January 21.

“With the lifting of the illegal ban on political activity, now is the time to return home and get back to work!” Lissu stressed in his message on the social network.