DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 5 -- UNDER the fierce Dodoma sun on November 3, 2025, President Samia Suluhu Hassan took the oath of office for her second term within the quiet discipline of the army barracks.

The setting was deliberate intimate, secure and strategic.

To critics, it suggested distance; to those who understood its meaning, it represented precision a leader reclaiming calm, authority and truth after Tanzania had faced an invisible assault on its confidence, economy and cohesion.

The nation she addressed was not collapsing but destabilised by perception. Inflation stood at 3.4 per cent, the shilling was steady at around 2,450/- to the dollar and foreign reserves covered more than five months of imports.

Yet in the days before her in...