Nigeria, Aug. 30 -- A Life in the Firing Line

On 9 April, I was arrested in Mbinga, in Tanzania's deep south, and hauled overnight more than a thousand kilometres to Dar es Salaam. By dawn, I was arraigned on the gravest charge in our law: treason; an offence punishable by death. For 131 days, and counting, I have sat in a maximum-security cell on death row at Ukonga Central Prison, accused not of violence, but of words spoken in public - words demanding democratic reform.

This is not merely my trial. It is a trial of Tanzania's democracy itself.

I was born in Mahambe village in 1967, the seventh of ten children of a peasant family. From the dusty plains of Singida, I rose to become a lawyer, legislator, and the leader of Chama cha Dem...