IV. Police Jamii, Sungu Sungu, and Other Vigilante Groups

Tanzania has several community policing organizations and vigilante groups, with varying degrees of formality. While the intent of Tanzanian law enforcement officials in collaborating with vigilante groups is to work with communities to stem crime, members of such groups, like the police themselves, at times use physical and sexual violence and extortion against people who are suspected of engaging in criminal activity.

Some of these groups are legally established and have official communication channels with state law enforcement agencies.[159] One such grouping is the “community police,” also known as “police jamii” or “polisi jamii” in Kiswahili. Through an official community policing program, squads patrol their neighborhoods and provide daily reports to the official Tanzania police. In some parts of Tanzania, residents lauded their work. However, the police jamii were reported to be responsible for a large number of human rights violations in Zanzibar.[160]

Sungu Sungu

The most problematic group is the “Sungu Sungu.” “Sungu Sungu” initially referred to a vigilante group formed to combat cattle rustling in western Tanzania in the 1980s, which then transferred its energy to fighting “witchcraft,” an early indication of the group’s dangerous potential to serve as a form of moral police.[161] In more recent years, the term has come to be used to describe any neighborhood militia.

In theory, Sungu Sungu operate under the guidance of the local government and the police, but in some areas they appear to operate on their own. The People’s Militia Act of 1973, amended in 1989 to make specific reference to the Sungu Sungu, grants them the power to make arrests.[162] According to a US State Department report, “Sungu Sungu members are not permitted to carry firearms or machetes, but they carry sticks or clubs.”[163] But Human Rights Watch research found that Sungu Sungu are often armed with machetes.

Some officials in Dar es Salaam deny that Sungu Sungu even exist.[164] The residents of Temeke, Dar es Salaam’s poorest district, know otherwise. In poor, peripheral neighborhoods, Sungu Sungu members—who are unpaid, untrained, and, according to residents, often have criminal records—patrol the streets at night with machetes (pangas) and clubs (rungus), a walking recipe for human rights violations.[165] In addition to policing actual crimes, they sometimes take on the role of moral police, targeting sex workers and people who use drugs, in particular.

Temeke residents say that Sungu Sungu members killed 34-year-old Abdallah Yunus (his real name), known as “Dula,” and another man, also named Abdallah, in April 2012. According to neighbors, Dula and Abdallah both used heroin. Dula was staying in Abdallah’s house. A woman that stayed in the same house recalled being awakened in the middle of the night by a crowd:

They were saying “Thief! Thief!” They were banging on doors, asking “Where is Dula?”… I don’t know if they wanted both Abdallahs or one of them.  I knew they were Sungu Sungu because they were more than 50, and there aren’t other guys like that. People didn’t take any action to stop them.[166]

Another witness saw Dula being beaten by people armed with stones, pangas, and concrete blocks. He explained,

There are Sungu Sungu from two areas. The Sungu Sungu from this area went and said, “Why are you abusing these people?” The others were 50 [people], while the ones from this area were just 7 or 8. I know they are Sungu Sungu because they often patrol, in groups of 40 to 50. They patrol every night.

They were coming with two people. They dumped one person there. Both were alive, but one had already been beaten. He fell. He had been beaten with stones, and he died. I didn’t see the beating, because they had come from around the corner. The second one ran…. They chased him, caught him, and beat him with stones, sticks and pangas.

Then they stopped a motorcycle…. they surrounded it, with pangas. They opened the pipe from the tank and put fuel into a water bottle. They put tires on the two men’s chests. And then they poured the fuel and burned the two people. They already seemed dead at this point.

The witness said police came around 3 a.m.:

They had one person inside the car who they had arrested [in another case]. They told him to put the bodies in the car. I don’t know which police station they came from. The police must have been informed about what happened…. They didn’t come back to do investigations. They didn’t ask residents about it.[167]

According to Dula’s mother:

After three days the family went to ask at Chang’ombe Police Station about investigations, but the investigating officer refused to receive us. He said, “You say it was Sungu Sungu, but if it was banditry, how would you know?” Dula’s brother asked, “If it was bandits, why are you not arresting them?” The police said, “You are bothering us”…. When we failed to get aid from the police, we lost hope.[168]

Although the Sungu Sungu were reportedly shouting, “Thief! Thief!” while abducting Dula, his mother did not know of any particular case in which Dula was accused of theft:

I don’t understand why they killed him. I have never gotten information that he stole anything. Both Abdallah and Dula were using drugs. Dula was calm, he didn’t fight with people; maybe just drugs was the problem.[169]

In December 2012, Human Rights Watch received information from Médecins du Monde outreach workers that a man known as Maliki, was killed by Sungu Sungu in Temeke. According to MdM staff members, witnesses saw Sungu Sungu abduct Maliki from the maskani where he was using drugs and cut him to death with pangas.[170]

Rashid E. was arrested by Sungu Sungu in Temeke who passed by while he was sitting outside in his neighborhood, eating chips, around December 2011:

I think they knew I use drugs because they’re from my area. They just came and grabbed me and started beating me. They beat me with pangas, iron window bars, and sticks. I have a finger that doesn’t straighten ever since. They beat me on the hand with iron bars until it was swollen and black.

The Sungu Sungu took Rashid to Vyaniza Police Post, where police accused him of being a thief. The next day, a friend came to pay a bribe of Tsh 7,000 and Rashid was released.[171]

Sungu Sungu members raped Mwanahamisi K. in May 2012 near the same maskani where Human Rights Watch interviewed her:

I had come here to smoke [heroin]. I was going home when I met with Sungu Sungu at the railroad. It was midnight or 1 a.m. They asked, “Where are you coming from, and where are you going?” I told them, but they wouldn’t understand. They had pangas. I screamed but no one helped me. It was night, so no one passed by. 

Six of them forced me to have sex with them. All six of them raped me and left me there. They didn’t use condoms. The rape lasted one or two hours. I was with my child. The baby boy was lying on the ground to the side while I was being raped…. After raping me, they told me “Don’t move around at night.”[172]

In the morning, Mwanahamisi went to Mashini ya Maji Police Post to file a complaint, but police refused to help her unless she paid them Tsh 10,000, so she went home.[173]

Sex workers in Dar es Salaam also reported that the Sungu Sungu committed physical and sexual violence against them. One sex worker in Kinondoni District said, “We are forced to hide from them. When they know that someone is a sex worker, they beat them.”[174] According to another female sex worker,

The Sungu Sungu in the area I live are harsh. When they see you coming back from work or working in the middle of the night, they force you to join them while they make their rounds. The only problem with this is they then feel it is their right to touch you when they feel like.[175]

The presence of Sungu Sungu was also reported in Mbeya and Arusha. In Mbeya, three sex workers told Human Rights Watch they had been beaten by Sungu Sungu.[176] In Arusha, a community activist working to rehabilitate people who use drugs said that Sungu Sungu uses preemptive violence: “At night, they go around. If they meet the users, they beat them, because they think they will steal something.”[177]

Police Jamii

As noted above, the police jamii are part of formal community policing programs. Some Tanzanians spoke somewhat favorably of the police jamii. In Mwanza, for instance, a representative of a local NGO told Human Rights Watch and WASO that the police jamii were assisting NGOs in their work with street children; they would turn children over to NGOs that can assist them.[178]

In Zanzibar, however, police jamii were frequently and virulently condemned. An outreach worker at a drug rehabilitation center told Human Rights Watch that police jamii—who he said usually traveled in groups that include one regular police officer—posed a challenge to outreach:

We go and try to counsel people; we arrive at places, and the people have fled because the police jamii have come and beat them. If they catch you smoking [heroin], they take you to the police or beat you. They sometimes severely hurt people. They use whips, belts, a fish tail whip called mkia wa taa. Sometimes they beat people with HIV or TB or hepatitis without knowing it. It has been reported several times.[179]

His colleague added, “They think they’re above the law.”[180]

Idris Z. is among those who have suffered brutality at the hands of the police jamii, with the complicity of the regular police. He recounted that in late 2011, police jamii arrested him while he was sleeping outside in a location known to be frequented by people who use drugs, and took him to Jangombe Police Station:

The police jamii said, “We caught him because he’s always sleeping outside and he steals.” The police jamii [told] the regular police, “Give us these guys.” The regular police accepted.

The police jamii took us back to the neighborhood. They took us to a field and beat us. They took mucuna bean [upupu] and spread it on us to make us itch. Then they told us to go home. They laughed, because they were happy to be torturing someone, especially an addict.[181]

One MSM activist complained that he had been beaten by police jamii in Dar es Salaam, although it was not clear whether the perpetrators were police jamii or Sungu Sungu:

Last year me and my boyfriend were sitting somewhere talking. The police jamii came, they assist the police. We used to call them Sungu Sungu. They said, “What are you doing here with this guy? Do you have sex here?” We said, “No, we’re just talking.” [One of them] said, “Ok, take them. Tie them.”

My boyfriend got a chance to run away. They tied my hands behind my back with a rope. I was not able to do anything…. They took me somewhere, untied me, and forced me to bend over. They started to beat me with wire, electric wire that is used to supply the power. They seriously hurt me. They beat me on the back and on the behind. I was screaming “You’re hurting me, please.”[182]

The activist eventually managed to run away, and went to the regular police to report the incident, but there was no follow up by the police despite their promises to investigate. He concluded, “The ones who beat me dislike homosexuals—that’s why they beat me.”[183]

By failing to investigate such crimes, or by encouraging them, as in Idris’s case above, the regular police are often complicit in abuses by police jamii and vigilante groups. One person reported that police attempted to rein in police jamii abuses. Ally H. was arrested at home by six police officers from Kilimahewa Police Post and an informant from the police jamii on suspicion of selling drugs in September 2012:

The police jamii started to beat me. The real police told him to stop. And also the informant collected some syringes and boxes from my house, but the real police told him, “Stop taking these, because they’re providing them from somewhere [an NGO].”[184]

Nonetheless, the police still extorted a Tsh 5,000 bribe (about $3) in exchange for Ally’s release.[185]