TED Talks Daily - How to fight for democracy in the shadow of autocracy | Fatma Karume

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Democracy may be an abstract concept, but it holds the very essence of our autonomy and humanity, says lawyer and human rights advocate Fatma Karume. Sharing her journey navigating a tumultuous political transition in Tanzania that put her life at risk, she highlights the importance of speaking truth to power and fighting for a brighter democratic future.

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Human rights advocate Fatma Karume's story is one of hope in the face of autocracy. In her 2023 talk from TED Democracy, she recounts what happened in Tanzania about a decade ago when a despot took over, how she responded, and what this

experience teaches the rest of us after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up

for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. AI keeping you up at night? Wondering what it means for your business? Don't miss the latest season of Disruptors, the podcast that takes a closer look at the innovations reshaping our economy. Join RBC's John Stackhouse and Sonia Sinek from Creative Destruction Lab as they ask bold questions like, why is Canada lagging in AI adoption? And how to catch up? Don't get left behind. Listen to Disruptors, the innovation era, and stay ahead of the game in this fast-changing world. Follow Disruptors on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And now, our TED Talk of the day.

The two most commonly used words to describe Tanzania until 2016 were peaceful and poor. From 1992, when Tanzania transformed from a single-party autocracy to a multi-party democracy, we became known as a transitioning democracy with a lot of potential. That is a polite euphemism for an authoritarian state that does not commit atrocities against its people and allows a modicum of controlled opposition. I was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and in the late 1990s, I became a corporate litigator. By 2007, I was successful and had reported cases under my belt. I knew that a transitioning democracy is nothing more than camouflage. So along with my practice, I had a weekly unpaid column in a daily English paper in which I espoused the importance of democracy, rule of law, human rights, and freedoms. I was chugging along nicely, raising a family, working hard, and contributing to public awareness. Until late 2015, when a man named John Pombe Magufuli,

also known as the Bulldozer, became president. Under him, Tanzania reverted to full-blown autocracy. My anxiety spiked, knowing that my life, and that of many others in Tanzania, was about to be turned upside down. My peaceful daily life quickly turned into horror. Every day for four years, from 2017 to 2021, I lived a personal nightmare which was played out on the public arena.

My office was bombed. A client and friend was shot 16 times. Friends and colleagues were arrested and imprisoned without due process. Others disappeared. Some were maimed. And I became the target of a state-sponsored press smear campaign. And the state eventually unlawfully disbarred me from practicing my profession. My self-image had become so enmeshed with my profession that I didn't recognize myself anymore. I had to rediscover who I was.

But what kept me going through those four years was, one, knowing that my belief in agency and free will for the people of Tanzania was echoed by millions of others. So I found a way to keep speaking out, even after being censored. Secondly, I found community in the alliances I made with people who had also found their voices and were willing to fight for democracy. A community that became my safe space.

And lastly, autocracies fail. It is what history has taught us. I reminded myself every day that I was on the right side of history and the autocracy in Tanzania would fail and democracy would prevail. So here's how it all started in 2015. President Magufuli promised Tanzanians wealth and the end to corruption in exchange for democracy. He claimed it was too messy, too many voices to contend with, and this would lead to too many compromises, and wealth in the form of development would suffer. As for corruption, the bulldozer told us

that rule of law was too slow. Corruption could only be dealt with by a messianic character like himself, who could mete out justice quickly and effectively. The Association Transparency International rates the police and the judiciary amongst the two most corrupt institutions in Tanzania. So in a country where the GDP per capita is less than 800 American dollars per annum, and corruption is a daily experience for the average person. Giving up an abstract concept like democracy for the promise of wealth and a corruption-free society is a very attractive proposition. Very few realise that this abstract concept holds within it our agency, our free will, the very essence of our humanity. In early 2016, my weekly column on the importance of democracy was cancelled.

That was extremely frustrating, and I let my editor know how much in no uncertain terms. After a heated debate, the editor admitted that the survival of the paper depended on him making some concessions, including cutting my views out of the publication. I felt like I had been robbed of my agency. My editor also asked me to self-censor and warned me that if I did not, the state would retaliate by creating fear, alienating me from family and friends, and destabilizing me financially. By late 2016, the public campaign of fear had begun. Bodies wrapped in gunny sacks would wash up on our pristine beaches. Journalists and businessmen

would disappear without a trace. Police would snatch and grab journalists, human rights activists, lawyers, opposition politicians, and keep them incommunicado. The country was consumed by fear. In June 2017, I dared lift my head above the parapet, and I represented Tundulisu, an opposition politician and also the president of the Bar Association of Tanganyika Law Society, who had been arrested and held in communicado for more than one week. What was his crime? He called Magufuli a petty dictator. He was finally released on bail in July. It was then, about a month later, at 2 a.m. on the 26th of August, that my office building was bombed. The campaign of fear had become personal, and no one has ever been charged for that offense.

I recall the fear in my colleagues' eyes as they asked me to self-censor. Association with me had become dangerous and I started to lose friends. It was very lonely. Then, on 7 September 2017, Tundulisu was shot 16 times with a submachine gun in broad daylight outside his home.

He survived this murderous attempt, and no one has been charged. Like the rest of the country, on the afternoon of the shooting, I was in disbelief, and fear gripped me. You know, fear can either cripple you into inaction or spur you to fight. I consider myself lucky. Fear spurs me to fight. So I began to fight back. I looked for a way to continue to advocate for democracy, rule of law and human rights on a platform outside the reach of the state, Twitter. In January 2018, I joined Twitter, where I started publishing my thoughts on democracy, rule of law and human rights in Swahili. In very little time, I had a million followers

and was known as Shangazi wa Taifa, which in Swahili means the aunt of the nation. I had regained my voice on my terms. No one could censor me, so I believed. But then, the state machinery used trolls to insult my family and me and threaten my life. It was frightening because I couldn't tell when the internet violence would spill into the real world. But I kept going. I made connections with other Tanzanian Twitter influencers

who were fighting for democracy. We were a small group, but we bonded on and offline, and there was power in our conviction and in our message. We created an online democratic space which we called Twitter Republic. To shut us down, the state spent millions of dollars, and this is a poor country, to block access to Twitter. We installed free VPNs, encourage others to do the same, and continued tweeting relentlessly. In March 2018, I decided to run for the presidency of the Tanganyika Law Society to keep fighting for rule of law and democracy. I was elected as the second female president of the society

and used my position to advocate for democracy, rule of law. The question most people ask is, were you not scared? I was petrified. And when I was driving, I used my rearview mirror and my sideview mirror a lot more than necessary to see who might be following me. But my belief in agency and free will outweighed my fear of the autocratic government. The Tanzanian judiciary has a tradition of inviting the president of the law society to speak at law day. In February 2019, during law day, the judiciary informed me that there was no time for my speech after they had scrutinized it.

Again, someone somewhere was attempting to censor me. The entire governing council of the Bois boycotted Law Day 2019. I made a recording of my speech in Kiswahili and posted it online. It was about the judicial's role and failure to promote rule of law. It went viral. I had once again regained my autonomy and my ability to share the truth. Not sufficiently satisfied with my presence on Twitter, I, along with a group of concerned citizens, decided to bring our activism to court.

In 2018, we commenced a slew of cases against the president and his government for breaching our constitution. We also made sure that the cases were fought out in the court of public opinion, if only to educate. In early 2019, the judge presiding over one of these cases suspended me from practicing indefinitely without giving me a right to be heard. By September 2020, as I mentioned, I was permanently disbarred. The reasons don't matter. Suffice it to say that in Tanzania, the bar is not independent, and we're disciplined by a judge sitting in a panel with the director of public prosecution, and both of them are presidential appointees. I lost my right to earn a living.

My partners and people I had considered friends promptly fired me from a law firm I had helped build. The government had achieved its goal. I was friendless and financeless. This fight wasn't without tremendous personal cost, but I still had my children, my parents, and my siblings, and I made new friends. But they were all at risk, and I worried about them every day. I couldn't stop, though. I realized that so long as I was living in an autocracy,

I didn't have a career anyway. There is no rule of law in an autocracy. And lawyers are only relevant where there is respect for the rule of law. Worse still, I would lose my agency and free will. And I confidently said to myself, in any event, I'm on the right side of history. It wasn't long before I did find out how right I was. In March 2021, Magufuli was pronounced dead. He was a COVID denier, and the state denies he died from COVID. But, you know, public consensus disagrees with the state.

His death marked the end of a terrifying era of hatred and darkness under a fearful autocracy. I don't want you to believe that there is a fairytale ending and that everything is good in Tanzania. What I can tell you is that we have reverted to a transitioning democracy with a lot of potential. Presidential commissions now invite me to give my opinions on establishment of rule of law and the need for constitutional reform. Tanzania is presently at a crossroad. We can either remain a transitioning democracy, proceed to become a working democracy, or revert to a murderous autocracy. This depends entirely on whether enough people can stand up for democracy. So if there's one thing you can take home from this,

it's this. If you live in a full-fledged democracy, please don't sit back. We need you to keep your country democratic. If, like me, you're living in a transitioning democracy, it's a good and safe place to fight for democracy, because transitioning democracies can easily revert into full-fledged autocracy, where fighting for democracy becomes a lot riskier. And if you're living in an autocracy, you can still fight. But it's better if you aren't fighting along. Find your people so you can look out for each other and stay safe. Thank you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb.

If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host.

That was Fatma Karoume at TED Democracy in 2023. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazi-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey. I'm Elise Hugh.

I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED games.