Advocate Alute Mughwai Lissu, the brother of Tanzania’s top politician, Tundu Lissu, has suddenly died in Arusha.
The renowned lawyer based in Arusha, Mr Mughwai reportedly passed away in the night of October 31st, or maybe early hours of the 1st of November 2026.
Reports of his death came from his sister, Rose Masesa who however did not speak further to explain what exactly could have happened as Mughwai has not been sick.
Advocate Alute Mughwai’s death occurred just as majority of Tanzanians are eagerly waiting for the ultimate court ruling of the case facing his younger brother, Tanzania’s top opposition leader, Tundu Lissu which is expected on the 6th of November 2026.
Tundu Lissu, also a learned lawyer, is currently being held in prison.
Lissu was arrested in April 2025, during an open-air political rally and immediately after, the state opened treason charges against him.
He is the chairperson of the Chama Cha Demokrasi na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) which is Tanzania’s main opposition and the country’s most popular political party.
In 2017 a gang of unknown attackers waylaid Lissu, a former Member of Parliament for Singida and showered him with bullets at his residence in Dodoma, leaving him for dead but he managed to survive by sheer luck.
Last week, the late Alute Mughwai made a 3 hours long interview with one of the trusted media outlets in Tanzania, ‘The Chanzo!’ in which, among other things, revealed that some high-ranking government official had recently called him in Dar-es-salaam to discuss about his brother, Tundu Lissu’s case.
According to Mughwai, the unknown person asked him to persuade Tundu Lissu to write a letter asking armistice, so that the state could drop his case on various imposed conditions.
“But I refused the proposal, because as head of our family, I still wanted to know who had rained 16 rounds of bullets onto my brother, Lissu on the 17th of September 2017 to start with,” the late Mughwai had stated during the recent interview.
During the recent interview with ‘Chanzo’ Alute Mughwai Lissu traced his family’s origins to Mahambe village in Ikungi District, Singida.
He described himself as the second of ten children born to Lissu Mhitwa Alute and Alu Alute, in a family of farmers and livestock keepers; Tundu, he said, was the seventh-born and is 13 years younger.
His father, started out as a clerk to a chief’s council under British colonial rule in 1950 and later served the post-independence state and became a councilor after retirement.
Meanwhile one of the Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) party members, Godbless Lema, had arranged a press conference which was to be held at Kibo Palace Hotel in Arusha, on Sunday the 1st of November 2026 to address a series of accusations against him.
Lema, a former member of Parliament for Arusha-Urban has been under fire accused of being a ‘sellout’ in party working with state organs.
Now that Alute Mughwai has suddenly died, it is not known if Lema will go ahead with his media event, especially of being one of the prime suspects behind the Lissu ‘negotiations,’ that Alute refused to accept.
