Image of woman boarding helicopter is not Tanzania’s president fleeing election unrest
- Published on November 13, 2025 at 11:03
- 3 min read
- By Monique NGO MAYAG, AFP Senegal, AFP South Africa
- Translation and adaptation Tendai DUBE
When Tanzanians voted in October, protests erupted as the opposition challenged the integrity of the polls. During the ensuing unrest, social media users circulated an image of a woman boarding a helicopter, claiming it showed President Samia Suluhu Hassan fleeing after her contentious re-election. This is false: the photo shows a Tanzanian regional commissioner attending an elephant relocation operation two months earlier.
“After winning the Presidential election by 97%, the Tanzanian president is seen RUNNING out of the country using a Helicopter as the protest intensifies,” reads an X post published on November 1, 2025.
Two photos in the post show a woman in a yellow outfit boarding a helicopter and Hassan saluting in a military uniform.
“The protesters have blocked the airport so she is using a Helicopter. All ministers are blocked from traveling (sic),” adds the post.
Similar claims that Hassan purportedly fled circulated in Nigeria and, predominantly, on francophone social media in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, debunked here in French by AFP Fact Check.
Hassan was sworn into office on November 3, 2025, for her first elected term after winning a landslide victory in an election that sparked deadly protests across the country (archived here).
Hassan took almost 98 percent of the vote, running against minor candidates after key opposition leaders had been disqualified.
The demonstrations were violently suppressed over three days, with the main opposition party claiming hundreds of deaths (archived here).
But the posts claiming she absconded are false: the image predates the elections and does not show Hassan.
Elephant operation
A reverse image search led to an Instagram post shared by Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa) on September 3, 2025 — almost two months before the election (archived here).
According to the Swahili caption, the pictures show the launch of an operation to transfer more than 500 elephants from the Kitengule Valley to the Burigi-Chato National Reserve, in the northwest of the country.
The woman pictured is identified as Fatma Mwassa, regional commissioner of the Kagera region.
Photos from Mwassa’s inactive Instagram account confirm her identity.
She also appears in this Facebook reel published on September 2, 2025, and in this photo shared by the same account a day later. Both were taken at the conservation event — her clothes are identical, as is the helicopter’s registration number JW9803 (archived here and here).
AFP Fact Check has contacted Mwassa’s office and Tanapa for comment.
Tanzania’s elephant translocation operation uses roaring army helicopters to drive herds from residential precincts to Burigi-Chato National Park (archived here).
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