"We have seen this pattern in Rwanda for a long time,” says Jeffrey Smith of Vanguard Africa. “Journalists and political activists disappear, they are murdered and imprisoned on unclear grounds. The list of attacks is long ... and it is growing."

Human rights groups say regimes are kidnapping dissidents with impunity. “Leaders like Paul Kagame know they can flout international law and not pay a price for it,” Jeffrey Smith, of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy activist group in Washington, said.

“The growing list of human rights defenders, journalists, civic activists, opposition members and critics of Kagame, like Rusesabagina, who have been arrested, or otherwise killed or disappeared, is truly staggering,” said Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit that advocates ethical leadership and democracy on the continent. “What Kagame and Rwanda’s ruling party have effectively done is to make the argument, both in rhetoric and in practice, that criticism, resistance or opposition to their rule amounts to terrorism.”

In a speech to legislators in June, Magufuli promised a free and fair election this fall. But Jeffrey Smith, founding director of the pro-democracy nonprofit Vanguard Africa, is blunt in his assessment of this claim. “It’s Orwellian to its core,” he said. Magufuli “presents this reality to the world, [which] might not otherwise be watching, while doing the complete opposite on the ground.” According to Smith, sustained international attention is vital in the months ahead. “That is the only way people like Tundu are going to stay alive.”

"This sort of incendiary rhetoric may seem shocking, but in fact, it's the norm for Mnangagwa well before he was president," Jeffrey Smith, director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit pro-democracy initiative, told DW.

When he was deputy president in 2015, Mnangagwa likened Zimbabwe's political opposition to Satan and announced to an assembled crowd in Midlands that "we have come to cleanse you of the sins of the MDC," Smith recalls.

ZANU-PF, which has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, has always displayed an utterly callous disregard for human rights, said Jeffrey Smith, director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit supporting pro-democracy initiatives.

"The record is clear," Smith commented. "And the Mnangagwa regime is a continuation of this trend. It's the same corrupt cabal that has devastated Zimbabwe, and its latent potential, for decades."

Jeffrey Smith, from Vanguard Africa which campaigns for free and fair elections, said recent actions by Tanzania’s regime demonstrated it “knows they cannot win on an equal political playing field.” “They use any means necessary, including violence, to try to silence the opposition. This is a clear sign of weakness, not strength,” he said.

“The faultlines ingrained in the DNA of American democracy are nothing new. And while jarring, neither the murder of George Floyd by a uniformed white police officer, nor the eruption of anguish that has followed, should come as a shock,” said Jeffrey Smith, a human-rights activist and founding director of Vanguard Africa. “Institutionalised racism and inequality, growing fissures between the haves and have-nots, and a political system that blatantly favours campaign finance over candidate quality have long tarnished America’s democratic standing.”

There are a lot of pundits out there declaring democracy promotion to be dead on arrival in the Trump era. But there’s still an important community of activists fighting for the cause against the odds and even winning.

“Democracy matters and democratic leadership matters, even in the face of a fast-moving crisis like the coronavirus,” says Jeffrey Smith, the founder and president of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit which has worked closely with a number of successful, visionary leaders in this region and beyond.

“Like the routine gaslighting of women's experiences in Zimbabwe, impunity has also long been the norm,” Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit that focuses on democracy in the continent, told VICE News. “Authorities will continue to deny their role in the abductions and the torture. And the perpetrators will not be held accountable, further emboldening an already vicious, ruthless regime.”