DAR ES SALAAM, March 6 -- WHEN the UKs Human Rights Ambassador, Eleanor Sanders, declared that Tanzanias post-election unrest required an “independent, transparent and inclusive investigation”, the language sounded familiar: grave concern, calls for accountability, invocation of fundamental freedoms. These are serious matters. But so too is sovereignty.

Tanzania is not a protectorate. It is a sovereign republic with functioning institutions, a written constitution and a long record of internal conflict resolution that predates and outlasts many of its contemporary critics.

To suggest, implicitly or explicitly, that it cannot manage its own political tensions without external tutelage risks reviving an old and uncomfortable h...