The killing of Tanzanian TV journalist Daudi Mwangosi last week shocked the country as well as people in East Africa and around the world who still have a view of it as a gentle land.

Several policemen set upon Mwangosi, and one of them fired a teargas canister at close range at his torso. It ripped the journalist apart, and he collapsed with his intestines and everything else scattered about in a heap.

While journalists have been killed in several countries in Africa, none of them had been murdered in this bizarre fashion.

Mwangosi, who was covering skirmishes between the police and the opposition Chadema, was the first journalist to be killed in the line of work in Tanzania, but you don’t need 20 dead scribes to worry about the direction a country is taking.

There was always the hope that the violent demons that have convulsed all of Tanzania’s neighbours, would spare it so that we could all argue that it was actually possible for a country in our region to be peaceful.

That is turning out to be a misplaced hope. In an incident not too dissimilar, two months ago, Dr Steven Ulimboka, leader of a group of striking doctors, was kidnapped, tortured and dumped in a forest outside Dar es Salaam.

His tormentors left him for dead. He was lucky. A local man noticed a bound and battered man twitching, and saved him.

President Jakaya Kikwete denied reports that his government was behind the kidnap and torture of Ulimboka.

It probably wasn’t, in the sense that orders were not given from the top. But that does not mean rogue security elements cannot take matters into their own hands.

The beating and killing of Mwangosi, though, was captured on camera. In this case, the police were probably emboldened because they expected they would get away with it.

It is this combination of rogue forces and impunity that should worry Tanzanians – and East Africa. You are actually better off when a government orders the police to beat and kill citizens.

That is because such a government can be shamed into changing its ways, compensating victims’ families, and the offending officer can be privately sued. And, in a country where you have free elections, a murderous government can always be voted out of office.

Rogue forces, shadowy militias, or state operatives who are above the law, are a different type of nightmare. They behave like the vampires in the movies.

They get a taste of blood today, and tomorrow they want two sips, and next week they want three sips of blood. As they suck more blood, they grow stronger, multiply their kind, and before you know it they take over the town.

Before long, they take over the government, and own the president.

Which raises the question. If indeed Tanzania has a growing vampire problem, what will they do if in the future the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) that they feed off, loses an election?

Will they allow the opposition to take power? You can bet your left hand they won’t.

Hopefully someone in Tanzania will turn on the lights and scare the vampires away before it is too late.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]. Twitter: @cobbo3