Constitutional Amendment No. 3 Bill reaches beyond law into the core of the nation’s founding principles. It raises a fundamental question for Zimbabwe, a country born from the rejection of colonial laws imposed without consent. After independence, should power return to the people in substance, or remain concentrated in elite hands?

This question is important because the Bill seeks to remove direct presidential elections and transfer that power to parliament, extend presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years, and centralise key electoral, judicial, and oversight functions under the executive and presidential appointees. It also weakens or abolishes independent institutions responsible for elections, accountability, and gender equality. The Bill seeks to concentrate power in the hands of political elites without a referendum.

Reader, the issue is not only what the law permits, but what political, democratic, and post-colonial practice requires. In such a society, who must consent when the rules of power are changed? Can those who temporarily hold authority, Members of Parliament, extend that power without returning to those from whom it is derived — the people?

If power is derived from the people, then its extension must be returned to them for approval. Authority must not renew itself.

A referendum, therefore, is not merely a legal requirement to be argued over. It is a political necessity and a de-colonial act.

If the constitution belongs to the people, why should they not be asked when it is being fundamentally changed?

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There is a temptation to frame the Constitutional Amendment No. 3 Bill as a narrow legal question. Does the law require a referendum or not? That frame is too narrow. Legitimacy is not only what the law permits. It is what the people accept.

Even where the law is settled, politics asks a higher question.

Zanu PF argues that no referendum is needed because the law does not require one. Even if that claim were correct, it is a dangerously narrow position. A decision on how people are governed cannot be reduced to mere procedure.

In post-colonial thought, a people’s vote carries deeper meaning. A referendum marks the point at which citizens move from being subjects of power to its source.

Three ideas clarify the issue. Legality asks: is it allowed by law? Sovereignty asks: who has the final say? Legitimacy asks: do the people accept it as right? Even the most authoritarian government may satisfy the first and claim the second, yet still lack the third. Without legitimacy, power is fragile.

A distant observer might be surprised that Zimbabwe, governed by a former liberation movement, now faces resistance to a people’s vote. The deeper issue is how power is constituted after colonial rule. Independence did not necessarily end domination. It reorganised it through new elites and centralised authority, keeping the people at a distance.

Frantz Fanon warned that merely replacing colonial rulers with national elites does not complete the process of liberation. Sovereignty is realised only when ordinary people actively authorise the terms of power. A referendum compels that return. It breaks elite closure and reopens politics to those historically governed without a voice.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o extends this insight. Decolonisation is about restoring voice, language, and agency to the people. When decisions about governance are confined to legal or parliamentary arenas alone, politics remains enclosed within elite discourse. A referendum translates power into a language and space where citizens can directly participate. It is a movement from being spoken for by the MPs to speaking.

Achille Mbembe adds another dimension. In post-colonial states, formal legality can coexist with deep democratic deficits. The question is not only whether procedures are followed, but whether power is dispersed, questioned, and made answerable. A people’s vote does precisely that.

Referendums collapse the distance between state and society. They affirm that governance is not something done to people, but something constructed with them.

This is why legality alone is insufficient in a postcolonial context. Parliamentary procedures may appear democratic, yet remain distant from popular participation. Decolonisation demands more. Power must return, visibly and substantively, to the people. In Zimbabwe, independence promised that shift. Asking citizens directly on foundational questions honours that liberation promise. Bypassing them risks reproducing, in new form, the very distance independence sought to overcome.

This is a defining moment, shifting focus from legal form to the foundations of a post-colonial political order.

Zimbabwe has faced this moment before.

In 2000, and again in 2013, constitutional questions of national consequence were not resolved only in courts or parliament. They were taken to the people through referendums. Not because the law was always explicit. But because the politics demanded it. That history matters. It tells us that legitimacy has never rested on legality alone. It has rested on whether citizens recognise themselves in the making of the rules that govern them.

This is the deeper political frame. A constitution is not just a legal document. It is a settlement of power between rulers and the ruled. When those terms are changed, the settlement itself is reopened. And when a settlement is reopened, it cannot be closed by elites alone. History teaches us that durable political settlements are those that carry public consent.

Even classical political philosophy is clear. Political authority is conditional. John Locke argues that it rests on the consent of the governed. When the terms of that consent are changed, those who authorised it must be consulted again. Consent cannot be assumed. It must be sought.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau goes further. Sovereignty does not belong to rulers. It resides in the people as a collective will. Laws are only legitimate if they express this general will. When the structure of governance changes, only the people can legitimately authorise that change.

This is because even if a change is legally defensible, it may still be politically thin. And politically thin decisions do not settle questions of power. They prolong them and more often brew instability.

Reader, a referendum, therefore, does something no parliamentary vote can fully do. It distributes ownership. It transforms a constitutional amendment from an elite project into a national decision. It binds both winners and losers into a shared outcome because all had the opportunity to speak through the vote.

Zimbabwe’s own trajectory shows this. The 2000 referendum, though rejected, clarified the limits of state power. The 2013 referendum, though supported, consolidated a sense of collective authorship over the constitutional order.

In both cases, the act of asking mattered as much as the outcome.

Even in modern constitutional democracies, this principle holds. Jürgen Habermas reminds us that legitimacy flows not only from legality, but from public justification of political authority through democratic means. A decision may pass legal tests, yet fail the test of democratic legitimacy if the people are bypassed or their expectations are not met.

This is why referendums exist to answer a simple question. Do the governed accept the new terms of being governed?

Zimbabwe’s post-colonial political order must rest on a deeper democratic and decolonial ethic. The familiar formulation, government of the people, by the people, for the people, is not a slogan. It is a standard, one that stands above mere procedure.

The Bill tests that standard. To decide on such a Bill without directly asking the people reduces governance to a technical and authoritarian exercise, detached from its democratic and decolonial foundations. It risks reproducing, in new form, the very logic of rule without consent that the liberation war sought to end.

More than four decades after independence, power must be returned to the people in substance.

A referendum is therefore not optional. Voices must not only call for a referendum, but also prepare for it on the ground. It is the point at which power returns to the people and legitimacy is earned. Where consent is thin or manufactured through stage-managed rallies, legitimacy remains fragile, and the nation is left in an intensive care unit.

Zamchiya is a political analyst who writes in his personal capacity.

 

 
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