ZIMBABWE stands at a perilous crossroads, where constitutional order is being toyed with as though it were malleable clay in the hands of incumbents.
The cabinet’s approval of the Constitutional Amendment Bill to extend presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years is not reform; instead, it is regression masquerading as stability.
If enacted, it would suspend the renewal promised by the 2028 elections and entrench President Emmerson Mnangagwa until 2030, setting a dangerous precedent for future leaders of Zimbabwe and the continent in general.
The legal feasibility of these proposals is, quite frankly, ridiculous. The Constitution of Zimbabwe is unambiguous because any fundamental changes to the electoral system or presidential tenure require a referendum.
To imagine that such sweeping alterations could be pushed through parliament without the people’s direct consent is not only arrogant, but it is unconstitutional, and constitutions cannot be rewritten at the whim of a ruling clique, as they are solemn compacts between citizens and the state.
The Cabinet’s posture reveals extreme arrogance by Zanu PF, a party that increasingly confuses political survival with governance. To alter the electoral system in a consistent pattern, always in favour of prolonging incumbency, is an infringement of Zimbabweans’ rights.
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From the outset, these proposals would not withstand the test of a popular referendum, yet there is a risk that the movers of the bill intend to illegally breach the referendum rule, undermining the very safeguards designed to protect democracy.
The government this week gazetted the Bill, kick-starting a 90-day public consultation period, which end with Parliament deliberating on the proposed draft law.
Guarding the social contract
Civil society must understand that the abolition of term limits is not a procedural adjustment, but a constitutional desecration.
To tamper with tenure is to vandalise the very architecture of democracy, converting elections from instruments of accountability into hollow ceremonies of entrenchment.
When incumbents manipulate succession rules, they are not reforming governance; they are reprogramming democracy into a system of coercion and permanence.
Activists, churches, unions and professional associations must, therefore, rally around the inviolable principle that sovereignty resides with the people, not with the survival instincts of a ruling party.
In this moment, silence is not neutrality; it is complicity in the slow-motion demolition of the social contract.
For the opposition, the 2030 agenda is not merely a political manoeuvre, but both an existential threat and a rare opportunity that lays bare Zanu PF’s profound fear of genuine competition.
It exposes a ruling party that survives by manipulating rules rather than winning trust, yet it also demands that opposition leaders transcend the comfort of slogans and craft a coherent, credible vision that speaks directly to Zimbabwe’s youth, the generation whose future is being clawed back by authoritarian consolidation.
This struggle must be framed not simply as resistance to the attempted extension of the presidential term, but as a broader battle for generational renewal, the reclamation of dignity, and the restoration of democratic accountability.
Zanu PF factions
Within Zanu PF, the proposed amendment has become a crucible of factional contestation. For Mnangagwa’s loyalists, it represents a mechanism to consolidate power and defer succession indefinitely.
For others, particularly those with ambitions beyond his tenure, it is perceived as a betrayal of the party’s liberation legacy, a distortion of the very ideals that once animated its struggle.
To extend Mnangagwa’s term is to risk reducing Zanu PF from a custodian of renewal into a cautionary tale of decay, remembered less for its historic victories than for its constitutional vandalism.
Those within the party who still profess fidelity to constitutionalism must now confront a stark choice: whether survival politics should eclipse the moral weight of history.
The stakes
This contest is not confined to Zimbabwe’s borders. Across Africa, authoritarian incumbents are clawing back the continent’s demographic dividend by systematically marginalising young voices, manufacturing conditions of mass unemployment, forced migration and corrosive disillusionment.
Liberation movements that once embodied the promise of emancipation now teeter on the edge of becoming relics of betrayal, their revolutionary ideals hollowed out by the logic of survival politics.
Zimbabwe’s youth, Africa’s largest reservoir of renewal, deserve leadership animated by courage, clarity and conviction, one that treats their energy not as a threat to be contained but as the very engine of democratic transformation.
Judicial independence in Zimbabwe is under siege. Courts pressed to legitimise unconstitutional manoeuvres risk not merely distorting individual rulings but delegitimising the very fabric of law itself.
Once the law is bent to accommodate the ambitions of a few people, it ceases to be a universal covenant and becomes a partisan instrument, stripped of its authority for all.
In this moment, Zimbabwe’s democracy is literally on trial, not in metaphor but in practice, and the verdict will determine more than our political trajectory.
It will define our moral standing in Africa and the wider world, revealing whether we remain a nation governed by principles or one reduced to the whims of power.
A call to action
Civil society must mobilise, the opposition must organise and Zanu PF factions must confront their conscience. The so‑called 2030 agenda is not about stability; it is about the survival instincts of an administration unwilling to face renewal.
To resist it is to defend the very essence of democracy in Zimbabwe; to accept it is to surrender our collective future to entrenchment, coercion and decay.
It must be underscored that all projects initiated by an elected president are bound by the temporal limits of their constitutional mandate.
The dictates of the Constitution override personal ambition, ensuring that national projects are structured for continuity beyond the tenure of any individual. Development must be institutional, not personal.
It must be anchored in constitutional permanence rather than the glorification of a president. To breach this principle is to confuse governance with vanity, and to reduce the state to a stage for personal aggrandisement.
Zimbabwe’s path forward must, therefore, rest on constitutional continuity, not the whims of incumbency. Only by safeguarding the supremacy of law over personality can the nation preserve its dignity, protect its future, and reclaim democracy from the grip of survival politics.
Muzengeza is an independent journalist, political risk analyst and urban strategist offering incisive insight on urban planning, infrastructure, leadership succession and governance reform across Africa’s evolving post-liberation and urban landscapes.