Mnangagwa Rewrites Zimbabwe's Constitution to Cling to Power Until 2030

Zimbabweans were promised the Second Republic would be different. We were told that Robert Mugabe's rot had been cut out, that a new dawn had arrived in November 2017, and that the men in khaki and the men in suits had finally heard us. Eight years later, the country's two most powerful men are fighting over who gets to keep the keys to a state that has never once delivered for the people who live in it. And the rest of us are being asked to cheer from the sidelines.

Let us say the uncomfortable part plainly. The power struggle between President Emmerson Mnangagwa and First Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga is not a battle for democracy. It is a dispute inside a ruling club about who will feed at the trough next, and for how long.

Start with the constitution, because that is where the real theft happened. Mnangagwa's Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill, known as CAB3, stretches the electoral cycle from five years to seven. That alone pushes his presidency past 2028, when the constitution says it must end, and carries it to 2030. It also replaces the directly elected presidency with one chosen by Parliament. Think about what that means. Ordinary Zimbabweans, who queued in the heat to vote in 2023, would lose the one lever they still hold. Instead, a parliament dominated by ZANU-PF would hand the presidency to whoever the party elite picks. This is not reform. It is the quiet removal of the voter from the equation.

Look at the Chinhoyi conference resolutions. ZANU-PF moved its next elective congress from 2027 to 2029, kept Mnangagwa as party leader until 2030, and decided he should be the sole, uncontested candidate to lead the party into that election. Uncontested. In a country where the opposition has been beaten, jailed, and hollowed out for a generation, the word "uncontested" is not a formality. It is a confession.

Chiwenga's objection is not principled. We should be honest about that. He is not defending the constitution or the right of Zimbabweans to choose their leaders. He is defending a deal he believes Mnangagwa made with him in 2017, when the military helped push Mugabe aside on the promise that Mnangagwa would step aside in 2028. When Chiwenga spoke of "repeating the same mistakes" and asked whether congress resolutions were "truly coming from the people," the irony was thick enough to choke on. The man who helped remove one entrenched president is now warning against entrenching another, and he is doing it because he is the one who got left out.

The military dimension tells the story of how this power is held. Mnangagwa moved Chiwenga's allies out of the way with what looks like a deliberate, methodical campaign. His successor as Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, Philip Valerio Sibanda, was brought into the ZANU-PF Politburo. Lieutenant-General Anselem Nhamo Sanyatwe was kicked upstairs and made Minister of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture. Bulawayo mayor David Coltart, a seasoned opposition figure, notes that nobody outside the inner circle knows how much of the army still answers to Chiwenga. That opacity is itself a warning. When soldiers' loyalties are a state secret, the citizen has no guarantee that the guns will stay in the barracks.

Then there is the patronage web, and the death that shook it. Wicknell Chivayo, the businessman Mnangagwa used as a conduit to buy support at home and across the region, died in a helicopter crash. Coltart argues that his sudden death was a serious blow to the president. Ask yourself what kind of state relies on one businessman to buy loyalty from its own politicians and from regional leaders such as Cyril Ramaphosa, King Mswati III, Samia Suluhu Hassan and William Ruto. A country built on private favours does not have institutions. It has a protection racket with a flag.

We must also confront the question of age and endurance. Mnangagwa presents himself as 84, but he is widely believed to be 88. If he sought another term in 2030, he would be 92. A country of more than fifteen million people is being asked to accept that its future depends on the health of one ageing man and the nerve of his rival. Coltart is right that the constitutional obstacles would grow sharper in 2030. Extending presidential term limits requires a popular referendum. That is the law. The ruling party knows it. The question is whether the ruling party will respect it or simply rewrite it again.

Hopewell Chin'ono, the journalist, believes Mnangagwa has outmanoeuvred Chiwenga. He is probably right in the short term. Chiwenga won a fight in the Politburo, but the decision was taken to the party conference, the higher body, and passed from the floor. Chin'ono's point is sharp: Chiwenga made a rock-star speech and got nothing for it. Speeches do not stop constitutional amendments. Only institutions do, and Zimbabwe's institutions have been captured by the same party that now argues over who controls them.

Here is the tragedy that the headlines miss. Many Zimbabweans, with no credible opposition left standing, are now pinning their hopes on Chiwenga as the only man who can end Mnangagwa's rule. We understand the desperation. We do not accept the logic. Piers Pigou of Intelwatch described it accurately: it is one big corrupt club, with varying shades of grubbiness. Neither man serves anything but partisan interests. A Zimbabwean who swaps one ZANU-PF strongman for another has not changed the system. They have only changed the name on the gravy train.

This is the pattern across our continent, and Zimbabwe is its most painful chapter. When a ruling party cannot win an election fairly, it changes the rules of the election. When it cannot control its own elders, it fights over succession in the dark. The people become spectators to a contest they were never allowed to enter. Mugabe was removed in 2017, but the system that made him was never dismantled. We warned then that the cure was not a new face. It was a new set of rules, enforced by independent courts and a free electorate. That warning has not aged well.

The way forward is not complicated, though it will be hard. Zimbabwe needs CAB3 withdrawn in full, and any attempt to extend presidential terms must go to a genuine national referendum with an independent Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, credible voter rolls, and observers who are free to report what they see. Parliament must stop functioning as a rubber stamp. The judiciary must rule on constitutional questions without fear of the executive. Look to Botswana, which has alternated power through competitive elections and built a reputation for fiscal discipline and property rights, and to Mauritius, which has sustained peaceful transfers of power for decades. Senegal showed in 2024 that an African president who tried to postpone an election could be checked by courts, civil society and citizens refusing to be silenced. That is the blueprint. Zimbabwe can follow it.

SADC and the African Union must stop treating Harare's constitutional coups as internal family matters. Regional bodies that condemn coups in the Sahel should be equally clear when an incumbent uses a parliamentary majority to cancel the voter. Civil society, from the churches to the trade unions to the professional associations, should coordinate a national demand for a referendum on any term extension. And Zimbabwe's private sector, long tethered to political favours, should back property rights and transparent contracting, because investment does not flow into a country where the rules change every time the ruling clique needs them to.

So here is what we demand, and what you should demand from your own leaders. Withdraw CAB3. Hold the referendum the constitution requires. Restore the direct presidential election. Guarantee that the army stays out of politics and that no soldier is promoted or demoted for political loyalty. Publish the source of every major patronage contract, from Chivayo's empire to the state tenders that still flow to ZANU-PF insiders.

Zimbabweans, you are not spectators. You are the country. Your vote, your courts, your constitution, and your refusal to accept a rigged succession are the only real checks on men who treat the state as a family inheritance. Do not let them make you choose between two faces of the same machine. Demand the system itself be rebuilt, and do it loudly, before 2030 arrives and the rules have been rewritten once again.

Based on reporting by ISS