By Gabriel Manyati
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has a habit of speaking about the future in ways that once sounded like bravado. Zimbabweans laughed. Then the calendar moved.
On Wednesday 9 September 2026, while addressing local and international delegates at the Sanganai/Hlanganani Tourism Expo in Masvingo, Mnangagwa made a statement that should end the laughter for good. Speaking about Masvingo’s natural resources and the government’s plan to rotate the tourism expo among Zimbabwe’s provinces, he said: “After nine years, when we will be rotating provinces to host this event, I will still be in power.”
Nine years from 2026 lands in 2035.
The president offered no explanation of the constitutional or political mechanism that would keep him in office five years beyond the already extended 2030 electoral timetable. The setting matters. This was not a casual aside at a party rally. It was a presidential declaration delivered before domestic and international tourism-sector delegates, buyers and industry representatives at Zimbabwe’s flagship international tourism exhibition.
The remarks came barely two months after Mnangagwa signed Constitutional Amendment No. 3 into law on 7 July 2026, extending presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years and postponing the next elections from 2028 to 2030.
In November 2017 the pattern first became impossible to dismiss. On 6 November Robert Mugabe dismissed Mnangagwa as vice-president. Mnangagwa fled. In a statement issued while outside the country he wrote that he would communicate further and “shall return to Zimbabwe to lead you.” He did not claim the military would act solely because of his words.
He simply stated his intention. Within days the defence forces intervened, ZANU PF removed Mugabe as party leader, parliament prepared impeachment, and Mugabe resigned on 21 November. Mnangagwa returned and was sworn in as president on 24 November. The sequence involved the military, war veterans, street pressure and Mugabe’s isolation. The narrow point remains: the man who said he would return did return, and became president within weeks of a career that had appeared finished.
Fast-forward to June 2018. At the Buy Zimbabwe conference in Gweru, addressing captains of industry, Mnangagwa said of Vision 2030: “I chose 2030 and it’s not a magic year, but I believe I will still be there.” The phrase “2030 ndendichipo” entered popular discourse as the Shona distillation of that claim. At the time many treated it as political theatre or an ambitious slogan for economic transformation. Opposition voices and ordinary citizens often laughed or shrugged.
Constitutional two-term limits still appeared firm. Yet the electoral timetable has since been rewritten. The 2026 amendment retained the two-term limit on paper but lengthened each term, abolished direct popular election of the president in favour of selection by a joint sitting of parliament, and moved the next election to 2030. The boast of 2018 now sits inside the constitutional calendar.
These three moments must be read together: the 2017 return, the 2018 “I will still be there,” and the 2026 declaration that he will still be in power when the tourism expo returns to Masvingo in nine years. Political priming works by repetition. An extraordinary proposition is first floated, then normalised through slogans, party resolutions and planning documents, until it acquires the texture of inevitability. Yesterday’s joke becomes today’s possibility and tomorrow’s legal architecture. Zimbabwe has watched this process before.
The life-president question follows naturally. No document proves Mnangagwa has issued a formal decree declaring himself president for life. The more precise question is whether Zimbabweans are prepared to treat the possibility as fantasy until the constitutional machinery has already been adjusted to accommodate extended incumbency. Further amendments would be required for him to remain beyond 2030 under the new seven-year framework. Party provinces have already begun floating 2037. The tools exist: parliamentary majorities, the new method of electing the president, and the demonstrated willingness to alter term lengths without a referendum.
Comparisons with Robert Mugabe are instructive but not identical. Mugabe ruled for 37 years through ruling-party dominance, successive constitutional adjustments, the fusion of party and state, and the gradual acceptance that one individual had become synonymous with the nation. Mnangagwa operates inside the same political culture.
He has reproduced elements of it: the use of constitutional change to manage succession, the reliance on security structures and patronage networks, and the progressive lengthening of the horizon. Differences exist. The 2017 transition involved the military in a more overt role than many earlier Mugabe manoeuvres. Yet the cultural continuity is visible. Is Mnangagwa merely a product of that culture, or is he deliberately refining the model of personalised, open-ended rule?
Talk of further constitutional tinkering, including reported discussions around a possible Amendment No. 4 and claims by figures such as Joshua Maponga about more personalised or even monarchical arrangements, must be tested against the actual text of any bill. Zimbabwe is not yet a monarchy. The risk is subtler: the step-by-step preparation of the public mind for arrangements once considered unthinkable. Each incremental change lowers the threshold for the next.
Alternative explanations deserve a fair hearing. Mnangagwa may have been speaking rhetorically. He may mean institutional continuity rather than personal tenure. He does not personally control every faction inside ZANU PF. Constitutions can still constrain. Circumstances change. Succession politics around Constantino Chiwenga and other contenders remain live. Even if the latest reference to 2035 was partly rhetorical, a sitting president’s public association of his own presence with a date five years beyond the existing electoral horizon, delivered at a major national event, is not politically neutral. It shifts the Overton window.
Policy continuity has genuine value. Vision 2030, long-term infrastructure, investment certainty and institutional memory can benefit from stability. A country can secure policy continuity without requiring one individual to occupy State House indefinitely. The counter-costs are familiar: personalisation of power, weakened succession mechanisms, institutional dependence on a single figure, reduced electoral competitiveness, patronage entrenchment, political fatigue, and the postponement rather than resolution of succession crises. Delaying the inevitable transfer of power can intensify rather than calm factional struggles inside ZANU PF.
For the opposition the signal is equally clear. If electoral dates and the method of choosing a president can be rewritten by parliamentary majorities, formal elections may remain while the substantive rules of succession grow harder to contest. Treating longevity statements as jokes is no longer a strategy. They function as strategic markers of intent.
Mnangagwa has previously told Zimbabweans where he intended to be. In 2017 he said he would return. He returned. After 2018 he said he would still be there in 2030. The timetable has moved to 2030. And now, at a tourism expo in Masvingo, he has said that after nine years he will still be in power. At what point does a political prediction stop being a joke and become a programme? At what point should a serious country stop laughing and start preparing for the possibility that the president means exactly what the pattern of his statements implies?
If Mnangagwa is already telling Zimbabweans that he will be there in 2035, and Zimbabweans have already watched one of his apparently impossible political predictions become reality, why would a serious country wait until 2030 to decide whether it believes him?
