By Reason Wafawarova
Zimbabweans have awakened today, 15 September 2026, to the country’s first official Munhumutapa Day public holiday. It is also President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s birthday.
Government offices are closed. Schools are closed. Businesses must adjust. Thousands of people are being assembled in Mvurwi for celebrations officially dedicated to the legacy of the Mutapa state, the achievements of the Second Republic, Vision 2030 and the life of the man who currently occupies State House.
The coincidence has now acquired the force of law. Statutory Instrument 148 of 2026 declares that 15 September “every year henceforth” shall be a national public holiday known as Munhumutapa Day.
The Gazette does not legally crown Mnangagwa king. But as Zimbabwe celebrates the inaugural holiday today, a proposal attributed to the Mashonaland West ZANU-PF Youth Wing is circulating within the political conversation.
It asks: “Should Zimbabwe restore the Munhumutapa throne and abolish the Presidency?”
The proposal suggests that Zimbabwe should consider abandoning what it describes as the colonial concept of the presidency and restore a modern Munhumutapa institution. It presents a king as a possible symbol of national continuity and unity, standing above the ordinary electoral cycle.
It carefully qualifies the proposal as a subject for national debate. It speaks about constitutional monarchy, democracy, accountability and the rule of law. It cites the United Kingdom, Japan, Lesotho and Eswatini as examples of countries retaining monarchies within modern political systems.
The language is polished, moderate and exploratory. It is also alarmingly familiar. Zimbabweans have seen this method before. A radical political objective is first introduced as an innocent thought.
Then it becomes a joke at a rally. Then excited youths begin chanting it. Then party structures “spontaneously” propose it. Then a province adopts it. Then another province endorses it. Then the party conference resolves that the people have spoken. Then Cabinet asks lawyers to prepare the necessary papers. Then a Bill appears in the Gazette. Then citizens are taken to public hearings to discuss a decision already made. Then Parliament complies. Then the Senate complies. Then the President signs. Then the political joke wakes up one morning as constitutional law.
This is substantially how the 2030 project travelled. Zimbabweans should therefore not laugh too quickly when ruling-party structures begin asking whether the presidency should be abolished and the Munhumutapa throne restored.
The 2030 joke is now law.
Today, the Munhumutapa joke is a public holiday. Tomorrow, it may acquire a constitutional clause.
THE FIRST STEP WAS SYMBOLIC; THE SECOND IS IDEOLOGICAL
When Munhumutapa Day was first commemorated in 2024 and again in 2025, the Government could present it as a cultural celebration organised by enthusiastic youths. It was not yet a statutory public holiday.
Indeed, earlier media claims that it had already been legally gazetted were found to be false. In 2025, the Government itself clarified that 15 September was not a public holiday.
That distinction disappeared on 9 September 2026. The President exercised statutory power to place his birthday permanently on the national calendar under the name of a pre-colonial imperial ruler. The 2026 event is the first official national observance.
That was the legal activation of the symbolism. The circulating proposal to abolish the presidency and restore the Munhumutapa throne is the next ideological step.
It attempts to move the national conversation from: “Let us remember the Munhumutapa” to: “Let us have a Munhumutapa.”
From celebrating an empire to restoring one. From commemorating a title to occupying it. From birthday symbolism to constitutional design.
That does not prove that a completed plan for monarchy already exists inside the Office of the President. It proves something more immediate: an idea that would previously have appeared absurd has entered the range of ideas ZANU-PF supporters now consider publicly discussable.
That is how political boundaries move. Yesterday’s impossibility becomes today’s debate. Today’s debate becomes tomorrow’s resolution. Tomorrow’s resolution becomes the next amendment.
CAA3 TAUGHT US TO RESPECT THE ABSURD
When the 2030 slogan first appeared at ZANU-PF rallies, many Zimbabweans dismissed it as sycophantic enthusiasm.
Mnangagwa repeatedly said he was a constitutionalist and would leave office when his term ended in 2028.
Supporters nevertheless continued chanting that he would still be there in 2030.
The “demand” then moved through party structures. It became a conference resolution. It returned in stronger form at another conference. Cabinet approved constitutional drafting. The Bill was gazetted. Public hearings followed. Parliament passed it. The Senate passed it. The President signed it on 7 July 2026.
CAA3 extended presidential, parliamentary and local-government terms from five years to seven, postponed the next election from 2028 to 2030 and removed the direct presidential vote, transferring the choice of President to Parliament.
The journey from slogan to law is no longer speculative. Zimbabwe has just lived through it.
That experience gives us a practical rule: Never dismiss an unconstitutional-sounding proposal merely because ZANU-PF introduces it through youths, provincial structures or apparently overexcited supporters.
The youths may be genuinely enthusiastic. The proposal may also be an authorised experiment in public conditioning.
Its purpose may be to discover:
• who supports it;
• who opposes it;
• which constitutional objections will arise;
• what language makes it sound acceptable;
• which cultural authorities can be recruited;
• which historians can legitimise it;
• and how the public can be moved gradually from shock to familiarity.
By the time an official Bill appears, society may already have spent months debating the ruler’s preferred premise.
The Government can then say it is responding to public demand. The political ventriloquist asks the puppet a question and later cites the puppet’s answer as the voice of the people.
WHAT DOES MUNHUMUTAPA ACTUALLY MEAN?
The title requires historical care.
“Mwene” is commonly translated as lord, owner or master.
“Mutapa” is associated in different accounts with conquered territory, conquest, raiding, metals or plunder. The complete royal title is commonly rendered as “lord of the conquered lands,” while another established translation is “master pillager.”
It is therefore inaccurate to sanitise the title as if it merely meant a friendly constitutional caretaker. It emerged from a political order created and maintained through power, conquest, tribute and hierarchy.
That does not make the Mutapa state uniquely evil.
Empires everywhere were built through expansion, coercion and the subordination of weaker communities. European empires, Asian empires, Arab empires and African empires all contain histories of warfare, tribute, captivity and exploitation.
The Mutapa state also represented sophisticated African statecraft. It developed systems of administration, mining, agriculture, regional commerce, diplomacy and religious authority long before colonial rule.
That history deserves study and respect. Its existence demolishes the colonial lie that Africans possessed no civilisation before Europeans arrived.
But historical pride must not become historical dishonesty.
The Mutapa political order was not a liberal constitutional democracy. It was a monarchy built in an age of conquest. Its rulers exercised authority over subordinate territories, demanded tribute and became entangled with Portuguese commercial and political interests.
Captives and enslaved people formed part of the wider regional trade that developed through Portuguese-controlled routes in and around modern Mozambique. Over time, Portuguese influence, military intervention, commercial exploitation and unequal treaties also weakened and subordinated the Mutapa state itself.
The history contains African achievement, African conquest, Portuguese imperial ambition, commerce, conflict, collaboration, resistance and betrayal.
It is not a children’s birthday story. Nor should it be converted into one man’s campaign biography.
The question is not whether we should condemn people who lived centuries ago for failing to adopt a constitution written in 2013.
The question is why a modern President, governing citizens protected by a democratic Constitution, would select imperial sovereignty as the political metaphor through which his rule should be celebrated.
THE PROBLEM IS NOT AFRICAN HISTORY
Zimbabwe must reclaim its pre-colonial history.
We should teach our children about:
• Great Zimbabwe;
• the Mutapa state;
• the Rozvi state;
• the Ndebele state;
• the Torwa and Kalanga traditions;
• the Manyika polities;
• the Tonga, Venda, Nambya, Shangani and other communities;
• regional trade systems;
• indigenous technologies;
• African philosophy;
• and the many centres of political authority that existed before colonial conquest.
The problem is not Munhumutapa history. The problem is the personal annexation of Munhumutapa history.
Why does the annual national celebration of this ancient state fall precisely on Mnangagwa’s birthday?
Why is an imperial history belonging to generations of Africans attached to the biography of one living politician?
Why does state media describe the holiday as a celebration of both “historical and present greatness”?
Why is the Mutapa past being tied to Mnangagwa’s developmental philosophy and Vision 2030?
Why is a youth structure now asking whether the office Mnangagwa occupies should be abolished and replaced by the title celebrated on his birthday?
The Government cannot separate these developments after deliberately placing them together.
State media has repeatedly joined:
• the ancient empire;
• Mnangagwa’s birthday;
• his administration’s achievements;
• “servant leadership”;
• democracy;
• and Vision 2030.
One state-media tribute went as far as presenting Mnangagwa’s political journey as a prophetic calling and his leadership as the modern embodiment of the Munhumutapa spirit.
That is not neutral historical commemoration. It is the construction of a political mythology.
The ancient empire supplies grandeur. The birthday supplies the living ruler. The public holiday supplies the State. CAA3 supplies continuity. Parliament supplies the electoral college.
THE NAME ZIMBABWE IS NOT A COLONIAL EMBARRASSMENT
The emerging argument appears to be that the presidency and perhaps even the national name belong to a foreign political inheritance that should be replaced by an authentically African order.
That reasoning is historically perverse. The name Zimbabwe was itself reclaimed as an anti-colonial declaration.
Nationalist Michael Mawema is widely credited with first using “Zimbabwe” as the proposed national name around 1960. His Zimbabwe National Party formally adopted the name in 1961. Other possibilities discussed by nationalists included Monomotapa, but Zimbabwe prevailed.
The name came from Dzimba-dza-mabwe—the houses of stone—and the civilisational authority represented by Great Zimbabwe.
It displaced “Rhodesia,” the territorial monument to Cecil John Rhodes.
Zimbabwe was not imposed upon Africans by colonialism. It was asserted against colonialism. It became a word of resistance, political imagination and national recovery.
Men and women went into detention, exile and war under movements that promised a free Zimbabwe.
To suggest abandoning that name in favour of the personal restoration of an imperial throne would not complete the liberation struggle. It would appropriate one of the struggle’s greatest achievements.
The liberation movement did not fight to restore one pre-colonial dynasty over all the country’s peoples. It fought to establish national sovereignty in which every adult citizen possessed equal political standing.
Zimbabwe united many histories without making any one king the owner of all of them. That was not cultural surrender. It was the foundation of modern nationhood.
THE PRESIDENCY MAY BE WESTERN; THE VOTE IS NOT
ZANU-PF supporters now present the presidency as a colonial political concept.
There is room for a serious debate about whether African countries inherited excessively powerful executive presidencies from colonial rule.
In fact, if the concern were genuinely decolonial, Zimbabwe should be reducing presidential power rather than creating a king.
The colonial Governor was not too weak. He was too powerful.
He combined executive authority, control of administration, influence over lawmaking and command of the coercive State. The post-colonial executive presidency inherited much of that architecture.
The democratic answer to the colonial Governor is not an even more permanent ruler. It is stronger popular sovereignty, firmer term limits, independent institutions and greater accountability.
The presidency may have foreign constitutional roots. “One person, one vote” does not. Zimbabweans fought for the vote precisely because colonialism denied it to them. Universal suffrage was not a gift from Britain. It was wrestled from Britain. The vote is ours because people sacrificed for it.
CAA3 removed the people’s direct presidential vote and gave that power to Parliament. The same political movement is now asking whether even the title “President” should disappear.
This is not decolonisation. It is the removal of the voter under cover of African history.
A KING ABOVE THE ELECTORAL CYCLE—THAT IS THE CONFESSION
The Mashonaland West youth proposal contains one especially revealing argument. It says a king could provide continuity because, unlike an elected President, the monarch would not be tied to an electoral cycle.
That is presented as an advantage. But the electoral cycle is not an unfortunate administrative interruption. It is the moment at which power returns to the people.
An election says to the ruler: “You govern temporarily. Your authority is borrowed. At a fixed time, you must return to the citizens and ask again.”
Continuity sounds comforting until one asks what exactly must continue. If continuity means the nation, the Constitution already provides it. If continuity means culture, traditional leaders and heritage institutions already preserve it. If continuity means the State, professional public institutions should survive changes of government. If continuity means Mnangagwa, his family, his faction or his patronage system, then the proposal is not about national unity.
It is about permanent power. A ruler released from the electoral cycle is also released from the voter.
That is the entire attraction. CAA3 extended the cycle. The proposed throne would abolish it.
FIRST THE PRESIDENTIAL VOTE, THEN THE PRESIDENCY
The sequence deserves attention.
CAA3 has already removed direct presidential elections. Citizens no longer choose the President themselves. They elect parliamentarians, who then select the President in a joint sitting of the Senate and National Assembly.
The presidency therefore remains constitutionally elective, but its electorate has been reduced from millions of citizens to a few hundred political intermediaries.
Now a ruling-party youth proposal asks whether the presidency itself should be abolished.
This is how institutional removal can proceed:
1. Weaken the office’s direct relationship with voters.
2. Transfer its selection to Parliament.
3. Expand executive influence over Parliament and the Senate.
4. extend the terms of the President and legislators;
5. present regular elections as expensive, divisive or foreign;
6. elevate a historical royal title as a symbol of unity;
7. place that title on the President’s birthday;
8. convert the birthday into a permanent public holiday;
9. invite party structures to “debate” restoring the throne;
10. claim the proposal arose organically from the people.
By the time the presidency is formally abolished, its democratic content may already have been emptied. The shell is removed only after the substance has gone.
THE SAME PARLIAMENT WILL BE ASKED TO CREATE THE KING
Supporters of a constitutional monarchy may point to Britain or Japan. The comparison is misleading.
In established constitutional monarchies, the monarch is generally separated from day-to-day partisan government. Elected institutions exercise political authority, and the monarch’s role is substantially ceremonial.
That is not the political environment being constructed in Zimbabwe. The proposed Munhumutapa would not descend from a universally recognised and politically neutral royal house standing outside ZANU-PF factionalism.
The proposal is emerging while a living President’s birthday is officially celebrated as Munhumutapa Day.
The President is the leader and beneficiary of the ruling party. That party controls Parliament. That Parliament has extended its own term. That Parliament will select the President under CAA3.
The executive has also acquired increased influence over the composition of the Senate. So who would select the modern Munhumutapa? Which royal lineage would supply the ruler?
Would all Zimbabwe’s communities recognise it? Would succession be hereditary? Would the monarch be ceremonial or executive? Would Parliament appoint the monarch? Could Parliament remove the monarch?
Would the current President become the first restored Munhumutapa? Would the title pass to a relative, a party nominee or a chosen political heir?
Would the people vote in a referendum? Would Matabeleland be equally free to restore a Ndebele monarchy? Would other historical polities receive corresponding constitutional recognition?
The proposal answers none of these questions. It offers the romance of kingship before disclosing who receives the crown.
That omission is not incidental. It is the whole manoeuvre.
MUNHUMUTAPA FOR ONE—SECURITY OPERATION FOR ANOTHER:
Zimbabwe contains many royal and chiefly histories. If imperial restoration is a genuine national principle, it cannot be selectively available to the political centre.
The Ndebele state under Mzilikazi and Lobengula is more recent than the early Mutapa state. Other communities retain their own living histories of sovereignty and traditional authority.
Would ZANU-PF support separate or parallel constitutional monarchies? Would it recognise a restored Ndebele king with the same enthusiasm? Would the Government accept competing historical claims over territory, authority and national symbolism?
Or does royal restoration become “tribalism” and a security concern whenever the proposed throne is not politically aligned with the President?
This is the danger of selective history. The State does not revive every pre-colonial authority. It revives the one that can be made to point towards the incumbent.
That is not cultural justice. It is political genealogy.
FROM JOKE TO LAW: THE 2030 MANUAL
The 2030 campaign has provided the operational manual for what may follow.
Stage One: The joke
Supporters introduce an apparently excessive slogan at rallies.
Stage Two: The spontaneous demand
Youth and provincial structures claim the idea arose naturally from below.
Stage Three: The party resolution
ZANU-PF conferences convert enthusiasm into official policy.
Stage Four: The legal workshop
Party-aligned lawyers and Government officials produce a supposedly constitutional pathway.
Stage Five: The Bill
The proposal enters the Gazette wearing technical language.
Stage Six: The hearings
Citizens are invited to comment after the political decision has already been made. Party supporters are transported to dominate proceedings. Opponents may be shouted down, excluded or assaulted.
Stage Seven: Parliamentary compliance
Legislators vote not only for the executive proposal but also for their own extended tenure.
Stage Eight: Presidential assent
The beneficiary signs the law and declares the process complete.
The Munhumutapa campaign has already passed through several preliminary stages:
• imperial language has entered presidential rhetoric;
• Munhumutapa Day has been celebrated politically;
• the day has been joined to Mnangagwa’s birthday;
• the holiday has been gazetted permanently;
• state media has connected it to Vision 2030;
• and a proposal attributed to a ZANU-PF provincial youth structure is now asking whether the presidency should be abolished.
The machinery has not completed its journey. But it has plainly started moving.
A WARNING IS NOT A CLAIM OF CERTAINTY
There is not yet a gazetted Constitutional Amendment No. 4 creating a monarchy. There is no publicly established Cabinet resolution abolishing the presidency. There is no verified national ZANU-PF resolution restoring a Munhumutapa throne.
The circulating Mashonaland West youth proposal should not yet be falsely reported as enacted party policy.
But none of this makes the warning premature. Democratic vigilance does not begin after authoritarian ambition becomes law. By then, vigilance has become archaeology.
The proper time to interrogate the proposal is while its authors still call it a conversation.
Zimbabweans should ask now:
• Who wrote it?
• Who authorised it?
• Which party structure adopted it?
• Which other provinces have received it?
• Is it intended for the next ZANU-PF conference?
• Has the Ministry of Justice discussed it?
• Is constitutional drafting already being considered?
• Is the proposed monarch intended to be ceremonial or executive?
• Why does the proposal emerge on a holiday attached to Mnangagwa’s birthday?
• Would citizens decide the question in a referendum?
• And has Mnangagwa rejected the suggestion that he should become the restored Munhumutapa?
Silence from the President will not prove the existence of a secret plan. But after CAA3, silence cannot reasonably be treated as reassurance.
DOES 2030 NOW LOOK LIKE A TRANSIT POINT?
CAA3 is presented as the final settlement taking Zimbabwe to 2030. It may instead be an intermediate constitutional platform.
Under the amended system, Parliament will elect the President for a seven-year term. The same Parliament whose own tenure was extended may then face an argument that the first presidency formed under the new arrangement is a new constitutional mandate.
Mnangagwa’s supporters could contend that:
• his previous terms belonged to the old direct-election system;
• the new parliamentary presidency is constitutionally different;
• a seven-year term conferred by Parliament in 2030 is the first full term under that system; and
• his previous years should not be counted in the same way.
Whether such an argument would survive the Constitution’s term-limit and incumbent-benefit protections is a major legal question. Politically, however, it is entirely foreseeable.
If existing term limits obstruct the theory, a further amendment could be proposed.
CAA4 would not need to declare: “Zimbabwe is now a kingdom.”
It could merely:
• redefine presidential tenure;
• alter succession;
• entrench parliamentary renewal of executive authority;
• enlarge appointed parliamentary components;
• remove remaining limits on traditional political authority;
• introduce a ceremonial or executive Munhumutapa;
• or rename existing institutions in the language of “traditional democracy.”
The Republic could be amended into a kingdom one clause at a time.
THE MUTAPA SLAVE-TRADE QUESTION
The romantic presentation of the Mutapa state as an uncomplicated model of unity, democracy and servant leadership should also be resisted.
Like other empires of its time, Mutapa expanded through conquest and incorporated subordinate peoples.
Its history later became entangled with Portuguese commercial penetration, armed interference, mining interests, tribute demands and slave-trading networks operating through modern-day Mozambique.
This must be handled honestly.
The Portuguese were not passive customers entering an innocent African market. They were imperial actors who used commerce, firearms, missionaries, political manipulation and military intervention to extend their control.
African rulers and intermediaries were also not uniformly innocent of captivity and human trading. History rarely provides the clean morality play demanded by modern propaganda.
The lesson is not that Zimbabwe should despise the Mutapa state. The lesson is that an empire from the age of conquest cannot simply be marketed as a ready-made model of democratic governance for the twenty-first century.
We can celebrate African sovereignty without celebrating subjugation. We can admire African statecraft without restoring royal domination. We can reclaim history without surrendering citizenship.
THE IRONY OF THE NAME
There is dark symbolism in celebrating a title associated with mastery over conquered territory on the same day as the birthday of a President whose constitutional project has reduced the political authority of ordinary voters.
Whether one prefers “lord of the conquered lands,” “owner of the realm” “Enslaver,” or “master pillager,” the title belongs to a vocabulary of hierarchy.
Citizenship belongs to a different vocabulary:
• equality;
• consent;
• representation;
• accountability;
• temporary authority;
• and the right to remove rulers.
The modern propaganda project tries to merge these incompatible languages. The ruler becomes a servant king. The empire becomes traditional democracy. The removal of elections becomes continuity. The extension of power becomes stability.
The President’s birthday becomes national history. The political party becomes the people. The compliant Parliament becomes the dare.
And subjects are renamed citizens even as their direct vote is removed.
This is not African political renewal. It is semantic conquest.
ZIMBABWEANS ARE CITIZENS, NOT SUBJECTS
Our people did not fight colonial rule merely because the ruler was white. They fought because the system denied Africans equal ownership of the country.
The demand for majority rule meant that political authority had to come from the people. “One person, one vote” was the moral centre of that struggle.
CAA3 violated that inheritance by removing the direct presidential vote. A restored executive Munhumutapa would complete the reversal.
The journey would be:
• from subjects under a colonial Crown;
• to citizens of an independent republic;
• back to subjects under a domestic ruler.
The skin colour of the monarch would not rescue the principle. Black domination is not liberation merely because colonial domination was white.
Zimbabwe did not fight Queen Elizabeth so that history could conclude with King Emmerson.
WHAT ZIMBABWEANS SHOULD DO TODAY
Today should not be observed through historical ignorance. Zimbabweans can celebrate the reality that our civilisation predates colonialism.
They can honour the builders, farmers, miners, traders, spiritual authorities and communities that created sophisticated societies before Rhodes ever imagined placing his surname on our country.
But citizens should refuse the conversion of that history into a personal title deed for a living politician.
They should demand:
• a complete public explanation of the purpose of Munhumutapa Day;
• disclosure of who selected 15 September and why;
• separation of national heritage from Mnangagwa’s birthday celebrations;
• clarification of whether ZANU-PF supports abolishing the presidency;
• rejection or confirmation of any proposal to rename Zimbabwe;
• disclosure of any intended constitutional changes;
• an assurance that no monarchy will be introduced without a national referendum;
• and protection of the direct political sovereignty recovered through the liberation struggle.
Most importantly, Zimbabweans must learn from CAA3. Do not wait for the Bill.
By the time the Bill appears, the rallies, slogans, resolutions, legal opinions and parliamentary numbers may already be organised.
Oppose the premise while it is still described as a harmless question.
THE THRONE IS BEING ASSEMBLED IN PUBLIC
Mnangagwa has not legally crowned himself Munhumutapa. Zimbabwe has not yet formally abolished the presidency. The country has not yet been renamed. No publicly verified CAA4 has yet been produced.
But today, several developments stand together:
• Mnangagwa’s birthday is a permanent national public holiday;
• the holiday carries an imperial title;
• the official celebration connects ancient greatness with Mnangagwa’s leadership and Vision 2030;
• CAA3 has extended his tenure and Parliament’s tenure;
• citizens have lost their direct presidential vote;
• Parliament has become the presidential electorate;
• executive influence within the Senate has increased;
• and a proposal emerging from ruling-party youth structures asks whether the presidency should be abolished and the Munhumutapa throne restored.
Democratic people do not have to wait for a coronation before noticing that a throne is being assembled.
The pieces are arriving separately so that each can be defended as harmless. The birthday is only a birthday. The holiday is only heritage. The imperial title is only symbolism. The youth proposal is only debate.
CAA3 is only constitutional reform. 2030 is only developmental continuity. Parliamentary election is only representative democracy.
CAA4, if it comes, will be only harmonisation. One harmless step follows another until the Republic discovers that it has travelled somewhere no citizen ever voted to go.
The greatest danger is not that Mnangagwa will walk into Mvurwi today wearing a crown. That would be too obvious.
The danger is that Zimbabweans will wake up on successive Munhumutapa Days having surrendered another piece of republican citizenship, while every surrender is presented as a celebration of African sovereignty.
Today the public holiday is law. Today the birthday is national. Today the title is imperial. Today the proposal is “President or Munhumutapa?”
Zimbabwe must answer before Parliament answers on our behalf. We are not conquered lands. We are not the personal domain of any ruler. We are not subjects waiting for a benevolent master. We are Zimbabweans.
The name Zimbabwe was reclaimed against colonial rule. The vote was won through sacrifice. The Constitution belongs to the people.
No President, Parliament, party, province, dynasty or manufactured royal lineage has the right to convert that inheritance into a throne.
Note*This is an opinion article and the views, opinions, interpretations and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect, represent or constitute the views, opinions or official position of National Interest News.
