By Dr. Phillan Zamchiya
The Zimbabwe government and state media have sought to use the reported 300 000 submissions on Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3 to politically delegitimise calls for a referendum.
But the more they attempt to manufacture legitimacy, the more the process begins to backfire.
Read carefully together, two state-controlled Zimpapers articles published on Sunday, 17 May 2026, unintentionally strengthen the very argument they seek to defeat: that a referendum is now the only legitimate democratic route available.
The first was the Sunday Mail article by Debra Matabvu titled “Parly receives 300 000 submissions on Amendment Bill…”
The second was the Herald online article by Joseph Madzimure titled “We made 180 000 submissions for CAB3, ZANU PF Harare Province says.”
These reports follow the Cabinet’s approval of Constitutional Amendment No. 3 (CAB 3) on 10 February 2026.
Among other draconian provisions, the Bill seeks to extend the term of office for the President and Parliament from five to seven years. This effectively moves elections from 2028 to 2030 without directly returning to the people through a referendum.
The two articles unintentionally expose the central political legitimacy crisis facing the entire CAB 3 process.
The state seeks to present the reported 300 000 submissions as evidence of broad democratic participation and overwhelming voluntary public endorsement.
The Sunday Mail repeatedly frames the exercise as one of the “largest public participation exercises” in Zimbabwe’s constitutional history.
The article attempts to perform both legality and legitimacy: a 90-day public consultation window, nationwide coverage across the country’s 64 districts, written submissions, demographic analysis, and procedural compliance under Section 328 of the Constitution.
The Clerk of Parliament, Kennedy Chokuda, is quoted as stating:
“As of Tuesday, we had received 300 000 submissions…”
However, the submission window closed on Monday, 18 May.
Then comes the second article.
On Saturday, ZANU PF Harare Province announced that it had generated over 180 000 written submissions in support of CAB 3.
Reader, politically, this is devastating.
Why? You might ask.
Because what was initially presented as broad national constitutional participation suddenly begins to resemble a ruling party rescue mission designed to inflate politically thin legitimacy through organised coercive mobilisation.
We do not know how many of the 180 000 submissions had already been included within the broader 300 000 figure announced earlier by Parliament.
However, this increasingly points toward highly organised coercive partisan mobilisation designed to manufacture the appearance of overwhelming voluntary public consent.
The language used in the Herald article is itself revealing.
ZANU PF Harare Provincial Political Commissar, Voyage Dambuza, states: “We sent our [ZANU PF] team, which brought about six truckloads of written views.”
Even more revealing is the language of “follow-up with our party members.”
And this is only one province out of ten.
One immediately suspects that more such party-coerced submissions may have suddenly emerged from the remaining provinces on Monday, the deadline, in an attempt to politically rescue and inflate the appearance of national constitutional consensus.
Reader, constitutions are supposed to emerge from free sovereign reflection by citizens, not trucked mass petition logistics organised through coercive ruling party structures.
The submissions, therefore, increasingly appear less like genuine citizen participation and more like organised coercive exercises designed to simulate popular consent.
Legitimacy in constitutional politics is not produced by truckloads of signatures, but by free sovereign consent under conditions citizens themselves recognise as credible and independent.
The demographic claims made by Parliament raise additional methodological questions.
The Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs reportedly stated that it was compiling demographic statistics from the hearings, including distinctions between male and female participants, age groups, and patterns of opinion.
Yet during the violent and exclusionary televised public hearings watched by many Zimbabweans, participants were generally asked only to state their names before making submissions. No systematic process for recording ages or demographic categories was visibly administered during many of these sessions.
Reader, this raises serious methodological questions.
How exactly are these demographic conclusions now being generated, verified, and authenticated after the fact?
Nevertheless, the arithmetic remains politically uncomfortable.
The 2013 Constitution was endorsed directly by the people through a national referendum held on 16 March 2013.
According to official results:
• 3,079,966 Zimbabweans voted YES,
• out of 3,316,082 total votes cast,
• representing 92.88% support.
That was direct and voluntary sovereign endorsement.
By contrast, the current process seeks to change major governance provisions through submissions gathered outside a referendum process and increasingly shaped by coercive partisan mobilisation.
Even though this is not formally a referendum, the numbers matter politically because the state itself is attempting to use those numbers as evidence of legitimacy.
The hearings and written submissions, therefore, represent the formal avenue through which citizens can register their views on the proposed constitutional changes.
The arithmetic becomes even thinner when placed against Zimbabwe’s current electorate.
In the 2023 presidential election, Zimbabwe had 6,623,511 registered voters. Of these, 4,561,221 citizens cast ballots.
Yet we are now told that submissions amounting to roughly only 4.5% of registered voters should carry sufficient legitimacy to change presidential terms and postpone elections.
Reader, power derives from the people.
As Rousseau argued, sovereignty derives from the people themselves. A process cynically dressed up as technical legality may still fundamentally fail the democratic test of genuine popular consent.
A referendum resolves this crisis because it answers the only legitimacy question that finally matters:
Do the people themselves accept the new terms under which they are to be governed?
A Constitution voluntarily endorsed directly by millions cannot morally and politically be changed through comparatively tiny, party-driven submissions gathered under conditions many citizens increasingly describe as coercive, fear-laden, and stage-managed.
If the amendment genuinely commands overwhelming national support, then return the question directly to the people.
That is the only democratic, constitutional, and politically legitimate route.
