By Gabriel Manyati
In the heavy, tobacco-scented air of Harare’s Parliament in late 1987, the old Westminster order was being quietly buried beneath the weight of new ambitions. Outside, the Unity Accord had papered over the raw wounds of Gukurahundi, ZANU and ZAPU were formally one, and the ruling elite gathered with the satisfied air of men who believed they were not merely surviving but forging a destiny worthy of the liberation struggle.
Sunlight slanted through the tall windows onto wooden benches worn smooth by debate, while whispers rippled through the corridors like the distant rumble of Matabeleland rains. Among them moved Edson Zvobgo – Harvard-trained lawyer, poet, constitutional craftsman, and intellectual colossus of the revolution. As Minister of Parliamentary and Constitutional Affairs, he steered Amendment No. 7 through the House with the precision of a surgeon and the rhetoric of a revolutionary, creating an executive presidency shorn of the ceremonial restraints that had previously hedged power.
Many in those corridors whispered that the formidable Zvobgo was not merely serving Robert Mugabe; he was building the throne he himself hoped one day to occupy.
History, that wicked Zimbabwean jester with a taste for the ironic, had other plans. The powerful presidency Zvobgo helped birth became the instrument of Mugabe’s three-decade dominion, a colossus that overshadowed everything else. Zvobgo himself would later be sidelined, demoted from one portfolio to another – first to Mines, then to Minister Without Portfolio – and finally cast into the political wilderness. He watched the monster he had midwifed devour ambition after ambition, including, in time, his own.
By the time he died in 2004, the brilliant mind who had once negotiated at Lancaster House and spoken truth to power on Gukurahundi had become a cautionary tale etched into the stone of Heroes’ Acre. Today, a day after MPs passed Constitutional Amendment (No. 3) Bill, CAB3, the same spectral laughter echoes from the gallery. Once again, political elites are redesigning the rules, convinced they are securing stability, continuity, and development. They are, in truth, repeating Zimbabwe’s oldest constitutional tragedy: the belief that one can write tomorrow’s rules only to become a prisoner of the institutions one creates.
The atmosphere after the 1987 Unity Accord was electric with reconciliation and triumphalism. The liberation war was a fading memory, the dissident problem notionally solved through the accord signed in December 1987, and ZANU PF’s mood was one of consolidation after years of uneasy co-existence. Many in the ruling party argued passionately that a strong executive presidency was essential to bind the fragile nation, drive ambitious development programmes, and prevent the fractiousness that had marked the early independence years.
Zvobgo, the brilliant orator and legal mind who had served as ZANU -PF’s spokesman at Lancaster House, was the perfect architect. With his sharp wit and commanding presence, he spoke eloquently of nation-building, of the need for decisive leadership to steer a young country through turbulent times. Yet those close to the process recall the whispered calculations in the smoke-filled rooms of power: Mugabe would not live forever; the office being created was one that a man of Zvobgo’s stature, intellect, and revolutionary credentials might reasonably inherit. Colleagues spoke of his Harvard polish, his love of poetry, and his ability to craft arguments that could sway even the most sceptical. He was seen not just as a loyal lieutenant but as a potential successor – the intellectual giant who could one day wear the crown he was helping to forge.
Instead, Amendment No. 7 helped forge something far more enduring and formidable than anyone had fully anticipated. By merging the roles of president and prime minister and concentrating executive authority, it marginalised rivals, weakened Parliament, and eventually subdued even the party that had championed it. Mugabe grew into the office like a tree whose roots cracked the very foundation. He became the indispensable centre of the political universe, his shadow lengthening over every decision, every congress, every succession rumour. Zvobgo, for all his intellect and early promise, found himself outmanoeuvred by the very system he had helped design. The constitution did not elevate him; it entrenched another.
The man who had helped move the country towards greater executive power watched as that power calcified around Mugabe, turning what was meant to be a tool for nation-building into a personal fiefdom. It was a masterclass in the law of unintended consequences – constitutional engineering producing outcomes its architects neither anticipated nor could control.
Now pivot to 2026, and the parallels feel almost too neat to be accidental. The arguments advanced by CAB3’s supporters sound wearily familiar: political stability, the need for continuity, the disruption caused by frequent electoral cycles to long-term development projects. Proponents speak earnestly of giving leadership sufficient time to deliver on infrastructure, economic turnaround, and Vision 2030 ambitions. The bill extends presidential, parliamentary, and local authority terms from five to seven years, shifts the election of the president from direct popular vote to a joint sitting of Parliament, enlarges the Senate with 10 presidential appointees based on professional skills, transfers voters’ roll functions, establishes a new delimitation commission, and repeals bodies like the Gender Commission and National Peace and Reconciliation Commission. These changes, taken together, concentrate influence in ways that echo the centralising impulse of 1987.
The contrast with 1987 remains instructive, even as it highlights uncomfortable differences. Then, there was at least the pretence of a foundational post-conflict settlement – national reconciliation after a brutal bush war and the Unity Accord’s healing gesture. Today, there is no existential national crisis demanding such redesign. No fresh wounds being bandaged, no new political order emerging from the ashes. Instead, there is the deeply personalised anxiety of succession within a liberation movement that has never gracefully managed the exit of its leaders.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, at 83, stands at the centre of this project. The bill’s transitional provisions would allow him to serve until 2030, buying precious time in a political landscape still haunted by the dramatic events of November 2017.
This is not crude ageism, the sort that reduces complex politics to biology. It is a deeper, more troubling question about institutional health and national imagination. What does it say about the strength of our republic when its future appears tethered so tightly to the biological clock of one elderly incumbent? Why does a state of millions appear unable or unwilling to envision political life beyond a single octogenarian? Does this reveal institutional weakness, deep succession anxiety, or a profound political insecurity born of repeated failures to manage transitions?
Constitutions are ordinarily written to outlive generations, to provide the sturdy architecture within which societies evolve. They should not be altered whenever the political calendar collides with an individual’s timetable. A supreme law should not resemble a personalised retirement deferral package. Nations are not family businesses whose succession plans can be indefinitely postponed by amending the articles of association. The constitutional order of an entire republic should not appear to hinge upon one man’s birth certificate.
The irony deepens when one considers the age question alongside the bill’s other provisions. The direct popular election of the president – a democratic advance born of earlier reforms – is to be replaced by parliamentary selection, a move that insulates the executive further from the electorate. Harare’s political gossip mills hum ceaselessly with the usual calculations: which faction benefits, whose ambitions are being carefully managed, who is quietly positioning for the post-Mnangagwa era. The long shadow of November 2017 still lingers over everything; liberation movements have proven adept at removing leaders in dramatic fashion but woefully inadequate at orderly, institutional succession.
Zimbabwe’s predicament echoes a broader international tradition of constitutional self-deception. Charles de Gaulle crafted the strong institutions of France’s Fifth Republic, only to see the office occupied by heirs and opponents he could scarcely have imagined. Yoweri Museveni’s removal of term and age limits in Uganda bought him time but intensified questions about what comes after. Even Deng Xiaoping, who spent years building safeguards against another lifetime ruler in China, watched later generations revisit and reshape those restraints. As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have observed, political survival remains the fundamental driver of behaviour in all systems.
James Madison reminded us that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Constitutions exist precisely because leaders are not angels; they require restraints, checks, and limitations to guard against the temptations of power. Lord Acton was blunter: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Zimbabwe’s repeated flirtation with concentrating executive authority suggests we have yet to fully internalise these hard-won truths.
The unintended consequences of such constitutional engineering form a recurring, almost cyclical theme in our history. Politicians personalise the supreme law, treating it as an instrument of immediate convenience rather than a settled rule of the game. Succession anxiety inside ZANU PF, the perennial tension between institutions and outsized personalities, the cyclical nature of our politics – all reappear with predictable regularity. The temptation to use amendments as quick fixes for political inconvenience remains strong. Yet the deeper irony is that constitutions almost always outlive the ambitions of the politicians who amend them. Today’s constitutional winners may well become tomorrow’s victims, just as Zvobgo discovered to his cost.
Zimbabwe’s constitutional history often resembles a man building a grand house for himself, only to discover too late that someone else has inherited the keys – and changed the locks. Whether the architects of CAB3 will one day share Zvobgo’s rueful insight remains to be seen. History, particularly Zimbabwean constitutional history, possesses a wicked sense of humour. It allows politicians to write the script with great flourish, only to cast somebody else – often the most unexpected understudy – in the starring role.
