90 days to stop the coup on Zimbabwe’s constitution

Zimbabwe finally woke up last week. Voices were raised, meetings were held and press conferences convened.

“We will die for this constitution” was the phrase we heard – and we knew, at last, that the voices of opposition were back. Leadership was back.

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Here’s what happened.

After months of speculation, anxiety and disbelief that they would actually do it, Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF government last week took us into a dark place we didn’t think they’d go.

The illusion that they have been so busy trying to create that everything is fine in Zimbabwe has suddenly been exposed for all to see.

Despite their massaged statistics, shiny shopping malls, huge mansions and palm-tree-lined highways, everything is not at all fine in Zimbabwe.

If it was, why would they be about to change the country’s 12-year-old constitution to give themselves more power and longer terms in office?

Amendment bill

Last Monday (16 February), following a cabinet meeting chaired by President Emmerson Mnangagwa a few days earlier, the government announced that The Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Bill (No 3) 2026 had been published in an Extraordinary Government Gazette – which formally started a 90-day public consultation period before it goes to parliament.

The bill proposes that the president will no longer be elected by the people of Zimbabwe but will instead be chosen by members of parliament.

It proposes that the presidential term of office be extended from five to seven years and that the extension will apply to the current president and to all members of parliament.

The next general election would be pushed from 2028 to 2030.

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The amendment bill also gives the president the power to appoint 10 more senators, removes the public interview process for judicial appointments, and moves the voter’s roll from the electoral commission to the Registrar-General’s office.

Zimbabwe’s current constitution was adopted after a national referendum held 12 years ago, in March 2013. That referendum was endorsed by all the major political parties, and 94.5% of Zimbabweans voted in support of it.

The likelihood of The Constitutional Amendment Bill (No 3) going to a referendum is apparently remote.

Lawyer and opposition politician David Coltart said: “Any amendment which has the ‘effect’ of extending an incumbent’s tenure should be subjected to a referendum. They know that if that happens, they will fail, so they will do all in their power to prevent a referendum from happening.”

This bill ‘will not pass’

Tendai Biti, a lawyer and former minister of finance, has launched the Constitutional Defenders Forum (CDF) – “a civic organisation to defend and protect the Constitution”.

Biti held a press conference this week, the likes of which we have not seen for many years, saying “we are going to work with everyone in the fight to protect this constitution”.

“All hands must be on the deck. … We are going to work together to stop this coup on our constitution. … We will die for this constitution. We will be arrested for this constitution. … They must kill us, they must arrest us but this constitutional amendment will not pass.”

For so long, we have thought we only had to survive two more years of this government …

Two more years of hospitals without medicine; two more years of food we cannot afford to buy; two more years of out-of-control corruption; two more years of illegal gold mining on hills and in rivers rubber-stamped by government officials; two more years of carrying water home in buckets because taps are dry; and the list goes on and on.

The legacy

An hour before sending this column I bought an extra loaf of bread in the supermarket to give to the old man sitting outside in a wheelchair under a grey sky with a thin drizzle of rain coming down on him.

You know how hungry people are when you see them start eating the bread straight out of the bag, right then and there.

My heart is sore today. This is the Zimbabwe the present government has given us, we become got poorer and poorer while they have become multi-millionaires.

Read: Helping hands, and hands that just keep taking in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe now has less 90 days to stop this coup on its constitution. Dark days lie ahead.

Please watch, listen and share this news and keep Zimbabwe in your hearts and minds.

© Cathy Buckle

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