HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s fractious ruling elite is hurtling toward a constitutional crisis that could shred what remains of the country’s democratic veneer, trigger mass unrest, and destabilise the entire Southern African region. The Constitutional Amendment Bill Number 3 (CAB3)—a sweeping power grab designed to extend President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s grip beyond the 2028 constitutional limit—has now cleared both houses of Parliament. And despite the constitution explicitly demanding a national referendum for any amendment touching term limits, the government is openly preparing to send the bill straight to the president’s desk, daring the courts and the people to stop them.
Into this cauldron, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga—the former army general who led the 2017 coup that toppled Robert Mugabe—has thrown fresh gasoline. In a closed-door meeting of the ZANU-PF politburo, Chiwenga reportedly declared that “the war is far from over,” a thinly coded reference to the brutal factional battle over the succession. The remark, captured by sources and echoed in the YouTube broadcast analysed here, signals that the military-backed wing of the party is not ready to cede the future to Mnangagwa’s civilian loyalists, even as they steamroll the CAB3 legislation.
A Brazen Assault on the Constitution
Legal advocates and opposition figures are sounding the alarm with a ferocity not heard since the 2008 violence. Prominent human rights lawyer Doug Coltart, whose father was a founding member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, laid out the mechanics of the looming violation in a detailed briefing this week. “Our constitution is absolutely clear: a bill that amends section 328 or the Bill of Rights has to be submitted to the people in a referendum within three months,” Coltart said. “However, the Minister has made it clear that they do not intend to abide by the constitution. They intend to deny the people a voice.”
CAB3 explicitly ousts the provision that prevents incumbents from benefiting from term extensions. It would allow Mnangagwa—or any future president—to essentially buy the presidency by securing the support of just 186 members of parliament, rather than facing a popular vote. “No longer will the president need to be elected by the people,” Coltart warned. “Whoever wants to become president will simply have to buy off a sufficient number of parliamentarians. That is a terrifying prospect.”
The bill passed the National Assembly in November 2024 and the Senate earlier this month. Because the Senate made amendments, it must return to the lower house for concurrence. After that, the constitution demands a referendum. Yet ZANU-PF’s legal minds are already constructing a justification to bypass that sacred requirement, claiming the bill only “codifies” the existing two-term limit—despite the precise language it replaces. The move mirrors the strategy used by other African strongmen, but in a nation where the 2013 constitution was hailed as a hard-won people’s charter, it lands as an especially brutal betrayal.
Chiwenga’s Shadow War and the Regional Fallout
Chiwenga’s “war” remark did not emerge in a vacuum. He and Mnangagwa have been locked in a cold struggle since the 2017 coup, when Chiwenga was widely expected to succeed Mnangagwa after a single term. That compact has now collapsed. Mnangagwa’s faction, known as Lacoste, has purged Chiwenga allies from the military and party structures, leaving the vice president isolated but still dangerous. His declaration that the fight is “far from over” is a reminder that the security sector remains divided, and that any precipitated power transition could fracture the state itself.
For Zimbabwe’s 16 million citizens, the stakes could not be higher. The economy is already a smoking ruin: official inflation is running at triple digits, 80% of the workforce is in the informal sector, and the Zimbabwe dollar has collapsed so many times that most transactions are conducted in U.S. dollars. The Mnangagwa administration’s repeated attacks on the judiciary—including the forced resignation of Chief Justice Luke Malaba in 2021 under a cloud of questionable retirement rulings—have already gutted trust in the courts. Now, by muscling through CAB3 without a plebiscite, Mnangagwa would effectively neuter the last institutional check on his rule.
Coltart framed the potential fallout with chilling clarity: “If the president signs that bill without a referendum, that will be a shocking violation of his duty to uphold the constitution. But that’s not the end of the road—that law can then be challenged in the Constitutional Court. There will be litigation if it gets as far as that.” He predicted that the judiciary would be further captured if CAB3 becomes law, because it would give the president “unfettered power to appoint judges.”
The reverberations would wash across the Limpopo River. South Africa—already home to an estimated 2 to 3 million Zimbabwean economic and political refugees—would face an immediate spike in desperate border crossings. The scenes captured in the same broadcast, of more than a thousand Zimbabweans sleeping outside their consulate in Cape Town, are a preview of the human tide that a new constitutional dictatorship could unleash. As one despairing consular volunteer put it: “They are sleeping outside. Unfortunately, the consulate is only a small space. They can’t even house everyone.”
Economists warned that a full-blown legitimacy crisis would scare off the fragile trickle of foreign investment that has timidly returned, deepen the nation’s pariah status, and pile further pressure on the regional bloc SADC, which has repeatedly failed to hold Zimbabwe’s rulers accountable. Botswana and Zambia, already uneasy about the spillover of political violence, would be forced to brace for another exodus. The breadbasket of Africa, crushed first by Mugabe’s land grabs and Western sanctions, then by ZANU-PF’s mismanagement, would gasp for air yet again—this time with no life raft in sight.
Opponents are already plotting resistance across the four arenas Coltart identified: Parliament (where the numbers are stacked against them), the courts (where independence is fading), the streets (where a brutal crackdown in Chiredzi last week on protesting vendors shows the state’s repressive appetite), and what he called “prophetic witness”—the churches. “Citizens need to be on their knees in prayer, and on their feet and standing up and marching,” he urged. “It is an attack on the sovereignty of the people, on the liberation struggle ideals of one man, one vote.”
The question no one can answer is whether the military will hold together if Mnangagwa ignores the constitution, or if Chiwenga’s “war” will leap from whispered threats to open confrontation. What is certain is that Southern Africa’s neighbours cannot afford to look away. Zimbabwe’s crisis has never been contained by its borders, and the next chapter is being written now—in the back rooms of Parliament, in the consulate queues, and in the dangerous silence of a stolen referendum.
