The Living Together Institute (LTI), a regional civil society organisation committed to democratic governance, constitutional rule of law, and peaceful coexistence in Southern Africa, issues this statement with deep concern and firm legal conviction regarding the escalating attempt by the Government of Zimbabwe and the ruling ZANU-PF party to unconstitutionally extend the presidential tenure of President Emmerson Mnangagwa beyond what Zimbabwe’s own supreme law permits. This is not merely a political dispute. It is a constitutional crisis that threatens the already shaky democratic foundations painstakingly built by the Zimbabwean people over the past 40+ years.
Background and Facts
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who came to power through a military-backed coup in November 2017, was subsequently elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2023. Under Sections 91 and 95 of the 2013 Constitution, he is required to leave office in 2028 upon completion of two five-year terms which is the constitutionally mandated maximum. In a pre-election interview in August 2023, he told ZTN: “I am going for my second term. It is my last term.” In 2018, he told CNN: “The maximum is two terms, for any president, and I will abide by that.”
In October 2025, ZANU-PF through a party resolution, formally resolved to extend the President’s term to 2030, directing government to draft constitutional amendments. In February 2026, Cabinet approved the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill (H.B. 1, 2026), which proposes to extend presidential terms from five to seven years and to abolish direct popular elections for the presidency, replacing them with a parliamentary vote. The Bill was gazetted in Parliament, triggering a 90-day public consultation period. Crucially, the Bill also seeks to make Section 328(7), the constitutional firewall against self-serving amendments, inoperative, so that the incumbent himself (including members of parliament and councillors) can benefit.
The Constitutional Case: What Zimbabwe’s Own Law Says
Zimbabwe’s constitution passed in 2013 is unambiguous on its position on this topic. Its amendment provisions, Section 328, establish a layered, tiered protection system designed precisely to prevent the kind of political manipulation now being attempted. The Living Together Institute’s legal understanding of the constitutional position is plainly set out as:
- Section 328(7) : The incumbency firewall
Section 328(7) states in plain terms that any amendment to a term-limit provision “does not apply in relation to any person who held or occupied that office, or an equivalent office, at any time before the amendment.” The language is unequivocal. Even if Parliament passes Amendment No. 3 with a hundred-percent majority, President Mnangagwa cannot lawfully benefit from it. Section 328(7) was deliberately crafted as a constitutional firewall against self-serving amendments. This provision cannot be wished away by semantic gymnastics or rebranding an extension as an “election cycle adjustment.”
- Section 328(8) & (9): The referendum requirement
Section 328(8) requires that any amendment to a term-limit provision, after passing with a two-thirds majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate must also be submitted to a national referendum and approved by a majority of votes cast. Section 328(9) specifies that Section 328(7) itself is an entrenched provision that is to say to amend or remove it requires its own referendum. This means the government faces not one but two separate referendum hurdles: one to change the term length, and another to remove the firewall that prevents the incumbent from benefiting. The government’s attempt to sidestep Section 328(7) by treating this as a mere harmonisation of the ‘election cycle’ rather than a term-limit amendment is, as legal analysts have consistently noted, a bad-faith interpretation that treats the Constitution as a plaything for those in power.
- Section 117: Parliament’s power is conditional, not absolute
Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution under Section 117 is expressly conditional, as the constitution unambiguously puts, it may only be exercised ‘in accordance with Section 328.’ Parliament is not a sovereign body with inherent, unlimited power, it is a creature of the Constitution, beholden to it. Its amendment authority is derived from it and conditional. Any attempt to invoke Section 117 while simultaneously repudiating Section 328(7) is constitutionally incoherent. Parliament cannot rely on the authority granted by the Constitution while rejecting the very conditions under which that authority is granted.
- The 2013 constitutions’ democratic mandate
The 2013 Constitution was not a purely people-driven, bottom-up constitutional moment, it emerged from a deeply political elite process, contested negotiations within the Government of National Unity between ZANU-PF, the MDC-T, and MDC (N) formations. It carries with it all the compromises, horse-trading, and imperfections that such processes inevitably produce. The final document bore the fingerprints of political expediency as well as democratic principle. Importantly though, none of that diminishes the fact Zimbabweans created and were taken through an extensive national consultation process. People gave their views in communities across the country. Blood was even shed in the course of producing this document.
When the referendum was finally held on 16 March 2013, Zimbabweans voted overwhelmingly in favour of it, not because the constitution was perfect, but because after decades of lawlessness, arbitrary power, and the systematic destruction of institutions, they chose to enshrine the principle that power must be limited, accountable, and subject to law. This context matters. Zimbabwe had become an international pariah, isolated, economically devastated, and diplomatically ostracised, in no small part because of a chronic, demonstrated inability to respect its own laws. Mnangagwa himself came to power on the back of a coup that removed Mugabe. His government has since staked its entire claim to international re-engagement on the promise of constitutional legitimacy and rule of law. The 2013 Constitution was Zimbabwe’s signal, to itself and to the world that it was choosing a different path. The two-term presidential limit was among the most symbolically charged provisions in that document. It was a direct repudiation of the Mugabe ‘error’, of one man bending and breaking constitutional frameworks across nearly four decades to remain in power. Even Mugabe himself ensured that the new term limits would not apply retroactively to him. He understood, as everyone understood, that a line was being drawn: no sitting leader would ever again use the constitution as a vehicle for personal entrenchment. Amendment Bill No. 3 crosses that line.
Whatever its imperfections, the 2013 Constitution was a covenant, ratified with the people’s vote. It was the price Zimbabwe paid for the hope of re-entering the community of nations. To now treat it only as a bureaucratic obstacle that can be engineered around by the same political class that negotiated it is not reform. It is a repudiation of the one democratic act that gave the document its legitimacy in the first place.
You cannot take a people through a costly, contested, and at times deadly constitutional process, invoke that constitution to present Zimbabwe to the world as a country committed to the rule of law and then, the moment its provisions become inconvenient to those in power, dismantle it from the inside. That is not governance. That is betrayal. And it is illegal.
Responding to the Argument That Other Countries Have No Term Limits
Proponents of the ED2030 agenda have sought to normalise Zimbabwe’s course by pointing to other countries, including several in Africa, that operate without presidential term limits. This argument deserves a direct, factual response.
The Living Together Institute addresses it in full:
- First: The comparison is irrelevant to Zimbabwe’s specific constitutional obligations.
Zimbabwe’s constitution is not the constitution of Uganda, Cameroon, or Togo. Zimbabwe’s people voted in 2013 for a specific constitutional framework with specific protections, including two-term 5-year limits . The question is not what other countries do, the question is what Zimbabwe’s own supreme law requires. Zimbabweans do not live under Uganda’s constitution. They live under their own, and it is their own that must be respected.
- Second: The countries most often cited as examples are precisely the cautionary tales Zimbabwe should be avoiding.
The African countries most prominently cited as those without presidential term limits include Uganda, Cameroon, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad. These are not models of democratic governance. Research by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies shows that countries which have circumvented or removed term limits have a median time in presidential office of 19 years. All eight African countries currently experiencing civil conflict are among those without effective term limits. Of the ten countries that are the largest sources of Africa’s 32 million refugees and internally displaced persons, seven lack term limits. The correlation between term-limit erosion and corruption is measurable, countries that have modified or eliminated term limits rank a median 46 places lower on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index than those that have upheld them. Furthermore, five of the eight African countries that experienced coups since 2015 had term-limit-evading leaders. The argument that ‘other countries don’t have term limits’ is, in practice, an argument to become more like Chad, not less.
- Third: The trend across Africa is toward more term limits, not fewer.
Since 2000, a significant number of African countries have actually introduced or strengthened presidential term limits including Burkina Faso, Niger, Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Rwanda. The direction of democratic progress on the continent is toward constraint of executive power, not entrenchment of it. Those countries that have moved in the opposite direction Burundi, the Central African Republic, Togo have done so through processes widely condemned as constitutional coups and have paid the price in instability, international isolation, and the erosion of the very development gains their leaders claimed to be protecting.
- Fourth: The overwhelming majority of Africans , including Zimbabweans, want term limits.
Afrobarometer surveys across 34 African countries consistently show that more than three-quarters of African citizens support presidential term limits. In Zimbabwe specifically, 80 percent of citizens favour these limits. The notion that extending Mnangagwa’s term reflects popular will is contradicted by every credible measure of public opinion and is further exposed by the fact that the government has resorted to baton-wielding masked assailants to silence those who would express that opinion publicly.
- Fifth: Zimbabwe’s own constitutional history demands a higher standard.
Under Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s original 1980 Constitution was amended seventeen times. None of those amendments went through a referendum. The cumulative effect was the progressive entrenchment of one man’s power for nearly four decades, the collapse and capture of democratic institutions, economic catastrophe and a normalization of violating the rules and processes required by the Constitution. The 2013 Constitution was Zimbabwe’s collective response to that history, a deliberate, democratic determination that the country would never again allow a leader to manipulate the supreme law for personal benefit. To now repeat precisely what Mugabe did, amending the Constitution to extend an incumbent’s hold on power, is not development. It is a betrayal of history. Zimbabwe’s constitutional trajectory, and the suffering that produced the 2013 Constitution, demand a higher standard.
- Sixth: Seven-year terms are not a democratic benchmark.
Of the 195 sovereign states in the world, only thirteen currently operate with seven-year presidential terms. These include the Central African Republic, Azerbaijan, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon, states widely characterised by authoritarian governance, chronic instability, and suppression of civic freedoms. The notion that Zimbabwe should join this small group as a model of development and continuity is, at best, a misreading of global democratic norms, at worst, it is a deliberate deception.
Our Demands
On the basis of Zimbabwe’s constitutional law, its democratic history, and its obligations to its own people and to the international community, the Living Together Institute calls upon:
- The Government of Zimbabwe to immediately abandon the Amendment Bill No. 3 and to honour the two-term limit as enshrined in Sections 91 and 95 of the 2013 Constitution
- The Parliament of Zimbabwe to refuse to pass any bill that violates Section 328(7) by allowing an incumbent to benefit from a term extension and to ensure the 90-day public consultation process is conducted without any intimidation, violence, or suppression of dissent
- Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court to uphold the plain meaning of Sections 117, 328(7), and 328(8), and to rule that any amendment purporting to extend the incumbent’s term without a referendum is unconstitutional on its face
- SADC Heads of State to formally invoke the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections and to engage Zimbabwe directly on its constitutional obligations under the Treaty of the Southern African Development Community
- The African Union’s Peace and Security Council to address Zimbabwe’s constitutional manipulation under the framework of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG), which expressly prohibits unconstitutional changes of government and the use of constitutional amendments to prolong incumbency
- International creditors and development partners, including the African Development Bank leading Zimbabwe’s debt restructuring negotiations, to make clear that democratic backsliding, including constitutional manipulation, has consequences for Zimbabwe’s re-engagement with the international financial community
- All Zimbabwean civil society organisations, legal professionals, faith communities, media houses, and citizens across the country and in the diaspora to engage the public consultation process in full force, to submit written and oral submissions, and to hold the line on what the 2013 Constitution means and what they voted for.
The 2013 Constitution is not a relic. It is a living compact between the Zimbabwean state and the Zimbabwean people. It was written in the knowledge that power corrupts and that constitutions must therefore be capable of constraining those who hold power, including those who drafted the very provisions they now seek to dismantle. The framers of Section 328(7) anticipated this moment. They built the firewall. The question now is whether Zimbabwe’s institutions, its courts, its parliament, its civil society, its neighbours, and the international community, will allow that firewall to be demolished from the inside.
The Living Together Institute stands with the people of Zimbabwe and with the constitution they chose.
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