Tendai Ruben Mbofana
To listen to Home Affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe speak at a political gathering in Mashonaland Central is to enter an alternate reality where political theater is masqueraded as high constitutional jurisprudence.
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According to Kazembe, the ruling ZANU-PF party was prepared to drag President Emmerson Mnangagwa to court had he hesitated to assent to Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3 (CAB3).
In this narrative, the President’s decision to sign the legislation into law was not an act of executive convenience or party strategy, but a supreme demonstration of his status as a “true constitutionalist” who selflessly bowed to the legal obligations imposed by Parliament.
It is a grand claim, but one that collapses under the slightest intellectual scrutiny.
The assertion that ZANU-PF—a party historically defined by centralized executive authority and strict internal discipline—would haul its own sitting Head of State into a court of law over a legislative signature is politically absurd.
It presents a sanitized, almost romanticized picture of intra-party democracy and constitutional checks that bears no resemblance to the reality of Zimbabwean politics.
Surely, who within ZANU-PF would have dared to take President Mnangagwa to court and lived to tell the tale?
Surely, who within ZANU-PF would have dared take President Mnangagwa to court and politically survive to see another day?
More fundamentally, however, Kazembe’s statements betray a profound and dangerous distortion of what constitutionalism actually means.
Constitutionalism is not merely the procedural act of adhering to formal mechanisms when passing laws, nor is it defined by an executive rubber-stamping bills crafted by a parliamentary majority.
Genuine constitutionalism is a philosophy rooted in the limitation of power, the protection of fundamental human rights, the independence of the judiciary, and the preservation of democratic norms.
It exists precisely to protect the public from executive overreach and the tyranny of a transient majority, not to provide cover for the systematic alteration of the supreme law to suit the political imperatives of the day.
The argument that President Emmerson Mnangagwa was trapped in a legal straightjacket completely ignores the explicit exit ramps provided by the supreme law itself.
Under Section 131(6)(b) of the Constitution, the President possesses the unambiguous authority to withhold assent or veto and refer any bill back to Parliament if he harbors reservations regarding its constitutionality or content.
If the President genuinely disdained political self-service or sought to defend the spirit of the supreme law, he was never powerless.
He could have returned the bill to the legislature, demanding that provisions altering governing terms be stripped away or brought into line with fundamental legal principles.
Furthermore, Kazembe’s narrative deliberately bypasses the core democratic barrier of Section 328, which dictates that any amendment extending an incumbent’s tenure cannot benefit the sitting President unless subjected to a direct national referendum.
By signing a bill that bypasses the electorate entirely, the President did not uphold the Constitution; he actively oversaw its evasion.
To praise a leader as a constitutionalist simply because he signed an amendment passed by his own party’s majority in Parliament is to reduce the Constitution from a sacred social contract to a malleable legislative notepad.
When a ruling party and a compromised opposition uses its dominant parliamentary position to reshape the foundational rules of governance, and the executive promptly signs those changes into law, hailing this sequence as an act of constitutional virtue turns logic on its head.
Compliance with procedural machinery is not synonymous with fidelity to democratic principles, particularly when that machinery is deployed to entrench institutional power.
Kazembe’s declaration that “the country spoke” through Parliament further conflates partisan interest with the genuine, collective will of the nation, while actively ignoring how the public consultation process was systematically undermined.
A Constitution belongs to all citizens across political divides and generations, yet the nationwide hearings on CAB3 were characterized by restriction, state-sponsored coercion, and violent disruptions aimed at suppressing opposing voices.
More crucially, claiming “the country spoke” through a whipped and bribed parliamentary majority completely sidesteps the constitutional imperative of a national referendum under Section 328—the only lawful avenue through which the entire electorate can give or withhold its consent on executive term extensions.
By framing this deeply compromised process as an irresistible popular mandate that forced the President’s hand, Kazembe attempts to insulate executive decision-making from legitimate critique, cleverly transforming a deliberate bypass of the sovereign electorate into an inevitable legal duty.
Furthermore, the threat of taking the President to court functions as a performative spectacle designed to project an illusion of institutional friction where none exists.
It attempts to convince the public that the executive is strictly bound by an unyielding legal framework, even as that framework is continuously re-engineered to suit the ruling elite.
True respect for the Constitution is demonstrated when leaders defend its core spirit—protecting term limits, safeguarding the separation of powers, and honoring democratic accountability—even when doing so runs counter to immediate political expediency.
Zimbabweans deserve a national discourse grounded in constitutional reality rather than political myth-making.
Re-branding executive compliance with party-driven legal amendments as high-minded constitutionalism does a profound disservice to the nation’s democratic aspirations.
As long as constitutionalism is invoked only to justify the expansion or consolidation of authority, assertions like Kazembe’s will remain transparent exercises in propaganda.
True constitutionalism is not proven by signing away the spirit of the supreme law under the guise of procedural duty.
It is proven by having the courage to protect it.
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