Tendai Ruben Mbofana
Imagine the global bewilderment if French President Emmanuel Macron stood before the citizens of Paris, draped himself in imperial regalia.
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Then declared that France would henceforth abandon its republic to crown him King Louis XVII.
The pretext being that democracy is a foreign import and France must reclaim its lost imperial glory.
The idea is so preposterous that it reads like political satire.
Yet, in modern Zimbabwe, a similarly absurd narrative is being entertained in political circles.
We are witnessing growing calls suggest turning the country into a kingdom and crowning President Emmerson Mnangagwa as the modern-day Munhumutapa.
Resurrecting a sixteenth-century monarchy to govern a twenty-first-century constitutional democracy is not just anachronistic.
It is an insult to the intelligence of the Zimbabwean electorate and a direct assault on democratic progress.
The historic Mutapa Empire was a feudal state that flourished hundreds of years ago before its eventual fragmentation and defeat.
To drag its ancient ghost into contemporary statecraft is an act of historical grandstanding that confuses ancestral heritage with modern governance.
Heritage belongs in museums, cultural festivals, and history books—it does not belong in the executive chamber as a tool to bypass democratic institutions.
What renders these monarchical ambitions even more ludicrous is the complete absence of legitimate lineage.
Monarchy, by its very definition, rests on hereditary legitimacy and unbroken bloodlines.
To abruptly fabricate a royal crown and place it upon the head of a modern politician who possesses zero traceable links to the original bloodline is not traditional restoration.
It is political theater at its most transparent.
It is an attempt to manufacture divine right out of thin air, cloaking partisan political ambition in the sacred garments of tradition.
You cannot simply vote, decree, or lobby a republican president into an imperial monarch without making a mockery of both historical truth and modern law.
Beyond the sheer absurdity of fake royalty lies a far more dangerous implication: the total disenfranchisement of the people.
Democracy elevates men and women to the status of citizens—free individuals endowed with fundamental rights.
This includes the power to elect their leaders, hold them accountable, and vote them out of office when they fail to deliver.
A monarchy reduces those very citizens to mere subjects.
Subjects do not vote; they submit.
Subjects do not demand accountability; they beg for royal clemency.
Converting a republic into a kingdom effectively strips every citizen of their constitutional authority.
It transforms their right to self-determination into a permanent obligation of unquestioning servitude to a crowned ruler.
Moving a nation backward from citizen power to monarchical subjugation is a profound betrayal of the liberation struggle itself, which fought to liberate the people, not to replace colonial masters with native kings.
Besides the historical dishonesty lies the fatal conceit of self-coronation.
History offers a stern warning to those who attempt to manufacture their own crowns: self-appointed imperial authority carries the seeds of its own downfall.
When Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor of France, bypassing established legitimacy to cement absolute personal power, he set in motion a cycle of overreach that ended in ruin and exile.
A leader who attempts to crown himself or resurrect a dead throne to bypass democratic accountability misjudges the populace.
Citizens who have tasted constitutional liberty will not passively accept the yoke of an manufactured monarch.
Attempting to impose a royal mantle on a free electorate is an act of political hubris that guarantees fierce resistance, destabilizes the state, and inevitably leads to a disastrous end for the self-made king.
Zimbabwe faces pressing real-world challenges that require transparent governance, robust institutions, economic reform, and strict adherence to the rule of law.
A nation cannot build a prosperous future while constantly looking back into a feudal past for governance models.
Turning a state into a personal fiefdom under the guise of ancient tradition solves zero economic crises and builds zero infrastructure.
It only serves to insulate power from public scrutiny.
We must reject this political delusion before the absurd is normalized into law.
Zimbabwean citizens were born free.
No political maneuver, fabricated royal title, or courtly flatterer can reduce a sovereign electorate into subservient subjects of an unwarranted king.
The people of Zimbabwe are citizens entitled to democracy, not subjects beholden to a king.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com