When a President takes his oath of office, he swears to uphold the Constitution, itself a sacred document that lays out how a nation should be governed. The current Zimbabwe Constitution was made and overwhelmingly affirmed by the people of Zimbabwe in a referendum in May 2013.
And yet since his violent entry to the saddle of power through a putsch in November 2017, Emmerson Mnangagwa has been a serial Constitutional delinquent.
As he launches yet another vicious attack on the supreme law of the land by seeking to extend his term, it is common cause that the only problem with our Constitution since 2013 has been flagrant violations as well as non-compliance and non-implementation of the governance cardinals which the people expressly stated and affirmed in a referendum.
That is why for some of us, it is trite and a waste of public resources to call for a Presidential term extension and to prepare for a referendum to go back to the same people to ask them about a matter on which they unequivocally pronounced themselves 12 years ago that a President must have a maximum of 10 years in office.
Dear reader, notwithstanding the inadequacies around the Constitution-making process, the fact remains that Zimbabweans were consulted and an overwhelming 93 percent, through a referendum, affirmed the current Constitution, including the issue of Presidential term limits.
Why self-servingly lie today that it’s the same people who have demanded the Presidential term extension?
Why seek to expensively go back to the same people on a matter they so loudly pronounced themselves in May 2013, just 12 years ago, that they want a maximum of two five-year terms for the President?
In any case, having become President after the 2017 coup before the commencement of his first term in 2018, Mnangagwa by 2028 would already have served more than the permitted 10 years!
But then ED has no respect for the Constitution that he swore to uphold. He is given to Constitutional truancy and this week I will be demonstrating this through practical examples.
Dear reader, as ED and his political acolytes and tenderpreneurs exhort the nation to support him in his quest to rule beyond his constitutionally prescribed 10-year term, I take a brief peek into some of his various Constitutional breaches ever since he came into office in November 2017.
Mnangagwa simply has no regard for the Constitution, notwithstanding his spurious claims to be a lawyer and a constitutionalist.
This week, I briefly take you through just 10 from his litany of Constitutional breaches since November 2017.
1. The coup
The first Constitutional breach was the coup itself that initially foisted him to power in 2017.
Though the High Court, through Justice Chiweshe, a retired soldier himself, ruled on 24 November 2017 that the military take-over was Constitutional, it is common cause that what happened then was a coup and therefore unconstitutional, despite the massive public support.
Respected civil-military relations expert Professor Blessing Miles Tendi (2020) has convincingly argued that what happened in Zimbabwe in November 2017 ticked all the boxes of what constitutes a coup.
Notably, Miles-Tendi states that the Constitution reposes only in the Commander-In-Chief of the Defence Forces, , in that case Robert Mugabe, with the sole powers to deploy soldiers for operations both nationally and internationally.
It is obvious that Mugabe did not sanction the military deployment for Operation Restore Legacy, the massive military operation that eventually ousted him from power in November 2017.
The Mnangagwa Presidency therefore was birthed and incubated through a brazen Constitutional breach simply because Operation Restore Legacy had no blessings from the Commander-In-Chief as per the dictates of the Constitution. .
2. Cabinet appointments that violated the Constitution
Both after the coup in 2017 and in 2018 at the commencement of his first term, Mnangagwa twice appointed more non-elected MPs into Cabinet than he is constitutionally allowed to do.
Though he quickly withdrew the appointments in both cases, he had already breached the Constitution through his initial acts.
In November 2017, when he came into power after the coup, he was forced to unappoint Chris Mutsvangwa as Information Minister after realising he had appointed more than the allotted five Cabinet Ministers from outside Parliament.
In 2018, Mnangagwa again broke the law when he appointed six instead of five Cabinet ministers from outside Parliament.
ED later dropped Cain Mathema who he had named Home Affairs Minister after belatedly noting that he had surpassed the Constitutional threshold of Ministers from outside Parliament.
The purported lawyer had yet again acted in breach of the Constitution.
3. The unconstitutional extension of Malaba’s term
In early 2021, there was legitimate national and international brouhaha when Mnangagwa unconstitutionally extended Chief Justice Luke Malaba’s term when in fact the judge had reached retirement age.
In May 2021, High Court Judges Happias Zhou, Jester Charehwa and Edith Mushore ruled that the extension of Malaba’s term was unconstitutional.
But strangely, in September 2021, a Constitutional bench comprising judges who were interested parties as they had been cited in the same matter, quashed the High Court ruling and okayed Mnangagwa’s blatantly unconstitutional extension of my name-sake’s term as Chief Justice.
4. Aping Independent Commissions
Chapter 12 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe lists five Commissions whose remit is to help support democracy. These Constitutional Commissions are supposed to operate independently, outside the control of the three arms of government.
The Commissions so listed are the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission, the Gender Commission, the Zimbabwe Media Commission and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.
Chapter13 of the same Constitution mentions the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission that is mainly charged with investigating and exposing corruption in the private and public sectors.
Strangely, Mnangagwa has actively undermined the independent Commissions by creating other nefarious creatures of similar scope that have usurped the powers of these sacred bodies.
For example, Thabani Vusa Mpofu, a former workmate of mine in the then Prime Minister’s Office who is the lead prosecutor of the Commission currently investigating Harare City Council, heads a special anti-corruption unit in Mnangagwa’s Office.
There is no justification why ED would seek to undermine the work of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission by creating a special unit in his office to duplicate the work of a Constitutional Commission.
On elections, ED has not only compromised the independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission as exposed by ZEC-gate. He has also created Forever Associates of Zimbabwe (FAZ) as a parallel body also running Zimbabwe’s elections, albeit illegally and unconstitutionally as it did in the 2023 plebiscite and as noted by all credible observer missions.
Undermining independent Commissions represents a serious Constitutional breach and Mnangagwa stands mightily guilty of that aberration as well.
5. No separation of powers
The notion of separation of powers is sacred and sits at the very heart of constitutional democracy.
Parliament, the judiciary and the Executive are supposed to be three separate arms of government. But their autonomy has been systematically compromised by Mnangagwa.
ED’s unconstitutional extension of Malaba’s term as Chief Justice means that the Judiciary is now at ED’s beck and call and is no longer acting independently.
On the other hand, Jacob Mudenda, his long-time ally and Speaker of Parliament, is the one who was used to connive with Sengezo Tshabangu to give Zanu PF an undeserved two thirds majority.
Dear reader, take note that in 2004 during the ill-fated Tsholotsho declaration, Mudenda was the host-chairperson in his capacity as the Zanu PF chair for Matabeleland North province which was the venue of the ill-fated meeting.
Out of the 10 Zanu PF provincial chairpersons at the doomed meeting, Mudenda was part of the seven pro-Mnangagwa chairpersons and it remains significant that he played host to this seismic event that was deemed a coup within Zanu PF.
So Mudenda is not his own man. He is a Mnangagwa lackey and a long-time factional ally.
It is therefore no coincidence that he is heading Parliament today obviously with the specific mission to safeguard and steer Mnangagwa’s personal political interests in that critical arm of government, which political interests now include the extension of the Presidential term.
As heads of the executive, the judiciary and Parliament respectively, ED, Malaba and Mudenda, over coffee or whiskey, can easily decide how the nefarious ED 2030 agenda will pan out both at Parliament and at the courts as well, should this heinous agenda be legally challenged.
And just as the compromised Malaba and Mudenda played significant roles during the recalls that donated an undeserved two-thirds majority in the House to Zanu PF—and with the notion of separation of powers now deliberately and effectively quashed—the 2030 agenda could very well be on course, unless of course Zimbabweans boldly stand up to defend the Constitution, as they should!
In pushing through the 2030 agenda, ED has at his disposal the now compromised heads of the Judiciary and Parliament, thereby undermining the sacred notion of separation of powers.
And undermining the principle of separation of powers, as ED has brazenly done, is unto itself a reckless and grievous breach of the supreme law of the land!
6. Capturing ZEC. (The ZEC-gate scandal)
ED’s brazen capture and usurpation of the powers of ZEC deserves separate mention because it sits at the very heart of disputed elections and the legitimacy crisis that have dogged Zimbabwe since 2000.
Chivayo’s leaked audios and the ZEC-gate scandal showed that Mnangagwa’s Office, through his Chief Secretary, usurped ZEC’s powers when it took upon itself to select the controversial South African company that supplied the election material for the August 2023 election, notwithstanding the fact that Mnangagwa himself was a candidate in the same election.
His own daughter, Chido, also received payments from the illicit proceeds from the US$40 million ZEC scandal.
The point is Mnangagwa’s meddling with elections, directly and vicariously through the involvement of his office and daughter, is patently unconstitutional as it is only ZEC that is constitutionally mandated with dealing with all election matters in the country.
7. The unconstitutional land tenure system
Mnangagwa’s new land tenure plan being fronted by his lackey Kuda Tagwireyi is patently unconstitutional.
As Advocate Fadzayi Mahere has publicly noted, the government cannot issue title deeds for farms that were seized and redistributed during the land reform programme without first amending the constitution, as doing so would be unlawful.
Mahere argued that at present, no law empowers the State to issue title deeds for agricultural land. She said at law, there are only three methods by which one can hold, use or occupy state land. These are by way of an offer letter, a permit or a lease.
There is no law that empowers the State to give out title deeds for agricultural land and the Gazetted Land (Consequential Provisions) Act says this expressly.
Ownership in state land vests in the State by operation of law in terms of section 72(4) of the Constitution.
In short, Mahere argued, it would be unconstitutional to alienate the land in the manner suggested without first repealing section 72 of the Constitution in its entirety and effectively reversing everything that was being done under the Land Reform Program.
Mnangagwa’s new land tenure system is simply unconstitutional.
8. Appointing a serving military commander into the Politburo
In October 2023, Mnangagwa appointed the country’s army general, his cousin Phillip Valerio Sibanda, into the Zanu PF Politburo in violation of the Constitution, which proscribes serving military personnel from being partisan and from playing active politics.
ED only rescinded this blatantly unconstitutional appointment the following month in November 2023 following massive pressure from opposition leaders, lawyers and civil society activists.
But the damage had already been done. The constitutional delinquent had yet again been up to his usual mischief.
9. Failure to appoint a State Security Minister
In yet another serious breach of the Constitution, ED had not for years appointed a Minister for State Security since the dismissal of Owen Muda Ncube.
Mnangagwa only appointed Lovemore Matuke as State Security Minister after Hatcliffe MP Agency Gumbo told Parliament that by keeping the position vacant, Mnangagwa was in breach of section 225 of the Constitution which places an obligation on him as President to appoint a Minister in charge of the country’s intelligence service.
10. Disrespecting the Constitutional principle of Devolution
Central government has sought to unconstitutionally undermine the role of elected mayors and councillors, in violation of the principle of devolution that is steeped in the country’s Constitution.
Mnangagwa, just like his predecessor, has even appointed Ministers of Provincial Affairs to run the provincial affairs even in provinces where Zanu PF has been utterly rejected by the voters.
Chapter 14 of the national Constitution explicitly states that there must be devolution of governmental powers and responsibilities to provincial, metropolitan councils and local authorities.
As we speak, the provincial and metropolitan councils are not even in place, 12 years after the Constitution was affirmed in a referendum.
The Constitution is clear that only elected representatives must manage affairs at local government level.
The government has however paid lip-service to the devolution principle, with central government arrogating upon itself all authority and usurping the powers of the elected representatives of the people in the lower tiers.
Section 274 of the Constitution specifically states that only elected urban local authorities must manage the affairs of the people and that only elected councillors must administer the government at local level. But the Pomona skulduggery shows that this is not the case.
Section 276 states that a local authority has the right to govern on its own initiative, the local affairs of the people within the area for which it was established and “has all the powers necessary to do so.”
Mnangagwa has usurped all those powers and conferred them on central government. He has brazenly ignored the Constitutional principle of devolution.
Conclusion
Even with a whole Ministry of Justice and an Attorney-General in place, ED, presumably a lawyer himself, has had a chequered tenure tainted by an unmitigated cocktail of unconstitutionalities, 10 of which have been alluded to in this piece.
As he prepares for yet another assault on the Constitution by seeking to extend his term, the man is obviously prepared to engage in more extra-legal shenanigans to achieve it.
The man just has no respect for the country’s Constitution.
We must all stop him—-by whatever means.
Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is by profession a journalist and a political scientist. You can interact with him via his facebook page or via his X handle @luke_tambo.
