Sneak peek into 2026: Five likely scenarios that could shape Zimbabwe

Political analysis is not fortune-telling. Analysts are not seers gazing into crystal balls; we work more like cartographers, drawing maps from traces of the past and the present to help societies anticipate what lies beyond the next bend.

With meticulous reading of political events in 2025, regional signals, and longer-term structural patterns, it becomes possible to model what the coming year may resemble.

My approach is neither prescriptive nor conclusive. It is a disciplined imagination, an attempt to illuminate the likely contours of Zimbabwe’s political, economic, social, and international trajectories.

I write this as both a public intellectual and an activist, mindful that my analysis is fallible and open to challenge, yet confident that it contributes meaningfully to public debate.

We inhabit dynamic, uncertain, and complex time, conditions that make long-term planning feel like building a hut on shifting sands. Still, modeling is essential. My “scenario modeling technique” draws from four core elements.

Firstly, a political economy analysis of long-standing political institutions, class relations, economic arrangements, and geopolitics. Secondly, recent trends, the events and decisions made in 2024–2025 that shape momentum into 2026.

Thirdly, critical uncertainties such as succession politics, global conflicts, climate impacts, and shifting donor interests.

Finally, actor behaviour patterns, how Zimbabwe’s political elites, state institutions, civil society, and external actors have historically responded to crises or opportunities.

Applying this thought process, five scenarios emerge from intersections of these elements, and I present them as projections of what 2026 will look like.

1. Continued Political Morbidity and the Deepening of Authoritarian Consolidation

Zimbabwe’s political landscape is likely to remain toxic, polarised, and suffocating, like a room where the air grows heavier but no one is allowed to open the windows. ZANU-PF will remain the dominant force, yet its internal contradictions will intensify.

Mnangagwa’s succession crisis will escalate in 2026. Early, informal manoeuvres to amend the Constitution to extend his tenure to 2030 will likely gather steam in the first quarter of the year.

As before, Mnangagwa will maintain public deniability—playing the role of a reluctant monarch while tacitly nudging allies to “explore options.”

A new wrinkle may emerge with retired army general Philip Valerio Sibanda entering the party’s upper echelons, potentially recalibrating the succession chessboard.

I must hasten to say this development is informed by emerging rumours and past political behaviour, but remains speculative. Yet even the speculative cannot be ruled out in our ever changing and fluid reality.

Chiwenga’s faction will likely appear publicly weakened and more isolated, yet may quietly reorganise behind the scenes—fortifying networks in the security establishment, the war veterans’ constituencies, and parts of the judiciary and diplomatic community.

At the moment it faces an existential question, one whose answer maybe determine the course of not just ZANU PF party politics but indeed the national question.

The opposition space will continue to resemble a graveyard of broken hope.

We are likely to be flooded with endless rumours of Chamisa’s return, recycled conspiracies about a new party, factions cannibalising each other in parliament, and opportunistic MPs and councillors feeding from the state’s trough.

There is unlikely to be any coherent opposition renewal beyond symbolic gestures and social media theatre.

Civil society organisations will remain in limbo—trapped between shrinking donor support, state hostility, and survival needs.

Many will gravitate towards soft reform work, partnering with government ministries on harmless programmes to stay afloat. The more confrontational, rights-based advocacy will be subdued.

The foregoing shows that barring an unforeseen “hand of God” rupture—mass protests, elite fallout, or sudden regional pressure, death—2026 will be a more intense extension of 2025’s authoritarian drift.

2. A Sluggish, Extractive Economy for a Connected Elite

On paper, the economy is “growing.” The Ministry of Finance claims Zimbabwe has become a US$56 billion economy, a figure contested by economists but politically useful. What is clear, however, is that this growth resembles a tree with only a few branches bearing fruit.

Mthuli Ncube’s famed economic expansion is driven by the gold sector, much of it opaque and illicit, and government tenders benefiting politically connected cartels. These tenders have had the effect of increasing borrowing to finance elite enrichment.

For a handful of elites, this has produced obscene wealth. Wicknell Chivayo, Kuda Tagwirei, and their networks parade their riches with the confidence of men who know the system serves them.

They build palaces in Harare’s leafy suburbs, buy fleets of luxury cars, and boast about political access as if flaunting a badge of honour. The reality, however, is that this model does not create broad-based welfare. It enriches a few while deepening poverty for the majority.

In 2026, Zimbabwe’s economic trajectory will likely be moderate GDP growth driven by gold and tobacco, high inequality, continued currency instability, and worsening unemployment.

It will be an economy where the fruits of growth are eaten by cronies while the rest survive on scraps.

3. A Troubled, Traumatized, and Soulless Society

Zimbabwean society is fraying. Poverty has numbed empathy, and like a body losing sensation in its limbs, we are becoming dangerously desensitised to suffering.

Economic desperation is fuelling violent robberies, gender-based violence (especially intimate partner violence), and petty crime. Current trends will persist and most likely intensify in 2026.

Maternal and child mortality is rising while preventable deaths—malaria, diarrhoea, TB—are becoming common. HIV services remain underfunded as global mechanisms shrink support. Communities increasingly speak of “slow violence” or a soft genocide of the poor.

Education is also not being spared, as the government has by its own admission “used up money meant for the poorest under the Basic Education Assistance Module.” Ironically, the money was used to build villas for the 2024 SADC summit.

Public trust is at an all-time low. Individualism is replacing solidarity. Social decay is evident in predatory religious movements, the rising mental health crisis, hopelessness among youth, and escapism through substance abuse.

Zimbabwe is becoming a society surviving on fumes, and this will only get worse in 2026.

4. A Precarious and Increasingly Vulnerable Diaspora

Zimbabwe’s diaspora is the country’s lifeline, keeping households alive through remittances, over US$1.5 billion in 2025. Yet abroad, they face tightening hostility.

Across the world—South Africa, the UK, the US, and parts of the EU—anti-immigrant sentiment is rising. Right-wing politics is mainstreaming xenophobia.

Zimbabweans face mass deportation threats, workplace exploitation, racist violence, and policy exclusion. This leaves diasporans in a cruel paradox: returning home is unsafe and economically hopeless, while staying abroad exposes them to racism, surveillance, and precarity.

This dilemma will intensify in 2026, increasing the diaspora’s vulnerability even as families back home rely more heavily on their remittances.

5. Vulnerabilities From Global Crises and Geopolitical Realignments

Zimbabwe is not insulated from global shocks. Wars, pandemics, climate disasters, and geopolitical shifts will continue to hit the country disproportionately.

As conflicts persist in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, traditional donors will prioritise domestic concerns. Rising nationalism in Western capitals will also constrict aid flows. Zimbabwe will find it harder to access debt relief or concessional financing.

Zimbabwe’s international isolation will deepen, making it more dependent on China. The country will increasingly resemble a resource frontier—a site of extraction rather than development. The Chinese will continue to extract and exploit local resources and labour.

With external solidarity shrinking, local civil society and social movements will have to intensify domestic organising and build new forms of resistance, mutual aid, and community resilience.

What emerges from this projection of 2026 is a likely intensification of the current problems: more authoritarianism, more inequality, more social distress, deeper diaspora vulnerability, and increased exposure to global shocks.

Yet within every crisis lies the seed of opportunity. Authoritarian consolidation produces its own contradictions. Economic injustice breeds dissent. Social collapse forces communities to rebuild. Global isolation pushes domestic innovation.

These scenarios are not destiny; they are warnings and invitations to think differently.

Their purpose is to help citizens, policymakers, civil society, and international partners anticipate what lies ahead and prepare interventions that shift the trajectory, in the understanding that change—even in the darkest period—is possible.

The future is contested terrain. What Zimbabwe becomes in 2026 will depend not only on the actions of the powerful, but also on the courage, creativity, and resilience of ordinary people. Thank you all for your feedback see you again in 2026!!

Pride Mkono is a political analyst and writes here in his own capacity. He can be contacted at [email protected].