A false choice: Should we defend the Constitution, or defend the country?

Dear Reader: A number of Zimbabweans have mastered the art of majoring on minors and minoring on majors.

We can spend days arguing over the wording of a slogan, the punctuation of a position, or the semantics of a statement, while the country burns behind us. Too often, we quarrel over the label while the substance collapses.

Meanwhile, the ruling ZANU PF is pushing to extend President Mnangagwa’s term to 2030, beyond the constitutional mandate, without even a people’s referendum.

We can even tear apart solidarity bonds forged in the struggle over whether someone said “step down” or “resign”, whether it was “dialogue” or “engagement”, whether to call it “capture” or “corruption”.

As I write, in opposition circles, we have found yet another argument to keep ourselves busy:

Should we defend the Constitution, or defend the country?

One camp says, “Defend the Constitution!”

Another responds, “There is no Constitution left to defend — defend the country!”

Dear Reader, my view is simple: this is a false choice. It is one of those debates that makes us feel busy while avoiding the real work. Clever talk can easily become a distraction from serious politics.

Because the truth is straightforward: to defend the country is to defend the Constitution too. You cannot separate the two without collapsing into contradiction.

So let us get basic things right.

What is a country? In the language of politics, from Max Weber onwards, a country is not merely a flag or a people.

An ideal country is a territorial political community (a society organised as a political unit) with a permanent population (citizens and residents who live there), governed by a state (the public institutions that run the affairs of government) that exercises sovereign authority (the ultimate right to rule itself, without external control).

This authority operates through institutions (courts, Parliament, public service, and the rules that guide them) and a constitutional order (the Constitution, laws, and other formal rules and administrative systems) over a defined territory (land, borders and resources), and recognised as such by its people and other states.

So when someone says “defend the country”, it must only mean defending the entire bundle: the people, the territory, sovereignty, institutions, the constitutional order, and the security and survival of the political community.

Notice what sits inside that bundle: the Constitution itself.

It is therefore impractical to defend the country, but not the Constitution.

Now, if we reflect further, those who say “there is no Constitution to defend” are reacting to something real.

Zimbabwe has mastered the craft of keeping a Constitution on paper while violating it in practice. We have lived through selective rule of law, partisan policing, weaponised courts, and elections whose credibility is permanently contested.

So yes: a Constitution can be hollowed out.

But Dear Reader, the correct response to a hollow Constitution is not to abandon constitutional defence. It is to fight to restore constitutional life, to make the written text behave like a living contract again.

That is why citizen defence matters. It is the defence of the nation from below. Citizens organising, insisting, and resisting, in everyday ways, to affirm that sovereignty belongs to the people, not to the powerful.

So instead of wasting time on rhetorical competitions, we should be asking the bigger question: what does defence require of us now — practically, daily, and together?

Reader, Zimbabwe does not suffer from a shortage of political theatre. It suffers from a shortage of sustained, principled civic action.

Let us avoid minoring on majors and majoring on minors, lest we are left with no country to defend.

To defend the country is to defend the Constitution.

And to defend the Constitution is to defend the country.

Anything else is political distraction.

Dr Phillan Zamchiya
26 January 2026.