Rejoice Ngwenya is not merely a commentator on Zimbabwe’s constitutional debates; he is a seasoned economist, political analyst, and policy thinker whose liberal democratic convictions have been forged through decades of engagement with governance processes across Africa.
As rapporteur and convenor in Zimbabwe’s 1998 and 2009 constitution-making exercises, and later as a governance consultant for the GNU, Ngwenya has witnessed first-hand the promises and betrayals of constitutionalism in our polity.
His voice matters because it is anchored in comparative experience, liberal clarity, and an unflinching commitment to democratic accountability.
In his analysis of Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3, Ngwenya delivers a masterclass in exposing the hollow pretences of ZANU-PF’s constitutional engineering.
He reminds us that constitutions are not ornamental texts to be bent at the whim of incumbents; instead, they are covenants between the people and the state, yet ZANU-PF’s latest manoeuvre is nothing less than a mutilation of that covenant, a calculated regression masquerading as reform.
Ngwenya’s arguments cut through the propaganda and the empty claim that these amendments “strengthen democratic structures” is mere political banter.
For three decades, Zimbabweans have demanded genuine political reforms, independent media, impartial courts, and freedom of assembly. None of these demands requires constitutional amendments, only political will, yet they have been ignored consistently.
Instead, ZANU PF seeks to extend presidential terms, strip the judiciary of independence, and hand electoral rolls to partisan appointees. This is not reform, it is regression.
Ngwenya’s comparative lens is devastating in its precision. South Africa, the example ZANU PF flaunts recklessly, anchors its parliamentary election of the president in the bedrock of free and fair elections, genuinely independent institutions, and transparent, accessible voters’ rolls.
Zimbabwe, by contrast, has offered none of these safeguards for at least three decades. To invoke South Africa’s model while denying Zimbabweans the very conditions that make it legitimate is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order.
What ZANU PF proposes is not constitutional reform but constitutional mimicry, a hollow transplantation of form without substance. It is fraud masquerading as progress, a cynical attempt to cloak authoritarian consolidation in the language of comparative governance.
Ngwenya exposes this charade for what it is: the deliberate entrenchment of power under the guise of constitutionalism, a betrayal of the people’s covenant dressed up as democratic innovation.
The Futility of ZANU PF’s Constitutional Project
Ngwenya poses the piercing question that shatters ZANU PF’s pretences: what, in truth, will two additional years of presidential tenure achieve?
Zimbabwe remains a nation importing its own survival, food, cars, and basic commodities, while public transport lies in ruins, health systems collapse, and millions of citizens flee in search of dignity elsewhere and rightfully points out that to imagine that an elongated term could resolve these structural crises is not only delusional, but it is also deceitful.
The extension is not about governance but about entrenching privilege and perpetuating looting under the veneer of constitutionalism.
More damning still is Ngwenya’s reminder that fear of a referendum is fear of the people themselves. ZANU PF’s refusal to submit these amendments to a plebiscite is not a technical omission but a brazen act of contempt.
It is a repudiation of the very sovereignty the constitution enshrines, a calculated insult to the citizens whose voice should be the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy.
In this refusal, the regime reveals its deepest insecurity that cannot withstand the judgment of the people, and so it mutilates the covenant to silence them.
Ngwenya is unsparing in his indictment of the opposition’s silence. In the wake of Tshabangu’s orchestrated recalls, the opposition benches stand hollow, stripped of legitimacy, incapable of defending the people’s covenant. This muteness is not neutral; it is complicity.
It is the abdication of duty at the very moment when vigilance is most required. In the vacuum left by their silence, authoritarianism does not merely survive; it thrives, metastasising into every crevice of the political order.
Ngwenya’s critique reminds us that when opposition voices retreat, tyranny advances unchallenged, and the constitution itself becomes hostage to the ambitions of one party.
Gen Z as Attitude, Not Age
Ngwenya’s liberal clarity converges with my own conviction that the locus of hope lies in Generation Z, not as a mere demographic category, but as a radical attitude. It is an ethos defined by an uncompromising insistence on transparency, accountability, and the refusal to normalise authoritarian mediocrity.
Gen Z embodies a politics of defiance, a generational consciousness that refuses to inherit silence as tradition. Across Africa, this spirit has already become the pulse of resistance, from Nigeria’s #EndSARS movement to Sudan’s street uprisings, where young people have redefined citizenship as active vigilance rather than passive endurance.
In Zimbabwe, this attitude must crystallise into a civic force that refuses to sanctify betrayal as inevitability. It must be the generation that dismantles the myth of permanence surrounding liberation parties, the generation that insists that constitutions are covenants, not conveniences.
Gen Z, as Ngwenya’s critique implicitly affirms, is not bound by age but by audacity, the audacity to imagine a Zimbabwe beyond survival scripts, beyond the suffocating binaries of loyalty and fear, beyond the authoritarian normalcy that ZANU PF seeks to entrench.
It is this attitude, not the hollow promises of extended presidential terms, that carries the possibility of national renewal.
Zimbabwe’s Future: Beyond Survival Scripts
As I have consistently argued in my previous writings, The Autocrats’ Playbook, Can Africa Tame Its Strongman Problem?, and The 2030 Agenda: ZANU PF’s Survival Script, Not Zimbabwe’s Future, constitutional manipulation is the quintessential tactic of African autocrats.
It is not a project of progress but a strategy of survival, a cynical recalibration of law to shield incumbents from accountability and to perpetuate their grip on power.
In Zimbabwe, this pathology is laid bare: the constitution is treated not as the people’s covenant but as the ruling party’s instrument of convenience.
The future of Zimbabwe cannot be tethered to ZANU PF’s survival script, a script that extends terms, erodes judicial independence, and mutilates electoral credibility. To acquiesce is to normalise betrayal.
The task before citizens is to reclaim the constitution as non-negotiable, to insist that sovereignty resides not in the whims of Parliament but in the will of the people. This reclamation is not optional; it is the very condition for national renewal.
The Constitution as Covenant, Not Convenience
Rejoice Ngwenya concludes with a clarity that pierces through the fog of propaganda: “Fear of referendum is akin to fear of the people. In November 2017, President Mnangagwa said, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’
He should prove his statesmanship by listening to what the referendum voice of five million Zimbabweans says. If this Bill is passed without a referendum, Zimbabwe’s parliamentary credibility will be permanently damaged.”
This is not merely a warning; it is an indictment. ZANU PF’s amendments are not reforms but betrayals, cynical manoeuvres designed to extend incumbency and hollow out the democratic promise of 2013.
The silence of the opposition is complicity, a retreat that leaves the constitution hostage to authoritarian ambition.
The hope lies in Generation Z, not as an age cohort but as an attitude. It is the audacity to imagine a Zimbabwe beyond authoritarian normalcy, the insistence that sovereignty belongs to the people, and the refusal to sanctify silence. Gen Z must embody the civic defiance that dismantles the myth of permanence surrounding liberation parties and demands accountability as the cornerstone of renewal.
The constitution is the people’s covenant. It is not ZANU PF’s property, nor Parliament’s convenience. It is the supreme law, and it must be defended, relentlessly, uncompromisingly, now.
Wellington Muzengeza is an Independent Journalist, Political Risk Analyst and Urban Strategist offering incisive insight on urban planning, infrastructure, leadership succession, and governance reform across Africa’s evolving post-liberation and urban landscapes.
