British historian Lord Acton once plainly stated, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That sincere observation gives a precise diagnosis of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s unraveling presidency in Zimbabwe.

Over the course of 2024 and 2025, I outlined several scenarios regarding the so-called “2030 agenda” and its implications for succession dynamics within both the ruling party and the state.

What once appeared speculative has since hardened into a menacingly dangerous political project. Dangerous for the future of the country and to its very architects.

Since the beginning of the year, events have taken a decisive and alarming turn. The 2030 agenda has become an overt campaign to subvert the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

At the core is the determination to unconstitutional extend Mnangagwa’s presidential term beyond its lawful end in 2028 to 2030, coupled with proposals to fundamentally alter the electoral cycle to seven years.

This is not merely administrative tinkering as proponents claim but a deliberate restructuring of the constitutional order to serve narrow political ends.

I will not belabor the legal arguments. They are, in truth, straightforward. The scale and nature of the proposed changes would, at minimum, require two referendums. What is far more revealing, and far more consequential, is the political logic underpinning this maneuver.

Beneath the procedural theater lies a reckless gamble. An attempt to consolidate personal power at the expense of institutional legitimacy. It is a gamble that may yield short-term control, but one that is almost certain to unravel in the long run.

Mnangagwa may well deploy the full weight of incumbency, leveraging state institutions, coercive apparatuses, and the vast resources of the public purse, to bulldoze through these changes.

His loyalists may choreograph performative “public hearings,” manufacture consent, and engineer parliamentary outcomes dressed up as democratic process. Yet such exercises cannot manufacture legitimacy. They merely expose its absence.

After September 2028, no amount of procedural manipulation or political theater will justify even a single additional day of rule under the guise of constitutional authority.

There is a deeper irony at play, one that borders on political amnesia. Mnangagwa himself ascended to power through a military-assisted transition, a coup, precipitated by Robert Mugabe’s refusal to manage succession and his systematic closure of political pathways within both party and state.

That moment was justified, in part, as a corrective to precisely the kind of political stagnation and elite entrenchment we are now witnessing again.

It is therefore perplexing, if not deeply cynical, that Mnangagwa appears intent on reproducing the very conditions that facilitated Mugabe’s downfall. What a tragedy!

The structural realities he faces make this project even more untenable. Mnangagwa governs within an already fragmented ruling party, where factionalism is not a possibility but a defining feature.

As succession anxieties intensify, these factions will not dissipate, they will harden. They will compete, maneuver, and destabilise in pursuit of post-Mnangagwa power. At 83 years old they have every reason to think of such a possibility in the short-term.

In such a context, the attempt to indefinitely postpone succession is not a strategy for stability; it is an accelerant for internal conflict. Clinging to power under these conditions is not only misguided, it is profoundly self-defeating.

Beyond the internal dynamics of the ruling elite lies the broader crisis of legitimacy, both political and economic, that continues to define Mnangagwa’s tenure.

Politically, his administration has entrenched a repressive state apparatus that systematically constrains democratic space, silences dissent, and undermines basic civil liberties.

Economically, the government has failed to deliver meaningful improvements in the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans. Instead, the country remains mired in deepening poverty, worsening inequality, and an onerous tax burden imposed on an already struggling population.

At the same time, a narrow class of politically connected elites has flourished. The Mnangagwa presidency has been remarkably beneficial for tenderpreneurs and networks of grand corruption, who have accumulated vast wealth through opaque state contracts and extractive practices.

These actors are not passive beneficiaries; they are active enablers of the current constitutional assault. They fund it, legitimise it, and cheer it on, not out of ideological commitment, but out of material interest.

Yet history is replete with examples of such alliances collapsing under the weight of their own excesses. The very forces sustaining this power grab today may well be consumed by its consequences tomorrow.

It is entirely plausible that, in the short term, this unconstitutional project may succeed. The machinery of the state, after all, is a powerful instrument. But political victories secured through coercion and manipulation are inherently fragile.

They carry within them the seeds of their own undoing. Those driving this agenda, whether in government, party structures, or business networks, must reckon with the reality that they are not merely bending the rules; they are mutilating the very framework that underpins political order. And when that framework collapses, accountability, however delayed, becomes inevitable.

For Mnangagwa himself, the path forward need not end in crisis. There remains an opportunity, however narrow, to step back from the brink, to respect constitutional limits, to allow for an orderly transition, and to secure a legacy that is not defined solely by overreach and repression.

The alternative is far less dignified. To be remembered as a leader who, in pursuit of absolute power, hastened the erosion of the very system he once claimed to reform.

Pride Mkono is a political analyst and writes here in his own capacity.