This piece is the winner of the Canon Collins 2026 essay competition. The annual competition invites essays that demonstrate thought leadership and offer fresh perspectives on issues affecting southern Africa.
++++++++++
An essay on why a pen aimed at the Constitution is a dagger aimed at the people
- The Obituary of a Promise
There is a moment in a nation’s life when the law stops being a shield and becomes a shroud. Zimbabwe arrived at that hour on 16 February 2026 when the government gazetted the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment) Bill No 3. To call it an amendment is to call a funeral a birthday party. This Bill does not refine; it shackles.
Let me explain this like I would to a friend in a café in Harare. You know that feeling when someone changes the rules of a game halfway through, then tells you they’re doing it for your safety? That is Bill No. 3. It extends presidential and parliamentary terms from five years to seven, moving the next election from 2028 to 2030. It abolishes direct presidential elections entirely, replacing the popular vote with selection by a joint sitting of Parliament. It allows a sitting President to appoint the Chief Justice and the head of the anti-corruption commission. And it makes “unauthorised communication” with foreign entities a crime, where the government decides what “unauthorised” means.
This is not a refinement. This is a legislative coup dressed in parliamentary robes.
- The ratchet that only turns one way
Separately, in April 2026, Cabinet approved a proposal to criminalise ‘unauthorised communication or negotiation by private citizens with foreign governments. Read that slowly. If a Zimbabwean scholar emails a human rights lawyer in London, or a journalist in Johannesburg asks for comment, or a grandmother in Mbare tells her daughter in London about the smell of tear gas, all of that could become suspect.
The Bill is retroactive. It applies to the current President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and the current Parliament – extending his term until 2030. This directly contradicts Section 328(7) of the 2013 Constitution, which explicitly prohibits term extensions for a sitting president. The ruling party holds the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to pass it.
The late Tanzanian president Juluis Nyerere once warned: “The state has no right to protect itself against the people, only the people have the right to protect themselves against the state.” Bill No. 3 inverts this. It protects the state from the people. That is not security. That is a ratchet that only turns one way: tighter.
- Shakespeare’s northern star – and why no president is one
You might wonder what a dead English playwright has to do with Zimbabwe. Everything. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare gives the tyrant these lines:
“But I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.”
Bill No. 3 assumes the executive is that northern star – permanent, unchallengeable, above the law. By extending the President’s power to appoint judges and provincial governors without sufficient parliamentary oversight, it writes that assumption into our supreme law. But Shakespeare also gave us the warning in Hamlet:
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
Zimbabwe’s sorrows are arriving in battalions. A collapsing health system. A currency that has been officially redenominated three times. Over 2 million citizens living abroad as economic exiles. And now this Bill, the final battalion: the battalion of fear.
- Why ‘national security’ cannot swallow everything
The most dishonest argument for Bill No. 3 is the incantation of “national security.” But as the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye argued, security without participation is merely a prison with better ventilation.
Proponents offer a different justification. They argue the Bill reduces “election mode toxicity,” aligns with Vision 2030 and gives the government sufficient time to complete long-term projects. The Minister of Justice has stated it simply “elongates the electoral cycle” to ensure economic stability and reduce election-related fatigue. But these justifications collapse under scrutiny: if a government cannot deliver in five years, it should face the voters, not erase them.
Look at our neighbours. South Africa’s Constitution, despite its real failures still protects the right to protest and an independent judiciary. Botswana’s High Court recently ruled against the government on a land rights case. Zambia voted out a sitting president in 2021 without a single tank on the streets. What does Zimbabwe do? It rewrites the rules mid-game.
The late Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote: “Language as communication and culture is a product of the history of a community.” Bill No. 3 is not a product of Zimbabwe’s history of liberation, a history that produced patriots who argued, debated and wrote manifestos in prison. This Bill is a product of a different history: the history of fear. It uses the language of order to bury the memory of freedom.
- A personal refusal – because some things are close to the bone
This is close to my heart. I am a scholar because my grandmother, in 1978, walked 40 kilometres to hide a young neighbour from the Rhodesian security forces. She risked everything for one principle: no law should make a person disappear for being inconvenient.
Steve Biko reminded us: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” This Amendment aims to capture that mind. It tells young Zimbabweans that asking why your currency fails is sedition. It tells alumni of programs like Canon Collins that your critical thinking is a foreign conspiracy.
And opposition is not merely ignored, it is punished. During the public hearings held from 30 March to 2 April 2026, reports documented selective microphone access, physical assaults on dissenters, and the theft of a lawyer’s phone containing evidence of irregularities. Constitutional lawyer Lovemore Madhuku and former Finance Minister Tendai Biti have been arrested and assaulted. Human rights lawyer Douglas Coltart was attacked, his phone stolen.
No. I refuse to internalise that lie.
- A region watching – and a precedent we cannot afford
What happens if this passes unchallenged? Look to Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, where King Mswati III has ruled by decree for decades. Bill No. 3 would give its government a blueprint: extend terms, criminalise foreign communication, detain without charge. Or consider Mozambique, where post-election violence in 2024 left dozens dead. An incumbent fearing defeat could cite Zimbabwe’s example to justify cancelling direct elections. This is not speculation. This is the logic of precedent.
The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which Zimbabwe ratified in 1986, states in Article 13(1) that every citizen has the right to participate freely in government. Bill No. 3 eviscerates that participation by criminalising civil society organisations that receive foreign funding for public interest litigation. That means if a women’s rights group in Bulawayo uses a small grant from a German foundation to challenge a discriminatory law, they are now criminals. This is not sovereignty. This is sabotage.
The Senegalese author Mariama Ba wrote in So Long a Letter: “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” In the same way, a constitution is not born democratic. It becomes tyrannical the moment the people stop defending it. We are at that moment.
- Therefore, I reject it. Totally.
I reject Bill No. 3 in its entirety. Not a clause. Not a comma.
I reject it because the 2013 Constitution was born from the blood of the 2008 violence. To amend it without a genuine referendum is to desecrate a grave.
I reject it because no president – no matter how long-serving – is a northern star. Nelson Mandela said: “I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter. But I have discovered that the real test is not whether we avoid the fall, but whether we stay down.” This government has fallen into the trap of power. It is staying down. We, the scholars and alumni, must lift the pen.
And I reject it because Zimbabwe deserves better than a cage called stability. Tsitsi Dangarembwga wrote in Nervous Conditions: “The things we do not say become the holes in our lives.” I refuse to have holes.
And I reject it because Shakespeare was right in The Tempest:
“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
The devils are not in London or Washington. The devils are in the clauses of this Bill. They wear ties. They speak in parliamentary language. But they are devils nonetheless.
- Conclusion: A grave that digs itself
Let me end where I began. A constitution is not paper. It is a promise between the dead, the living, and the unborn. Bill No. 3 breaks that promise. It tells the unborn that they will be born into a cage.
But I still have hope. Not in this government. In the people. In the scholar who reads this and decides to write. In the alumni who shares it despite the risk. In the Mail & Guardian that dares to publish dissent.
Shakespeare, through Hamlet, gave us the final instruction when facing a rotten state: “The readiness is all.”
I am ready. We are ready. To reject. To critique. To trouble power until power learns to tremble.
Because a grave that digs itself cannot bury anyone else. And Zimbabwe , my Zimbabwe, is not a grave. It is a sky waiting for flight.