ZANU-PF resolutions shape Zimbabweans' future with little public say

Zimbabweans watching the latest round of their country’s long succession fight have been reminded that the decisions shaping their daily lives are being settled inside one party, largely without their say. At last week’s annual conference of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in Chinhoyi, resolutions were adopted that could keep President Emmerson Mnangagwa in power until 2030. The prospect carries direct consequences for voters, the constitution and the country’s stability.

The conference aligned the party’s constitution with the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill, 2026, known as CAB3. That measure would extend Mnangagwa’s presidential term from 2028, when it was constitutionally due to expire, until 2030, by lengthening the electoral cycle from five to seven years. It would also replace the directly elected presidency with one chosen indirectly by Parliament, removing from citizens the power to choose their head of state at the ballot box. The resolutions moved the party’s next elective congress from 2027 to 2029, kept Mnangagwa on as party leader until 2030, and declared him the sole, uncontested presidential candidate at the 2029 congress, to lead ZANU-PF in 2030.

These changes were anathema to First Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, who is widely believed to have been promised that Mnangagwa would step aside in 2028 when Chiwenga, then military chief, helped him oust Robert Mugabe in the November 2017 coup that ushered in the so-called Second Republic. At the conference, Chiwenga appeared to warn Mnangagwa that he risked repeating the events of that year. “What led to the emergence of the Second Republic?” Chiwenga asked. “It emerged from correcting the rot that was prevailing. Are we not repeating the same mistakes? That is the question we should be asking ourselves.”

He called for a “brutal and honest self-appraisal,” including asking whether the congress resolutions were “truly coming from the people.” He had already raised eyebrows by apparently boycotting a conference ball in honour of Mnangagwa, and the funeral of the mega-rich Mnangagwa crony businessman Wicknell Chivayo, who recently died in a helicopter crash. In apparent response, Mnangagwa warned his unnamed, but clearly implied, enemies at a preparatory central committee meeting against behaving like “demons.”

For all the drama, the outcome favoured the president. Zimbabwean journalist and commentator Hopewell Chin’ono, writing on X, noted that Chiwenga had succeeded in blocking the term-prolonging resolutions in ZANU-PF’s Politburo and had delivered “a rock star speech at the conference.” But, he asked, “did he win anything?” He thought not. Chiwenga’s success in the Politburo showed he had influence, yet Mnangagwa overrode that body by having the resolutions presented from the floor and passed at the conference itself, a higher decision-making forum. “But it earned him nothing, because the very changes he was trying to stop were adopted,” Chin’ono posted.

The critical unknown is how much support Chiwenga retains. Bulawayo mayor David Coltart, a seasoned opposition leader, told ISS Today: “What I and what we don’t know is what support Chiwenga has.” He said Mnangagwa had effectively neutralised much of Chiwenga’s military backing by, for example, bringing his successor as Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, Philip Valerio Sibanda, into the ZANU-PF Politburo and “kicking upstairs” army commander Lieutenant-General Anselem Nhamo Sanyatwe, appointed Minister of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture, a harmless portfolio. Yet Coltart also believes Chiwenga would not have been so strident had he not still enjoyed the support of key elements in the military.

Coltart added that Chivayo’s sudden death was a serious blow to Mnangagwa, who had used him as a conduit to buy patronage and support, not only domestically but in the region, with leaders like South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Eswatini’s King Mswati III, Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan and Kenya’s William Ruto. He also noted that Mnangagwa was weakening physically and mentally, presenting himself as 84 though widely believed to be 88, and so would be 92 if he ran again in 2030. If he did, he would confront even more strongly the same constitutional obstacles glossed over in CAB3, including that extending presidential term limits requires a popular referendum. “I think that this situation is becoming extremely problematic. This is just the beginning of a very serious, intense power struggle,” Coltart said.

Chin’ono believes that for Chiwenga, defeated politically, the only remaining leverage is the military. “If the army is behind him and willing to act, that is his saving grace. Without it, he is finished,” he says, while adding that a coup is unlikely but cannot be discounted. “Nobody knows how much of the military he still has influence over after Mnangagwa removed his allies from there,” he told ISS Today.

For ordinary Zimbabweans, the stakes are stark. As Chin’ono observed on X, many citizens, left without an opposition to believe in, largely because it has been crushed by ZANU-PF, are now rallying behind Chiwenga “as the only man who can end President Mnangagwa’s rule.” Yet Zimbabweans “are mere spectators to a battle raging inside ZANU-PF. Spectators, and nothing more.”

Intelwatch Director Piers Pigou largely agreed, characterising the rivalry as “an endless repetitive saga. Chiwenga’s messaging is important, as many who are not in the Mnangagwa camp are not impressed. But they remain in ZANU-PF. It is one big corrupt club, with varying shades of grubbiness.” He added: “Ultimately, neither [serves] more than partisan interests. Chiwenga is trying to appear more benign … but can he really be trusted?”

The prospects for citizens are not encouraging. Either the country faces an indefinite continuation of the same debilitating Mnangagwa leadership, or another perilous upheaval with the same basic outcome: more ZANU-PF misgovernance. Many Zimbabweans and others naively pinned their hopes on Mnangagwa when he ousted Mugabe in 2017, a lesson worth remembering as the struggle enters its next round.