Zimbabwe’s parliament is processing a Constitution Amendment Bill, reopening nationwide discussion about the form of governance most suitable for the country. The article argues that this presents an idea opportunity to ditch the binary, winner-take-all system, which has led to endless crises, and opt for a more inclusive, more African form of government. Can this be a model for the rest of Africa?
by Mabasa Sasa
Zimbabwe’s political story is often told in the language of rupture: disputed elections, contested legitimacy and a future deferred.
For much of its post-independence history, the Southern African country has operated under a strong presidential system in which executive authority is concentrated in a directly elected head of state and government and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
This has, particularly from the turn of the millennium, produced high-stakes, winner-takes-all electoral contests — and the attendant fall-out of such political systems in post-colonial Africa.
Today, that model is once again under scrutiny. A proposed set of constitutional reforms — the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment Number 3) Bill — has reopened debate around the country’s governance architecture, and whether it should be recalibrated to reduce political polarisation and embed greater consensus in the exercise of power.
The Bill is proceeding through a structured legislative process. It was gazetted in March 2026 to formally place it before the public and Parliament. This triggered a 90-day period of scrutiny that includes nationwide public consultations encompassing public hearings and submission of written opinions directly to Parliament.
The idea is to solicit citizen input before the Bill goes to Parliament for debate, possible refinement, and ultimately a vote requiring a two-thirds majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate. Should it pass these thresholds, it will then be presented to the President for assent, at which point it becomes part of the Constitution.
Away from the technical legal processes and beneath the familiar narrative of Zimbabwean political crisis and contestation, lies a quieter yet instructive history: at another moment of profound uncertainty, Zimbabwe once cobbled together a working model for shared governance, which resulted in a constitutional overhaul.
It was not something that emerged from deliberate design. It was a child of necessity.
The Government of National Unity (GNU), locally referred to as the Inclusive Government, was forged in the uneasy aftermath of the 2008 political and economic crisis. Disputed elections that year triggered widespread instability, economic collapse and international isolation. This forced political rivals into negotiations mediated by regional actors. The result was an unprecedented power-sharing arrangement.
Bringing together Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T, and Arthur Mutambara’s MDC, this was less an act of political imagination than it was a response to near-systemic breakdown across almost all institutions and pillars of the state.
Designed by six negotiators drawn from the three major parties contesting the 2008 elections — Patrick Chinamasa, Nicholas Goche, Tendai Biti, Elton Mangoma, Welshman Ncube and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga — the GNU was not authorised by a referendum.
No popular vote approved the creation of a Prime Minister’s Office or the allocation of Ministerial portfolios. Instead, it was formalised through a political agreement and then accommodated within a constitutional framework that the generality of Zimbabweans approved of.
Reflecting on the 2008–2013 GNU is not an exercise in nostalgia. After all, that arrangement had its innumerable problems and was never destined for institutional permanence. It qualifies, rather, as an exercise in institutional memory building.
Mechanism to engender stability
What the GNU revealed, perhaps unintentionally, is that governance need not always be a zero-sum game. The binary, almost Manichean, logic of winner-takes-all that is so deeply embedded in many post-colonial political systems is not inevitable.
Zimbabwe briefly demonstrated that those outside the circle of electoral victory could still be brought into the framework of governance — not as an act of charity to a weaker political foe, but as a mechanism to engender stability.
While not deliberately sought by any of the parties involved, the GNU was an improvised arrangement that ushered in a measure of balance and a semblance of normalcy. Power was redistributed. Decision-making was broadened. A fragile and bruised economy began to somewhat settle. Even Zimbabwe’s long-frozen international relationships showed signs of nascent thaw.
The GNU created a delicate equilibrium in which competing actors were compelled into a shared responsibility for shared outcomes. It introduced necessary friction where there might otherwise have been unilateralism, and balance where potentially destructive selfish dominance might have prevailed. In doing so, it offered more than a temporary political fix. It offered a constitutional insight.
The question now is whether that insight will remain confined to the exceptionalism of crisis, or whether it can be translated into enduring institutional design.
Tempering the concentration of power.
Through the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment No. 3) Bill, the country is presented with an opportunity to convert the hard-earned lessons of the GNU into a more permanent framework. Specifically, this can materialise by reconsidering the structure of executive authority in a way that tempers the concentration of power.
At the centre of the current debate is a proposal to move the election of the President away from a direct popular vote, to an indirect election by a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the Senate. In comparative terms, this would shift Zimbabwe away from pure Presidentialism towards a more parliamentary or hybrid model where executive legitimacy is mediated through elected representatives rather than a nationwide vote.
Notably, this proposed reform does not trigger a constitutional referendum. Under Zimbabwe’s constitutional framework, referendums are reserved for particularly entrenched provisions — such as the Declaration of Rights or Presidential term limits.
Changes to the method of electing the President, while significant, fall within the scope of amendments that Parliament itself may enact, provided the requisite supermajority is secured.
This is neither a proposal to recreate the GNU nor to reintroduce a Prime Ministerial-like dual executive. The President would remain the singular head of the executive. But the route to that office — and therefore the incentives shaping political competition — would change, placing a premium on coalition-building within both Houses of Parliament.
To defend the status quo, then, is to suggest that cycles of contestation, exclusion, and reactive governance are somehow sufficient. But Zimbabwe’s own history resists that conclusion.
The GNU, brief as it was, disrupted that cycle. It shifted incentives. It compelled political actors into a reluctant but necessary accountability to one another.
A parliamentary or hybrid system offers a pathway to institutionalise these dynamics. It transforms coalition-building from an emergency response into a governing principle. It embeds negotiation into the everyday workings of the state, rather than reserving it for moments of national brinkmanship.
Such a shift is not without its complexities. Coalition politics demands patience, compromise, and a recalibration of political culture. But it also offers something Zimbabwe has long struggled to secure: time. Time for policy to mature, for institutions to stabilise, and for governance to move beyond the immediacy of political contestation.
There is a familiar argument that Zimbabwe’s challenges lie not in its institutional framework, but in its implementation — that better adherence, rather than structural change, is what is required.
Yet this distinction is ultimately misleading. Institutions are not passive vessels; they shape behaviour, define incentives, and determine whether political competition tends towards cooperation or confrontation.
Converting experience into principle
The proposed amendment is, at its core, an attempt to convert experience into principle — to take the hard-earned lessons of the GNU and give them permanence. It asks whether a moment of imposed cooperation can become a framework for sustained governance.
The choice before Zimbabwe is no longer whether it has glimpsed a more stabilising form of governance. It already has. The question is whether that glimpse will remain a fleeting moment in history, or whether it will be forged into a durable political settlement capable of carrying the nation beyond the cycles of crisis that have too long defined its story.
Mabasa Sasa is a Zimbabwean journalist. He edited Zimbabwe’s largest Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Mail, and the Southern Times in Namibia, as well as the Assistant Editor of the Africa Factbook and a contributor to New African magazine in London. This was first published here by the News Africa Magazine.Â
