Constitutional debates are rarely about law alone. They are, more often than not, arguments about power, time, and the uneasy relationship between leaders and the systems they inhabit. In the unfolding discussion surrounding Emmerson Mnangagwa and the prospect of constitutional amendment in Zimbabwe, the legal mechanics risk obscuring the deeper philosophical and political tensions at play.
By Brighton Musonza
Modern constitutionalism rests on a deceptively simple premise: that authority must be institutional, not personal. The state, by design, must survive the mortality of those who govern it. Constitutions are therefore not merely legal documents but political technologies, devices constructed to regulate succession, distribute power, and prevent the concentration of legitimacy in any single individual. They are, in a profound sense, society’s response to the biological limits of leadership.
When constitutional amendments arise in ways that appear to extend personal tenure, the question inevitably expands beyond procedural legality. It becomes a matter of political meaning. What is being preserved: stability, continuity, or the psychological comfort of familiarity? What is being risked: institutional resilience, democratic credibility, or the delicate equilibrium between authority and accountability?
Political systems, like individuals, are shaped by narratives. Among the most enduring is the story of indispensability: the belief that a leader’s continued presence is synonymous with national stability. This narrative rarely emerges overnight. It is cultivated gradually, often imperceptibly, through the interaction of psychology, power structures, and political culture.
Long-serving leaders operate within environments defined by ritualised authority. Deference becomes normalised; criticism becomes filtered; political proximity narrows. Over time, identity itself can shift. The office ceases to be an external role and becomes intertwined with self-perception. The distinction between governing the state and embodying it begins to blur.
Political psychology offers insight here, though it resists easy moralisation. Scholars describe processes of identity fusion, wherein individuals psychologically integrate roles, institutions, and symbolic meanings into their sense of self. In political leadership, this fusion can produce a sincere, not merely rhetorical, belief that stepping aside represents not institutional transition but existential displacement.
Yet the phenomenon is never purely individual. Indispensability is co-produced by systems. Political elites whose security depends on continuity may actively reinforce narratives of uniqueness. Patronage networks, loyalty hierarchies, and informal power arrangements create structural incentives for the myth of irreplaceability. Stability becomes associated with a person; uncertainty becomes associated with leadership change.
Zimbabwe’s political trajectory cannot be disentangled from its historical inheritance. Post-colonial states often navigate the lingering symbolic architecture of liberation politics, where leadership was forged not merely through governance but through struggle, sacrifice, and existential national stakes. Liberation movements fused authority with identity and survival. The echoes of that fusion persist, shaping how legitimacy, loyalty, and continuity are interpreted.
In such contexts, debates over tenure take on emotional and historical significance. Leadership continuity can be framed as guardianship of legacy, protection of sovereignty, or defence against instability. The language of politics subtly shifts from administration to destiny.
Age adds another dimension that is seldom discussed openly, yet is deeply influential. Lifespan psychology suggests that later stages of life heighten concerns of coherence, significance, and historical meaning. Leaders, like all humans, seek narrative closure. Governance becomes intertwined with legacy. Continuity begins to feel less like political preference and more like historical necessity.
This is not reducible to vanity. It is the intersection of ordinary human psychology with extraordinary authority.
But constitutional governance is built precisely to resist such gravitational pulls. Its core logic is not distrust of leaders but recognition of human limits. Succession mechanisms exist not because leaders are flawed, but because individuals are finite. Institutional stability depends on demonstrating that the system functions independently of any single personality.
When legitimacy becomes overly personalised, fragility quietly accumulates. Institutions weaken, not through formal dismantling, but through symbolic overshadowing. Authority migrates from rules to individuals. Succession transforms from a procedure into a potential crisis.
The danger lies less in the amendment itself than in the political imagination it reinforces. If stability is perceived as contingent on personal continuity, then leadership transition, the very process that constitutions are designed to normalise, becomes destabilising by definition.
Transnational realities complicate this dynamic further. In an interconnected global order, constitutional adjustments reverberate beyond national borders. Governance credibility influences investment decisions, diplomatic relations, regional stability calculations, and international legitimacy frameworks. Domestic political narratives coexist with external perceptions shaped by democratic norms and institutional expectations.
Leadership continuity may be defended internally as stability while interpreted externally through the prism of systemic resilience. The modern state operates simultaneously within national history and global scrutiny.
At its philosophical core, leadership is stewardship, not possession. Authority is borrowed from the polity, exercised within constitutional limits, and ultimately relinquished through institutional design. The endurance of the state depends on the principle that no individual, however capable, becomes synonymous with its survival.
History repeatedly illustrates a paradox: leaders seek permanence through continuity, while institutions secure permanence through succession. Political maturity lies in reconciling these impulses, honouring leadership without subordinating systemic legitimacy to it.
The belief in indispensability is powerful precisely because it often feels rational from within the structures that produce it. Leaders surrounded by affirming signals, filtered intelligence, and loyalty-driven ecosystems encounter confirmation bias at scale. Continuity appears empirically justified. Exit appears risky.
Yet political stability cannot sustainably rest on psychological necessity. Institutions, unlike individuals, are designed to metabolise change. They derive strength not from preventing transition but from managing it without systemic shock.
Zimbabwe’s constitutional debates, therefore, are not merely contests over tenure. They are reflections of a broader civilisational tension confronting many political systems: can authority remain anchored in institutions when the symbolic pull of personal leadership intensifies?
The answer carries implications far beyond electoral cycles. It shapes how citizens understand legitimacy, how elites calculate risk, and how the state negotiates its long-term stability.
In the end, constitutions represent a wager on the future, a collective assertion that the state must outlive personalities, ambitions, and even historical giants. Leadership, however consequential, remains a chapter. Institutions are the book.
The tension between these two realities, human psychology and constitutional design, remains one of the defining dramas of modern governance.
