THE debate surrounding Zimbabwe’s proposed Constitution Amendment No. 3 Bill, 2026 (CAB3) has reached a fever pitch.
Two camps have effectively monopolised the public debate on CAB3. On one side, proponents like justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, Paul Mangwana, Professor Jonathan Moyo, and Temba Mliswa argue that the bill modernises our architecture and aligns with “tested and successful practices in other progressive jurisdictions.”
On the other hand, legal and political opponents such as Professor Justice Mavedzenge, Douglas Mwonzora, Tendai Biti, Professor Lovemore Madhuku, and Jameson Timba decry it as a democratic rollback. While Rutendo Matinyarare has touched on economic performance, a rigorous socio-economic analysis has been absent.
What is missing? A rigorous analysis from a development and institutional economics perspective. This article attempts to fill that gap, drawing on constitutional political economy, institutional economics, and development economics, with comparative evidence from Africa and beyond.
The article attempts to offer a snapshot of how CAB3 will actually impact foreign direct investment (FDI), property rights, sovereign risk, and inclusive economic growth.
Why Economics Must Enter This Debate
Constitutions are not merely legal instruments. They are the fundamental institutional infrastructure of an economy. Every provision that allocates power, defines accountability relationships, structures incentives for political actors, or shapes the rules governing transactions ultimately has economic consequences — in the short run on investor confidence and fiscal credibility, and in the long run on growth trajectories, poverty reduction, and human development.
This is not an abstract claim. Douglass North (1920-2015), the Nobel laureate in economics, established four decades ago that institutions — the rules of the game in society — are the primary determinant of long-run economic performance. James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu (2012), in their landmark work Why Nations Fail, demonstrated empirically and through extensive comparative historical study that the difference between prosperous and impoverished nations comes down, fundamentally, to whether they have inclusive or extractive institutions — institutions that broadly distribute political and economic power, or ones that concentrate it in the hands of a narrow elite.
Zimbabwe’s CAB3 proposes twenty-one clauses of reform. The legal community has picked these apart through procedural, rights-based, and constitutional theory lenses. What follows is something different: a clause-by-clause interrogation of what these proposals mean for Zimbabwe’s development trajectory — its capacity to attract investment, sustain fiscal discipline, achieve inclusive growth, and maintain the institutional quality that determines credit ratings, aid flows, and the everyday welfare of its citizens.
The economic argument advanced by this argument is that nations that fail economically almost always fail institutionally first. The question for Zimbabwe is not merely whether CAB3 is constitutional, but whether it makes the institutions of governance stronger or weaker as engines of economic development.
The Macro-Institutional Framework
Before analysing individual clauses, it is necessary to situate CAB3 within Zimbabwe’s current institutional and economic context. Zimbabwe’s economy remains characterised by chronic foreign currency shortages, a fragile financial system, limited foreign direct investment (FDI) relative to regional peers, a large and growing informal sector, extremely high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality, and a governance environment in which property rights protection remains unreliable.
According to the World Bank’s most recent Governance Indicators, Zimbabwe scores in the bottom quartile globally on Rule of Law, Voice and Accountability, and Control of Corruption. This is not merely a political assessment — it directly translates into a higher country risk premium that every Zimbabwean business and citizen pays through higher borrowing costs, lower private investment, reduced trade credit, and limited access to international capital markets.
Against this backdrop, the critical development economics question is: Does CAB3 increase or decrease Zimbabwe’s institutional quality? Does it move Zimbabwe toward or away from the inclusive institutions associated with sustained economic development?
Clause-by-Clause Economic Analysis
Parliamentary Election of the President (Clause 2 · Section 92)
This is arguably the most consequential single change proposed by CAB3. The amendment abolishes direct popular election of the President, replacing it with election by a joint sitting of Parliament. The memorandum frames this as promoting “fairness, openness, and judicial oversight.” The development economics literature tells a more nuanced and, in the Zimbabwean context, concerning story.
In economic theory, the relationship between citizens and their elected leaders is modelled as a principal-agent problem. Citizens (the principal) delegate authority to politicians (the agent) and design institutions (elections, term limits, accountability bodies) to ensure agents serve principals’ interests rather than their own. Direct presidential elections create a direct accountability link between the president (the agent, mutumwa, or umthunywa) and millions of citizens (principals). Parliamentary election of the president fundamentally restructures this accountability relationship: it inserts Parliament as an intermediary, and the president becomes accountable first and foremost to the parliamentary majority rather than to the electorate as a whole.
The economic implications are significant. Development economists have long documented that when leaders are not directly accountable to broad populations, they tend to pursue narrower distributional coalitions — delivering benefits to the politically strategic groups that keep them in power rather than broad public goods. A parliamentary electorate of approximately 280 members is, from this perspective, a far smaller and more targetable coalition than 5 million voters. This dynamic has a name in the political economy literature: it is the logic of selectorate theory, developed by Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues, which predicts that smaller winning coalitions produce more private goods (patronage, rents) for supporters and fewer public goods (roads, hospitals, schools) for the population.
While proponents of CAB3 argue that this aligns Zimbabwe with “contemporary African constitutional standards”, especially South Africa and Botswana, it should be noted that the South African system is anchored on a strong party system, proportional representation, an independent judiciary, and robust Chapter 9 institutions that provide countervailing accountability. Without these independent institutions, the Zuma years demonstrated precisely the “captured state” risk that parliamentary presidential selection creates when accountability mechanisms are weak.
Furthermore, Botswana also elects its president indirectly. However, the country has historically maintained strong and inclusive political and economic institutions, with the rule of law, a disciplined public service, and transparent fiscal management. Botswana ranks consistently as one of Africa’s least corrupt economies and has sustained growth rates that transformed it from one of Africa’s poorest countries at independence to an upper-middle-income country today (read the book ‘Why Nations Fail’ for further details).
In conclusion, both domestic and foreign private investors make their decisions based on assessments of political risk, which includes the predictability and legitimacy of governmental authority. A president elected by a parliamentary majority that is itself the product of an electoral system whose credibility is in question (see the discussion of Zimbabwe Electoral Commission [ZEC] reforms below) creates compounding legitimacy deficits. The result is a higher political risk premium that discourages long-term capital commitment, particularly in sectors requiring large up-front investment and reliable enforcement of commercial contracts.
I therefore argue that moving presidential selection to Parliament, in the absence of a dramatic strengthening of horizontal accountability institutions, increases the risk of elite capture of the executive, reduces the president’s incentive to invest in broad public goods, and raises political risk perceptions for investors. The South African state capture experience under parliamentary presidential selection is the most proximate cautionary tale.
Extension of Terms from 5 to 7 Years (Clauses 3, 7, 8 · Sections 95, 143, 158)
Proponents of CAB3 justify the extension to 7-year terms by arguing that this will “eliminate election mode toxicity and allow sufficient time for project implementation while promoting stability.” This deserves careful scrutiny because it represents one of the few clauses where the proponents’ argument has some genuine economic basis, though it is substantially weaker than advocates suggest.
There is a well-established relationship in the development economics literature between political stability and economic growth. On one hand, the “Political Business Cycle” theory shows that politicians tend to manipulate fiscal policy (e.g., printing money, overspending) right before an election, causing post-election inflation. In theory, fewer elections (every 7 years instead of 5) could reduce the frequency of these costly, inflationary cycles. On the other hand, Alesina and Perotti (1996) demonstrated that political instability — measured by regime changes, coups, and social unrest — reduces per-capita GDP growth by reducing investment rates. These two theories form the legitimate core of the stability argument for longer terms.
However, the critical distinction in this literature is between the stability of rules and institutions versus the stability of particular rulers. What generates positive economic outcomes is not the same person staying in power longer, but rather predictable, consistently enforced rules that allow businesses to plan. A five-year term that is credibly enforced and peacefully transferred produces more institutional stability — in the economically relevant sense — than a seven-year term in which term limits are subject to constitutional manipulation.
Furthermore, institutional economics warns that without strong, independent checks and balances, longer terms simply insulate the executive from public accountability. If we look at regional economic powerhouses, neither Botswana nor South Africa relies on 7-year terms for stability; they use 5-year terms and achieve project continuity through strong institutional frameworks, not elongated incumbency. In an environment with a history of currency volatility and high sovereign debt, a 7-year term without rigorous parliamentary oversight risks entrenching rent-seeking behaviours rather than fostering genuine macroeconomic stability.
Further interrogation reveals that the claim that ‘development projects require longer than five years’ lacks a strong empirical basis. Zimbabwe’s National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) was a five-year plan (2021–2025). The issue has never been the five-year political cycle per se — it has been fiscal constraints, foreign currency shortages, and implementation capacity. Rwanda implements transformational development projects on four-year cycles. Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plans operated on five-year horizons.
The Asian developmental states (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) achieved their “economic miracles” within standard democratic electoral cycles or, crucially, through meritocratic technocratic bureaucracies insulated from political interference, not through extended executive tenures. An empirical study by Cox and Weingast (2015) found no statistically significant relationship between presidential term length and economic growth rates across developing countries. What mattered overwhelmingly was the quality of institutions constraining executive behaviour.
Development economists have identified a paradox in extended executive tenures. While the stated goal is to reduce “election mode toxicity” (i.e., pre-electoral spending, violence, populist policy reversals), extended terms can actually intensify these pathologies in the latter years because the incumbent knows the period before the next election is more distant and uses the extended window to entrench patronage networks. Patronage-based redistribution is economically inefficient: it directs resources based on political loyalty rather than returns to investment or poverty reduction impact.
Continuation in Office of the President and the Current Parliament
The proposed amendment includes a highly consequential provision in the new subsections 2(a) and 7(2a): “notwithstanding section 328(7),” the 7-year term shall apply to the continuation in office of the President and the current Parliament. Though the legal argument has centred on the issue that the current constitution does not allow for incumbents to benefit from extensions that are instituted while they are in office, my opinion is that the legal argument, though sound, is narrow and needs to be reinforced by the economic argument.
Section 328(7) of the Constitution ordinarily prevents constitutional amendments from extending the terms of the sitting president and parliament. This retroactive application to current term holders is precisely the mechanism by which term limit circumvention has occurred across Africa, and it carries the most severe institutional credibility costs.
The application of the seven-year term to sitting officeholders via the “notwithstanding section 328(7)” provision is the most economically damaging aspect of CAB3. It signals to investors, credit rating agencies, and development partners that constitutional rules are contingent on the preferences of current powerholders — the defining characteristic of what Douglass North called “limited access orders,” which are systematically associated with lower growth, higher inequality, and greater economic volatility.
Presidential Appointment of Ten Senators (Clause 6 · Section 120)
The memorandum argues that ten presidential senate appointees will “bring in broader technical expertise, enhance parliamentary oversight, expand the pool of potential ministers, build public confidence, and help reduce political and social divisions.” From a development economics perspective, the argument about technical expertise has merit in theory.
Firstly, it has to be noted that appointing technocrats (meritocracy) can be an economic boon. Singapore and Rwanda have successfully utilized merit-based appointments to drive rapid economic transformation. If these 10 seats are used to bring in world-class economists, engineers, and trade experts who cannot survive the gruelling political primary system, it could deeply enrich legislative quality.
However, in heavily polarised, low-trust environments (such as the Zimbabwean institutional context), these provisions are frequently co-opted to reward political loyalists (patronage), effectively bloating the public wage bill without yielding any developmental dividends.
There is a genuine strand of development economics (associated with the “developmental state” literature on South Korea, Japan, and Singapore) that identifies technocratic insulation of key economic policy institutions as a driver of successful industrial policy and economic transformation. But this literature refers to independent technocratic bodies (central banks, planning commissions, revenue authorities) that are structurally insulated from day-to-day political direction.
Presidential senate appointees are, by definition, politically selected. The mechanism through which a politically appointed senator produces independent technical expertise is not clear.
More importantly, Zimbabwe’s most credible technocratic governance institutions are arguably the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), Mutapa Investment Fund (MIF), Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA), and their effectiveness (or not) has not been determined by the composition of Parliament but by their legal mandate, their operational independence, and the broader macroeconomic policy framework. The Technical Advisory Committee model used in many development planning processes globally does not require parliamentary seats — it requires structured consultation mechanisms.
From an institutional economics perspective, the separation of powers between executive, legislature, and judiciary is not merely a constitutional formality — it is a fundamental economic institution that protects property rights and contracts. When the executive appoints members of the legislature, even a minority, it introduces a structural conflict of interest that compromises the legislature’s oversight function.
The economic cost is concrete: a legislature that cannot independently scrutinise executive budgets and expenditure plans provides weaker protection against fiscal mismanagement, which is directly connected to Zimbabwe’s history of fiscal crisis and monetary instability.
The Electoral Architecture: ZEDC, ZEC, and the Registrar General (Clauses 9–12 · Sections 159A, 160, 161, 161A)
Clauses 9 through 12 collectively restructure Zimbabwe’s electoral administration in ways that have significant political economy implications. The creation of the Zimbabwe Electoral Delimitation Commission (ZEDC) to handle boundary delimitation, separate from the ZEC, has an arguable institutional logic; separating delimitation from electoral administration to reduce conflicts of interest. This is a reform adopted in several mature democracies.
However, Clause 12: transferring voter registration, voters’ roll compilation, and maintenance to the Registrar General, is economically and institutionally concerning for reasons that go beyond legal form. The Registrar General’s office is a departmental agency directly under the executive. Voter registration management by an executive agency rather than an independent constitutional body creates structural incentives for political manipulation of voter rolls that compromise electoral credibility. Zimbabwe has been here before under the Tobaiwa Mudede era!
The political economy of credible elections is straightforwardly linked to economic development. When elections lack credibility, the political risk premium on investment rises, external financing conditions tighten, and post-election political disputes – which impose their own direct economic costs through uncertainty, capital flight, and disrupted economic activity – become more likely. The African Development Bank has documented that election-related political uncertainty is among the top five deterrents to private investment in Sub-Saharan Africa.
On one extreme, we have Ghana, the first country to gain independence from colonial rule in 1957. Ghana’s Electoral Commission, constitutionally independent and with full control over voter registration, has administered credible elections since 2000, enabling multiple peaceful transfers of power. This institutional credibility has been a significant factor in Ghana’s sustained economic growth and access to international bond markets (its first Eurobond was issued in 2007). Let’s contrast this with Kenya, whose disputed elections in 2007 cost the country an estimated 1-3% of GDP in direct economic damage, with much larger medium-term investment suppression effects. However, the subsequent institutional reforms, including a fully independent electoral body with administrative control over voter registration, were a precondition for economic recovery. Zimbabwe cannot be seen to be going back south while its peers are galloping towards the north.
Expanded Constitutional Court Jurisdiction (Clause 13 · Section 167)
Clause 13 proposes to extend the Constitutional Court’s jurisdiction to hear “any other matter” on a point of law of general public importance, beyond its current constitutional matters mandate. From a development economics perspective, this is the one provision in CAB3 that is unambiguously positive in its institutional economic implications.
Judicial capacity — the ability of courts to resolve complex commercial and public law disputes with speed, consistency, and expertise — is a major determinant of the business environment. Access to a supreme appellate court for important points of law reduces legal uncertainty, which is itself an economic cost borne by businesses in their contract design and dispute resolution processes. This reform aligns Zimbabwe with best practices in appellate court design and should be welcomed by the business community.
Judicial Appointments Reform (Clause 14 · Section 180)
Clause 14 of the CAB3 repeals the existing competitive, publicly advertised judicial appointment process under sections 180(3), (4), (4a), and (5), replacing it with presidential appointment “after consulting the Judicial Service Commission.” This is a significant regression in judicial independence from an institutional economics perspective.
The relationship between judicial independence and economic development is one of the best-established findings in institutional economics. Independent courts protect property rights, enforce contracts, constrain arbitrary executive action, and provide the legal certainty that businesses — both domestic and foreign — require for long-term investment planning. La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny (the “LLSV” group) demonstrated empirically that countries with stronger legal protections for investors and creditors have deeper capital markets, higher investment rates, and stronger economic growth.
Zimbabwe’s existing appointment process — which includes public interviews and a degree of competitive merit selection — represents an institutional reform that has moved the country toward greater judicial independence. Reverting to a predominantly presidential appointment process concentrated in the executive undermines this progress precisely at the moment when rebuilding business confidence in Zimbabwe’s legal infrastructure is critical for the foreign investment the country desperately needs.
Abolition of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission (Clauses 17–18 · Part 4, Chapter 12)
It is being proposed that the functions of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) are to be absorbed by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC). The proponents argue that this rationalises institutional architecture and avoids duplication. The development economics literature on gender and economic growth presents a compelling case for treating this as more than an administrative restructuring.
The evidence on the relationship between gender equality and economic development is now overwhelming. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other research programmes have consistently found that closing gender gaps could increase GDP by 20-35% in many developing countries over the medium term. McKinsey’s Power of Parity report estimated that advancing women’s equality could add $12 trillion to global GDP.
In Zimbabwe, where women constitute over 52% of the population and are disproportionately represented in agriculture (the backbone of the economy), gender-responsive economic institutions have direct productivity implications.
A dedicated Gender Commission provides institutional focus, specialised capacity, and a distinct mandate that gets lost when merged into a broad human rights body. The ZHRC’s existing caseload and mandate encompass civil and political rights, socio-economic rights, and a wide range of other issues. Gender economic equality — equal property rights, equal access to financial services, equal labour market opportunities, equal participation in land reform — requires sustained institutional attention that a catch-all human rights commission, already stretched in capacity and resources, cannot reliably provide.
Rwanda, for example, maintains a dedicated Gender Monitoring Office alongside human rights mechanisms. Rwanda leads Sub-Saharan Africa in gender economic participation, ranking in the global top 10 on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index. This institutional architecture has been associated with higher agricultural productivity, financial inclusion among women, and stronger economic growth.
Zimbabwe seems to want to emulate Tanzania, which removed a dedicated gender institutional capacity in the mid-2000s and witnessed a deterioration of its scores on the OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index, with documented consequences for women’s land rights and access to credit — both key economic productivity variables.
Equally important is the fact that Zimbabwe is signatory to SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and the Maputo Protocol. Therefore, the disbandment of the Gender Commission may trigger adverse assessments from development partners who link aid conditionality to gender institutional infrastructure — with direct implications for development assistance flows.
Prosecutor-General Appointment Without JSC Advice (Clause 19 · Section 259)
The amendment removes the requirement for the President to appoint the Prosecutor-General (PG) on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission. The memorandum argues that the current arrangement creates “a potential conflict of interest where the Commission recommends a candidate for appointment.”
This reasoning is curious: the JSC’s role in recommendations is specifically designed as a check against pure executive discretion, not a conflict of interest. The “conflict of interest” would be the Commission recommending its own members, which is not what Section 259 provides.
From a development economics and economic governance perspective, the independence of the prosecutorial function is directly linked to anti-corruption credibility. The World Bank’s research on anti-corruption and growth is unambiguous: economies with credibly independent prosecution of corruption grow faster because they reduce the cost of corruption on productive enterprise and signal to investors that contracts and rules are enforced impartially. A PG appointed purely on presidential prerogative, with no requirement for independent advisory input, weakens this credibility structurally.
Traditional Leaders and Political Rights (Clause 20 · Section 281(2))
Section 281(2), which the amendment repeals, requires traditional leaders to remain politically neutral — not to act in a partisan manner or further the interests of any political party. Its repeal has significant implications for the rural political economy. It should be noted upfront that around 11.2 million people, or approximately 67% of the total population of Zimbabwe, live in rural areas.
Therefore, traditional leaders in Zimbabwe are not merely ceremonial figures — they are pivotal institutions of local governance, particularly in the communal land areas where the majority of the rural poor live. Their role in land allocation, dispute resolution, and community governance makes them central actors in the rural economy and affects the livelihoods and sustainable development of the rural areas.
Political economy research in Zimbabwe and across Sub-Saharan Africa has documented how politicisation of traditional leadership — when chiefs become instruments of partisan mobilisation — leads to clientelistic land allocation, exclusion of opposition-aligned households from community resources, and breakdown of local governance mechanisms that the rural economy depends upon.
The economic costs of this politicisation are primarily borne by the rural poor. Insecure land tenure (because allocation becomes politically contingent), restricted access to community resources, and the chilling effect on local entrepreneurship among politically marginalised households are concrete development costs that do not appear in macroeconomic statistics but are experienced daily by rural Zimbabweans.
This amendment has the effect of keeping poor rural areas even poorer and severely underdeveloped. Its suffering continues for the majority of us who were born, raised, and still stay in rural areas such as Zaka.
Abolition of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (Clause 21 · Part 6, Chapter 12)
The mandate of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) is to promote national healing, peace, and reconciliation. Its abolition is perhaps the provision with the least direct economic justification, but one with substantial implications for a development economics framework that takes the link between social cohesion, trust, and economic development seriously.
Post-conflict and social cohesion economics is an established field demonstrating that societies with high levels of inter-group trust, low levels of perceived historical grievance, and effective mechanisms for managing political violence have measurably better economic outcomes.
Robert Putnam’s work on social capital, and a substantial subsequent literature, shows that social cohesion reduces transaction costs in economic exchanges, enables collective action for public goods provision, and supports the political stability that underpins investment.
Zimbabwe’s political history — Gukurahundi, Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP)-era social dislocations, Operation Murambatsvina, post-2000 farm invasions, loss of pensions and savings due to hyperinflation, election and political violence — has left deep social fractures that the NPRC was constitutionally mandated to address. Abolishing this mechanism does not remove the underlying social tensions; it removes the institutional channel through which they could have been constructively processed.
From a development economics perspective, this is a loss of institutional social capital infrastructure whose costs are long-term and diffuse but real.
Aggregate Institutional Assessment
Viewed as a package, as CAB3 must be evaluated, the amendments collectively shift Zimbabwe’s institutional architecture in a direction that development economics consistently associates with lower growth, higher inequality, and reduced economic resilience.
Nine of eleven major provisions either clearly or probably weaken Zimbabwe’s institutional quality from a development economics perspective. One provision (Constitutional Court expansion) is clearly positive. One (ZEDC creation) has modest potential benefit but is undermined by the concurrent weakening of voter registration independence.
For international credit rating agencies, development finance institutions, and foreign investors evaluating country risk, a constitutional amendment package that simultaneously weakens judicial independence, reduces electoral credibility, and compromises prosecutorial independence is a significant negative signal, regardless of the stated developmental intentions behind it.
The “Re-engagement” Paradox
Before I conclude, please allow me to briefly talk about the current regime’s re-engagement initiatives. There is a glaring strategic paradox in CAB3 from a macroeconomic perspective. Zimbabwe’s official economic strategy, as articulated in NDS1 and now NSD2, the Transitional Stabilisation Programme before it, and the Vision 2030 aspirations, is premised on re-engagement with the international community, debt resolution, and rebuilding access to concessional development finance and private capital markets. This strategy requires demonstrating sustained improvement in governance, rule of law, and institutional quality to international partners, including the IMF, World Bank, African Development Bank, and bilateral donors.
CAB3 moves Zimbabwe’s institutional architecture in the opposite direction from what this re-engagement strategy requires. The amendments that weaken judicial independence, reduce electoral credibility, expand executive control over the legislature, and abolish accountability institutions will be assessed negatively by the governance frameworks that all major development finance institutions use to allocate concessional resources and guide debt restructuring negotiations.
The African Development Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), the World Bank’s equivalent framework, and IMF Article IV consultations all incorporate governance and institutional quality assessments that would be adversely affected by these changes.
In short, if the proponents’ genuine economic goal is to attract the investment and financing Zimbabwe needs for Vision 2030, CAB3 as a whole, particularly its governance-weakening provisions, is counterproductive to that goal. The stability it claims to promote is precisely the kind of institutional stability that foreign capital does not require.
The amendments are completely at variance with President Mnangagwa’s repeated statements and undertakings that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”, “I’m a listening president”, “Zimbabwe is open for business”, “I’m a constitutionalist”, “I will allow my party to choose my successor”, etc.
Given what we have articulated in this article, the proposed amendments are completely at odds with the president’s much-hyped Vision 2030. One wonders whether these amendments have the president’s blessings, or whether it’s actually criminals (Zviganandas) surrounding the president who are pushing their own agendas.
Conclusions and Way Forward
The genuine development concerns embedded in some of CAB3’s provisions, such as long-term policy planning, technical governance capacity, and institutional rationalisation, are legitimate. But the proposed mechanisms for addressing them are institutionally counterproductive.
A government genuinely committed to economic transformation and Vision 2030 should ask itself a hard question: Will these changes make Zimbabwe more or less attractive to the genuine FDI, development finance, and private sector dynamism that our development plans require?
To President Mnangagwa and his government (policy makers), I offer the following alternative approaches:
• Pursue genuine policy stability through multi-year development compacts with parliamentary consensus, not extended executive tenures. Rwanda’s development success was built on policy continuity within standard electoral cycles, not term extensions.
• Retain and strengthen judicial appointment transparency. This is one of the cheapest and most effective signals Zimbabwe can send to investors that property rights will be protected. The current public interview process should be expanded, not contracted.
• If institutional rationalisation is the goal (Gender Commission, NPRC), ensure receiving institutions (ZHRC) receive adequate additional resourcing and mandate clarity before disbanding specialised bodies.
• Strengthen ZEC’s independence rather than fragmenting electoral administration across multiple bodies with different lines of accountability, including retaining voter registration within the independent electoral framework. The most urgent issue is to implement the recommendations of the 2023 SADC Election Monitoring Report.
Withdraw the retroactive application provision (the “notwithstanding section 328(7)” clauses) as it is the single most damaging signal this package sends about Zimbabwe’s constitutional order.
Dr Eddie Mahembe is the deputy president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society (ZES) and Managing Editor of the Zimbabwe Journal of Economics (ZJE). He can be contacted at eddiemahembe@gmail.com
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