Ziyambi claim of a diaspora vote under the new constitutional amendments is a legal deception

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

When the history of Zimbabwe’s democratic struggle is written, the Constitutional Amendment No. 3 Bill of 2026 will likely be remembered as a masterclass in legislative gaslighting.

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Minister of Justice Ziyambi Ziyambi, through the pages of the state-controlled Sunday Mail, has presented a radical dismantling of the electoral process not as a power grab, but as a “historically transformative” reform.

Central to this rhetorical sleight of hand is the dangling of a carrot that has been denied to millions for decades: the diaspora vote.

However, when one subjects the Minister’s claims to the cold light of legal logic and constitutional reality, the entire edifice crumbles.

The claim that stripping the Zimbabwean citizenry of their right to directly elect a President is the “key” to unlocking the diaspora vote is a calculated insult to the intelligence of the nation.

To understand the magnitude of this deception, we must look at the Minister’s primary assertion: that moving to a parliamentary system for electing the President “naturally” enables diaspora voting because electors will “focus solely on MPs and councillors.”

This is a spectacular non-sequitur.

In the current legal framework, the barrier to the diaspora vote has never been the office being contested, but the residency of the voter.

Under Section 23 of the Electoral Act, a citizen must be “ordinarily resident” in a constituency to be registered.

This residency requirement is not a mere legislative whim; it is anchored in the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution, specifically Section 1(1), which mandates that every citizen is entitled to be registered as a voter “on the voters roll of a constituency.”

Herein lies the “smoking gun” of the government’s insincerity.

If the administration were genuinely eager to enfranchise the millions of Zimbabweans living abroad, they would be repealing or amending the Fourth Schedule to allow for a national or external voters’ roll.

Instead, they are leaving the constitutional anchor of disenfranchisement firmly in place while promising “attendant changes” to the Electoral Act that would be legally toothless as long as the Fourth Schedule remains untouched.

As long as the Constitution requires a voter to be on a “constituency” roll, the law assumes a geographical link to a specific place in Zimbabwe—a link that the diaspora, by definition, does not maintain in the traditional sense.

The Minister’s logic is actually inverted.

It is legally and logistically far simpler to facilitate a diaspora vote for a President than for a Member of Parliament.

In a presidential election, the entire country serves as a single, national constituency.

A Zimbabwean in London or Johannesburg only needs to prove their citizenship to participate in the selection of their national leader.

Conversely, voting for an MP or a Councillor requires a granular, ward-based connection to a specific geographical location.

By claiming that the removal of the simpler, national vote (the Presidency) makes the complex, local vote (the MP) possible, Ziyambi is engaging in a transparent bait-and-switch.

He is asking the public to trade their most direct form of democratic accountability for a vague, legally precarious promise of a local vote that the government could have granted years ago by simply amending a single line of the Constitution.

The Minister’s argument collapses under the weight of the actual text of Section 1(2) of the Fourth Schedule.

While it allows for residential requirements, it explicitly mandates that any such requirements ‘must be consistent with this Constitution, in particular with section 67.

This is the ultimate indictment of Ziyambi’s logic.

If the Fourth Schedule already demands that residency rules must respect the Section 67 right of every citizen to vote, then the current exclusion of the diaspora is already a violation of the supreme law.

The government does not need to dismantle the Presidency to ‘allow’ the diaspora to vote; it simply needs to obey the existing command of the Fourth Schedule and align the Electoral Act with Section 67.

By framing the diaspora vote as a “consequence” of Constitutional Amendment No. 3, the Minister is treating a fundamental constitutional right as a political concession that the public must “buy” by giving up their right to choose their Head of State.

​Furthermore, the Minister’s claim that the diaspora vote is “not important for now” because it will come via the Electoral Act after the Bill is passed is a classic “trust me later” tactic.

There is no legal guarantee within Constitutional Amendment No. 3 that compels the government to later amend the Electoral Act in favor of the diaspora.

If the Bill is passed and the President is elected by Parliament, the government could easily maintain the residency requirements for MP elections, leaving the diaspora exactly where they are now: disenfranchised.

By leaving the Fourth Schedule as it is, the government retains a “legal trapdoor” that allows them to later claim that a diaspora vote is “unfortunately” not possible because the Constitution still requires constituency registration.

We must also question the timing and the packaging of this reform.

If the goal were truly “in service to the supreme national interest,” the enfranchisement of the diaspora would be the centerpiece of the Bill, codified in the Constitution with clear, unambiguous language.

Instead, the diaspora is being used as a rhetorical shield to deflect criticism from a Bill that systematically strips power away from the individual Zimbabwean voter.

The Minister is essentially saying that the government will stop blocking a citizen’s right to vote for an MP only if the nation agrees to surrender its right to vote for a President.

This is not a legal evolution; it is a political trade-off.

​Ultimately, the diaspora vote is being used as a shiny distraction to prevent critical analysis of the Bill’s true impact: the centralization of power.

Zimbabweans, both at home and abroad, deserve a constitution that protects their rights, not one that uses them as bargaining chips.

The government’s refusal to address the “constituency” requirement in the Fourth Schedule is the loudest part of this proposal.

It tells us that they have no intention of letting the diaspora vote, but they are more than happy to use the promise of it to dismantle the direct mandate of the President.

​We must call this what it is: a constitutional sleight of hand.

The logic offered by the state is hollow, and the legal justifications are contradictory.

If the government truly wanted the diaspora to vote, they would simply amend the laws that currently stop them.

They don’t need to take away our right to elect a President to do it.

The fact that they insist on doing both suggests that the diaspora vote is not a goal, but a bribe.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08