Zimbabwe’s opposition withdraws from violence-plagued hearings on Bill to extend Mnangagwa’s term

Major Zimbabwean opposition leaders this week announced a boycott of public hearings — already marred by violence — on proposed legislation that would extend President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s tenure beyond the two terms of five years stipulated in the Constitution.

Former finance minister Tendai Biti, head of the Constitution Defenders Forum, Jameson Timba, a senator and convenor of the Defend the Constitution Platform (DCP), and Lovemore Madhuku, head of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), said at a press conference in Harare on Tuesday, 31 March, that they had urged their supporters not to participate in the government’s consultations on the constitutional amendment.

The opposition leaders accused the ruling Zanu-PF of manipulating and violently disrupting the hearings into the highly controversial Constitutional Amendment Bill No 3 (CAB3), which would allow Mnangagwa to remain in office for another two years beyond the end of his second term in 2028.

“This is not consultation. It is orchestration,” said Timba, announcing the launch of an alternative consultation process.

Zanu-PF supporters violently broke up hearings and prevented opposition supporters from speaking in Harare and Bulawayo this week. At the City Sports Centre in Harare on Tuesday, lawyer Doug Coltart was assaulted and his cellphone was stolen, allegedly by a Zanu-PF office-bearer who has been named on social media.

His father, a veteran opposition leader and now the Bulawayo mayor, David Coltart, told Daily Maverick he himself had attended a “farcical” hearing on the constitutional amendment on Monday in the Bulawayo city hall.

“I sat right at the front. I’m mayor. I’m a fairly well-known figure. I’m tall. And I tried to contribute throughout this meeting. I was studiously ignored by the chairman, who picked on Zanu-PF supporters to contribute.”

He said a later hearing in a working-class suburb of the city had been violently disrupted.

Coltart Snr added that the pro-Zanu-PF media was using the hearings to try to convey the impression that the Bill has widespread support. Yet, he said, the opposition to it ran deep within Zanu-PF itself. He noted that the print media had reported that Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga had opposed the Bill in a Zanu-PF Politburo meeting last week.

“So there’s clearly even division within Zanu-PF. And there’s this very corrupt elite around Mnangagwa pushing for this, but clearly now prepared to use extreme means to pursue their objective,” said Coltart Snr.

Coltart Snr said Zimbabwe’s Constitution mandates that the public should be given an adequate opportunity to understand the Bill, but Zanu-PF had set aside only four days for the hearings. Bulawayo, with a population of more than 700,000, had only two hearings, while Harare, with a population of three million, had only three hearings.

He also accused Zanu-PF of busing in supporters from far afield to pack the halls and control the discussion.

Coltart Snr, a lawyer who helped draft Zimbabwe’s Constitution in 2013, said any amendment to the Constitution that would extend the term of the incumbent president had to be approved in a national referendum.

But Zanu-PF had overridden that and was now also manipulating the requirement of a full public consultation on the amendment.

‘Orchestration, not consultation’

Meanwhile, Timba said in a joint statement with Biti and Madhuku after their press conference in Harare on Tuesday, “What we witnessed yesterday in Harare, and indeed in other parts of the country, cannot be described as a genuine consultative process.

“Citizens were denied the opportunity to speak, voices were drowned out, and in some instances, violence and intimidation were deployed against those expressing dissenting views. A lawyer and a journalist were assaulted. A student in Bindura and youths in Bulawayo and elsewhere were abducted.

“This is not consultation. It is orchestration. A constitutional process that excludes citizens cannot claim legitimacy.”

Timba said the Defend the Constitution Platform, the Constitution Defenders Forum and the NCA had decided to “disengage from the current public hearings process”.

Instead, these organisations and others would establish an alternative framework to allow citizens to express their views about the constitutional amendment, exercising their constitutional right to demonstrate and present petitions peacefully.

Both Madhuku and Biti have been targeted for their opposition to the amendment.

“Armed unidentified men” forcibly entered a meeting in the NCA offices in Harare on 1 March and violently beat Madhuku and others “in the presence of uniformed police officers”, said Amnesty International’s Zimbabwe executive director, Lucia Masuka.

“This assault is the latest outrage targeting critics opposed to changing the Constitution to allow the extension of presidential term limits,” she said, and called for an independent investigation of the assaults.

Biti was arrested last week in Mutare and charged with violating public order laws for failing to inform authorities of a meeting he planned to discuss the constitutional amendment. He was later released on bail.

Biti, a lawyer, was the finance minister in the unity government comprising Zanu-PF and the then main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), between 2009 and 2013.

The coalition government was formed after the MDC beat Zanu-PF and the MDC’s founding leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, beat the then president, Robert Mugabe, in the 2008 elections.

Since then, the MDC has steadily disintegrated under relentless Zanu-PF pressure and poor leadership, and the Zimbabwean political opposition is now in disarray. DM