---
title: "Zimbabwe’s descent into dictatorship and the peril of African leaders’ apathy"
description: "The Southern African Development Community’s governments, with South Africa being the most powerful, have been watching Zimbabwe’s slide into a constitutionally entrenched dictatorship in silence. This has consequences, not just for the country whose democracy is being killed, but for its neighbours as well."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "THE LOWLY NEWSPAPER MAN"
author: "Mondli Makhanya"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/mondli-makhanya/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-07-25-zimbabwes-descent-into-dictatorship-and-the-peril-of-african-leaders-apathy/"
published: "2026-07-25T16:52:43"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 1422
---

# Zimbabwe’s descent into dictatorship and the peril of African leaders’ apathy

> The Southern African Development Community’s governments, with South Africa being the most powerful, have been watching Zimbabwe’s slide into a constitutionally entrenched dictatorship in silence. This has consequences, not just for the country whose democracy is being killed, but for its neighbours as well.

By Mondli Makhanya · Published 25 July 2026, 18:52 SAST

## Key points
- Zimbabwe’s slide into dictatorship is intensified by the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) silence, potentially destabilising the entire region.
- President Emmerson Mnangagwa recently enacted constitutional amendments to extend his term until 2030, solidifying a system designed for perpetual Zanu-PF dominance.
- Intimidation tactics against independent media highlight the pervasive fear stifling dissent, as prominent figures rue their failure to stand against authoritarianism.
- SADC and African Union leaders are criticised for their inaction in the face of Zimbabwe’s democratic erosion, raising alarms about broader regional consequences.

## Content

Prominent Zimbabwean businessman and newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube [penned a spine-chilling piece](https://allthingszimbabwe.substack.com/p/they-forced-us-to-apologise-then) on Substack this week about how, in 2024 and 2025, newspapers in his stable were intimidated into to apologising for and withdrawing stories that revealed President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s intention to extend his term beyond the constitutionally stipulated end in 2028.

The intimidation came in a writ from Mnangagwa’s lawyers demanding that the respective stories be taken down within 48 hours or pay damages of up to $22-million, which would accrue daily if not paid. On both occasions the newspapers, faced with the might of one of the country’s most formidable legal firms and representing the most powerful (and one with deep pockets), buckled. They knew their reporting was 100% on point but the idea of facing obviously malicious litigation that could bring them to their knees convinced them to live to fight another day.

Anyway, about two weeks ago, Mnangagwa signed constitutional amendments that will see him extend his term until 2030, what Ncube described as “the very outcome our newspapers warned about”. This is despite consistently denying for years that he had any such intentions and taking that drastic step of threatening NewsDay and The Standard.

The amendments will see the scheduled 2028 elections cast aside, the presidential and parliamentary terms increased from five years to seven and a shift from the system of the president being directly elected by voters to one where the head of state will be chosen by parliament. This may not sound controversial to South Africans where the president is elected by the National Assembly. There are many other jurisdictions around the world that operate this way, Zanu-PF and its apologists have argued, so it is not intrinsically undemocratic. They are not wrong.

***Mnangagwa’s legacy will be that of sending Zimbabwe’s democracy to the cemetery and systematically replacing it with a constitutionally entrenched dictatorship.***

However, this is not happening in a vacuum. Since the 2000 parliamentary election in which the Movement for Democratic Change’s victory was snatched in broad daylight, the political system has been engineered to always deliver a Zanu-PF win. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is basically a Zanu-PF organ and has been indicted by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission as being an enabler of flawed elections. The tightly controlled state media that dominates the airwaves and whose print products are heavily supported by government advertising, is essentially the ruling party’s propaganda arm. The security forces swear loyalty to the party hierarchy rather than the republic. The judiciary is packed with loyalists or mediocre beneficiaries of Zanu-PF favours.

So what do you have? A system designed to ensure permanent Zanu-PF parliamentary dominance and the presence of the party leader at the very helm. That 83-year-old Mnangagwa is that leader right now. He and his Zanu-PF successors are guaranteed the presidency through this cooked system. Where Robert Mugabe’s legacy is that of choking Zimbabwe’s democracy, Mnangagwa’s will be that of sending it to the cemetery and systematically replacing it with a constitutionally entrenched dictatorship. By the time his extended term ends in 2030, only a fool would believe that his appetite for another term will have been satisfied. Let’s brace ourselves for a repeat of Cameroon’s Paul Biya, who contested an election at the age of 93.

Ncube today deeply regrets the decision to bow to the threats, calling it a “failure of courage”. He believes they should have stood their ground and damn the consequences.

“We were afraid. Afraid of a powerful president. Afraid of the enormous costs of defending ourselves in a judicial system over which the executive has accumulated disturbing influence. Afraid that even if our journalism was defensible, the process itself could cripple the business. That is what intimidation looks like when it arrives on a lawyer’s letterhead,” Ncube wrote.

He added: “That experience taught me something important: authoritarian systems do not depend only on violent men and repressive laws. They depend on the fear of ordinary institutions.”

***The people who should be hanging their heads for failure of courage, failure of conscience and failure of conviction are the leaders of our continent and in particular the SADC region.***

Truer words could not be said. Another iteration of this statement is that evil thrives when good men are silent. This lowly newspaper man has long been very critical, sometimes unfairly, of Zimbabweans’ aversion to risk when confronting the Zanu-PF regime. While it is true there have been protests that have been violently crushed, that the brutal state has spared nothing in crushing political opposition and civil society activism, the fact is that in the 26 years since the meltdown began, most Zimbabweans’ form of resistance has been to skip the border and make a new life elsewhere.

But “failure of courage” or not, Ncube is being hard on himself and his colleagues in believing that defying the threat could have staved off the certain march to full authoritarianism. In a situation where much of the judiciary unashamedly conducts itself like an extension of the Zanu-PF politburo, a prolonged battle might have marked the demise of one of the country’s most courageous media houses and actually allowed the bad guys freer rein. As painful as that decision might be, when you apply 20/20 vision in hindsight, the bottom line is that NewsDay and The Standard did get to live another day and continue to shine a light on the dramatic slide to full authoritarianism.

The people who should be hanging their heads for failure of courage, failure of conscience and failure of conviction are the leaders of our continent and in particular the SADC region. Zimbabwe has faced many perilous moments over the past 26 years, each darker than the previous. Each one of these moments has seen the country take leap after leap into greater authoritarianism. The constitutional amendments are yet another huge leap in this direction, but this time a fundamental legitimising of autocracy. The legacy of Mugabe was the use of brute force to enforce Zanu-PF legitimacy. Mnangagwa will make the crime of oppression constitutional.

The African Union and the SADC are watching this strangulation of democracy play out without lifting a finger or even raising a voice. This is not a movie. This is real life, a culmination of two-and-a-half decades of killing the dreams of a liberated people. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the Harvard academics who authored the 2018 book How Democracies Die, contend that this need no longer happen in spectacular fashion – with coups, martial law and the takeover of broadcast services. Instead it happens in “plain sight” as elected officials kill democracy “through gradual erosion of political norms and institutions”.

***South Africa’s leaders need not be reminded of the consequences of our acquiescing to Zanu-PF’s savage suffocation of the Zimbabwean democracy.***

“Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders – presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps,” they argue.

How Democracies Die was apt as it came out in the second year of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, when it was becoming clear that the wannabe autocrat was following the script of other democratically elected leaders who did not like the model that got them elected. When democracies die there are consequences, mostly in the form of economic decline and political instability. Official kleptocracy thrives. The autocrats become voracious and vicious.

The SADC’s governments, with South Africa being the most powerful of them, have been watching this happen in plain sight. This silence comes with consequences, not just for the country whose democracy is being killed, but for its neighbours as well. South Africa’s leaders need not be reminded of the consequences of our acquiescing to Zanu-PF’s savage suffocation of the Zimbabwean democracy. If they do need a reminder then they need to look up the name “Jacinta” on their phones. There are consequences for regional stability, for the SADC economy and balanced socioeconomic development in our neighbourhood.

Mnangagwa is popularly known as the “Crocodile”, a nickname derived from his ruthlessness as he rose through the ranks of Zanu-PF. This carnivore is about to devour more than his own nation. The silence and inaction of our leaders serves nobody. Even if they do not care about the citizens of Zimbabwe, they should see the bigger picture. **DM**