Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF Party Seeks To Extend President’s Term By Two Years

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Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF spokesman, Farai Marapira, on Tuesday said the party is seeking to extend President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s term in office by two years until 2030.

The spokesman gave no details of how this could be achieved or whether constitutional changes would be sought to enable the 82-year-old Zanu-PF leader to stay on.

However, Zimbabwe’s constitution limits the presidential office to two five-year terms, and Mnangagwa’s second and final term as president expires in 2028.

“The issue of the president staying in power is a party position which has been agreed upon,” the party’s director of information, Farai Marapira, told Reuters by telephone.

Asked whether that meant changing the constitution to extend presidential terms to seven years, he replied: “The modalities have not been decided.”

For much of its history since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe was led by the late Robert Mugabe who was prime minister from 1980 until he was elected president in December 1987, a post he held until November 2017.

Mugabe openly believed in a one-party state and used violence and intimidation to prevent anyone from challenging his monopoly on power at the ballot box.

In 2013, Mugabe signed a new constitution into law limiting presidents to two five-year terms.

It did not apply retroactively, and Mugabe would have been able to stay in power for a further 10 years were it not for the 2017 coup that replaced him with his then-deputy, Mnangagwa.

Mugabe died two years later.

Constitutional lawyer Welshman Ncube said that, in theory, any constitutional change could not apply to the incumbent.

“Mnangagwa will have to subject himself to two referendums, one to scrap the term limits and another to remove the provision that an incumbent cannot benefit from any amendments,” he told Reuters.

Another constitutional lawyer, Lovemore Madhuku, said Mnangagwa couldn’t stay in power legally beyond 2028 as “no one has the power to extend the president’s term of office”.

Since 1990, 24 African governments have sought to extend their president’s rule beyond existing constitutional limits, usually by scrapping the two-term ceiling, and with all but four of them successful, according to a 2023 paper in Scientific Research Publishing.