The CAB3 threat to democracy: Even Hitler was turned into a tyrant through a parliamentary landslide

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

Zimbabwe’s information ministry permanent secretary, Nick Mangwana, took to social media to gloat over the passage of Constitutional Amendment (No. 3) Bill, boasting that a combined tally of 291 to 46 votes is a “landslide.” 

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However, by celebrating these raw numbers, he is willfully ignoring the death of democracy.

In proclaiming that “the thing speaks for itself,” Mangwana relies on a dangerous, superficial conflation of absolute power with popular legitimacy. 

History, however, has already given us a tragic masterclass in how a parliament, reduced to a rubber-stamp chamber, can be used to construct a tyranny through the very mechanisms of democracy.

If we are to talk about parliamentary landslides that birthed dictatorship, we must look at Germany on March 23, 1933. 

On that day, the German parliament passed the Enabling Act, officially turning Adolf Hitler into a tyrant. 

Through a vote of 444 to 94, the legislators themselves handed him absolute power and destroyed their own democracy.

By the logic of Mangwana’s definition, that is an overwhelming landslide. 

Yet, no sane person looks back at that moment as a triumph of democratic consensus. 

It was the legal suicide of a republic, showing that even Hitler was made into a tyrant by a landslide vote in a compromised parliament.

To measure the health of a democracy by the lopsidedness of a parliamentary vote, as the permanent secretary attempts to do, is a profound fallacy. 

It deliberately confuses the actions of a whipped, insulated political class with the actual will of the sovereign citizens. 

A genuine progressive step in fostering democracy requires that fundamental alterations to the supreme law of the land be taken directly to the people through a referendum. 

When a government avoids the public and chooses instead to fast-track structural constitutional changes through a compromised legislature, it reveals a deep-seated fear of its own electorate.

The reality behind Mangwana’s celebrated numbers is rarely found in shared conviction; it is found in structural coercion and political patronage. 

Modern legislators in a captured system do not vote with their conscience or the interests of their constituents foremost in mind. 

They operate under the crushing weight of a party whipping system where dissent means political exile, or they are swayed by the quiet allure of “gifts” and privileges dangled by politically connected individuals. 

When members of parliament are either terrified of their party masters or bought by executive largesse, the lopsided numbers they produce do not represent a popular mandate. 

They represent a transaction.

A parliament that operates under these conditions ceases to be a shield for the citizens and instead becomes an acute danger to the nation. 

Mangwana boasts of a landslide as if it proves the righteousness of the bill, but history warns us of the exact opposite. 

When the guardrails of accountability are dismantled from within, democracy is effectively weaponized to endorse authoritarianism. 

A landslide in a captured chamber is not a sign of a robust state.

It is the ultimate warning sign that the institutions designed to protect freedom are being used to entrench absolute control.

• 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