The people’s will can not be manufactured: MPs represent no one without a referendum on CAB3

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The frantic rush to railroad the Constitutional Amendment (No. 3) Bill, known as CAB3, through the Parliament of Zimbabwe has exposed a profound and terrifying assault on the foundational pillars of our constitutional democracy. 

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At the heart of this unfolding tragedy is a calculated, deeply dishonest attempt by the ruling ZANU-PF government to redefine what the “will of the people” actually means. 

By parading the recent findings of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs—which claimed an astonishing and highly dubious 537,000 public submissions in favor of the bill—as a blanket democratic mandate, the authorities are engaging in a fundamental, deliberate misreading of constitutional processes. 

This is not a celebration of a maturing democracy, as ZANU-PF apologists loudly proclaim; it is a clinical exercise in manufacturing consent to mask a deep-seated fear of the genuine popular will.

The deception relies entirely on conflating two completely distinct constitutional mechanisms. 

Section 328 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe explicitly provides for both public consultations and a national referendum because the framers of our supreme law recognized that they serve entirely different purposes and are absolutely not interchangeable. 

​A public consultation process under Section 328(4) is an advisory, qualitative exercise meant to foster debate, gather diverse perspectives, and allow citizens to flag concerns or suggest refinements to a bill before legislators debate it. 

Instead, this process was completely broken by design. 

​Parliament squeezed the physical public hearings into a meager four days, scattering a tiny handful of venues across the country and effectively excluding millions of Zimbabweans. 

At the same time, they restricted written input largely to email submissions or physical delivery to the Parliament building in Mt. Hampden. 

This structurally shut out those without access to modern technologies or the means to travel hundreds of kilometers—who make up the bulk of the population, particularly in rural areas.

By its very nature, this deliberately restrictive and compromised layout left the open forums completely vulnerable to political manipulation, intimidation, and bussed-in ruling party loyalists.

​A national referendum under Section 328(6), however, is a quantitative, binding democratic mechanism that introduces an element entirely absent from public hearings: absolute secrecy. 

A referendum is not a town hall meeting; it is a nationwide election anchored by the secret ballot, a sacred democratic shield designed specifically to protect the individual from intimidation, surveillance, and consequence. 

The Constitution mandates this secret process precisely because it guarantees that the result is an uncoerced, mathematically precise measurement of the popular will.

To use the sheer volume of submissions gathered during a deeply flawed consultation process as a substitute for a referendum is a legal and moral absurdity. 

During the ongoing parliamentary debates, ZANU-PF MPs have repeatedly pointed to these numbers to support their claims. 

They argue that ordinary citizens are practically begging to extend presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years. 

Furthermore, they are using these figures to justify stripping away the direct popular election of the president in favor of a parliamentary selection system.

This is a grotesque distortion of reality. 

The nationwide public hearings were notoriously stage-managed, choreographed, and militarized. 

Watchdog groups and independent media documented how ruling party loyalists were bussed into venues to drown out dissenting voices, while ordinary citizens were compelled to sign pre-printed forms endorsing amendments they likely never understood. 

A pile of mass-produced, coerced signatures collected under the watchful eyes of local party enforcers does not equal public endorsement; it equals administrative intimidation.

The government is fully aware of this distinction, yet they pretend not to be. 

Their frantic efforts to avoid a national referendum are born out of a stark, shivering fear of the secret ballot. 

The secret ballot is the ultimate equalizer in a democracy. 

Within the privacy of the voting booth, away from the surveillance of state security apparatuses and party monitors, a citizen is shielded from coercion and consequence. 

That is where the true will of the people resides. 

ZANU-PF knows that in a free, fair, and unchoreographed referendum, the Zimbabwean populace would overwhelmingly reject an amendment designed solely to consolidate executive power and extend the incumbency of the political elite. 

This is nothing short of a constitutional heist.

This paralyzing fear of the uncoerced voice is mirrored within the very walls of Parliament. 

The regime has steadfastly refused requests for parliamentarians to vote on CAB3 via a secret ballot. 

If the ruling party were truly confident that these amendments represented a genuine national consensus and a progressive path forward, they would have no reason to fear anonymity. 

Instead, they require open, visible voting to ensure that the party whipping system remains ironclad, forcing MPs to choose between political survival and their constitutional conscience. 

By denying both the citizens a national referendum and the lawmakers a secret ballot, the executive has ensured that the entire legislative process surrounding CAB3 takes place in an environment completely stripped of genuine democratic freedom.

We must call this process what it is: a fraudulent substitution of state-sponsored theater for actual democratic consensus. 

The 537,000 submissions touted by the parliamentary committee are a monument to organizational coercion, not a mandate for dictatorship. 

True sovereignty belongs to the people of Zimbabwe, and that sovereignty cannot be bartered away through choreographed town halls or forced signatures on pre-printed templates. 

By intentionally avoiding the constitutional master key of a national referendum, the government has conceded its own illegitimacy on this issue. 

A constitution is a sacred social contract between the state and the citizens, meant to limit power, not to be rewritten at a whim to extend it. 

Any attempt to alter the fundamental structure of our governance without a secret ballot is invalid. It is an authoritarian imposition. 

The people of Zimbabwe must reject it with the contempt it deserves.

• 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