Constitution, time, development: Zimbabwe's defining equation

THERE are moments in a nation's life when the argument is not chiefly about personalities, slogans or the theatre of the day - but about time itself: how it is organised, how it is protected and how it is converted into national capability.

Constitutional Amendment No. 3 of 2026 belongs in that register.

It is best read not as a narrow political adjustment, but as an attempt to redefine how Zimbabwe structures constitutional time in pursuit of stability, coherence and developmental momentum.

Modern constitutional democracies often treat elections as sacred civic rituals - an unquestioned rhythm that promises renewal, accountability and legitimacy.

The five-year cycle, in particular, has become an inherited orthodoxy, largely drawn from Western parliamentary traditions and carried across borders as though it were a universal formula.

Yet a sobering question lingers beneath the ceremony: Does the tempo of frequent elections reliably deepen development, or can it - in certain institutional environments - fracture it into permanent motion without durable progress?

Zimbabwe's experience, like that of many post-colonial states, exposes a paradox that is easy to acknowledge yet difficult to solve.

Electoral competition can energise participation, widen public engagement and sharpen scrutiny. At the same time, it can generate chronic instability - not always through violence or overt crisis, but through a subtler erosion of governing bandwidth.

Campaign season begins early, ends late and steadily bleeds into governing season; policy becomes messaging, strategy becomes optics and long-horizon projects are pulled into the gravity of short-term bargaining. The State oscillates between mobilisation and paralysis - a cycle that looks energetic from a distance, yet often feels unproductive up close.  This is the constitutional dilemma Amendment No. 3 appears to confront: whether governance can be insulated, at least partially, from perpetual campaign politics - without severing the cord of public legitimacy.

Development is not episodic; it is cumulative. Infrastructure corridors, industrial clusters, currency reforms, agricultural transformation and State-capacity upgrades do not succeed because they are announced; they succeed because they are sustained.

Where leadership horizons are short, incentives distort: immediate applause competes with structural reform; difficult but necessary adjustments are postponed; long-term investments are traded for short-term popularity. Even when intentions are sincere, the political clock can quietly train decision-makers to prioritise what is quick over what is consequential.

Political science literature increasingly recognises this tension. Democracies with tight electoral cycles often struggle with policy continuity: tax reforms are reversed, trade positions are renegotiated, bureaucracies operate under shifting priorities and investors hesitate when electoral volatility signals that the rules may be rewritten midstream. The result is not simply "politics" in the abstract - it is measurable friction in the machinery of development.

In that light, asking whether constitutional design should recalibrate political time is neither radical nor anti-democratic; it is strategic - and, for states pursuing long-term reconstruction, arguably overdue.

China's policy continuity

It is here that comparisons become useful - not as templates to copy, but as mirrors that reveal what continuity can unlock.

China's transformation over the past four decades stands as one of the most consequential development stories in modern history. Under the stewardship of the Communist Party of China, the country lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, built world-leading infrastructure and emerged as a technological powerhouse.

The critical ingredient was not electoral spectacle; it was policy continuity.

Five-year plans were implemented with discipline, leadership transitions occurred within a controlled framework that prioritised stability over populism and industrial policy was not rewritten with every shift of political mood. Infrastructure commitments survived beyond individual personalities, because the system made continuity a governing virtue rather than a political accident.

Zimbabwe need not replicate China's model wholesale - and, indeed, should not pretend that different histories, cultures and institutional realities can be flattened into one. But it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore the correlation between continuity and development.

Stability enables strategic patience; it attracts capital; it strengthens state capacity; it reduces the "stop-start" tax that frequent political resets impose on serious projects.

If the ambition is to build, not merely to govern, then constitutional time becomes an economic variable - as real as interest rates, as consequential as policy credibility.

In contrast, Western democracies often display a different pathology: policy whiplash. Consider the United States, where major commitments can be entered, abandoned, then revived - sometimes within a single electoral cycle.

Trade positions shift, climate commitments oscillate and immigration policy can swing dramatically depending on who occupies the Executive. The era of Donald Trump illustrated something even deeper than partisan controversy: the structural vulnerability of highly competitive electoral systems to leadership volatility, including the elevation of polarising figures whose governing style can strain domestic institutions and disrupt diplomatic predictability.

Whether one admires or criticises Trump's politics is beside the point; the constitutional lesson is that electoral intensity can, under certain conditions, prioritise drama over durability - and the consequences do not remain domestic. The question, then, is not whether democracy is desirable, but what kind of democracy is being pursued.

Is it a theatrical democracy - rich in contestation, poor in continuity - or a developmental democracy, where legitimacy is not only procedural but also measured in delivery, stability and rising national capability?

Put differently, is the constitutional system designed to maximise competition or to maximise outcomes?

These are uncomfortable questions precisely because they force a nation to evaluate governance not by how loudly it performs, but by how reliably it builds.

Sovereignty sharpens this debate further.

Constitutional design is not only about internal governance mechanics; it is also about protecting the strategic posture of the State in a world where external pressures, incentives and punishments are real.

Political actors are entitled to opposition, criticism and alternative policy visions - that is normal in any society with public life.

Yet when factions within the political class treat external leverage, including sanctions pressure or foreign coercion, as a tactical instrument against their own State, the sovereignty calculus changes.

A constitution, in such conditions, is not merely a rulebook; it is a shield.

Sanctions, regardless of how they are justified rhetorically, can constrain a country's financial architecture, restrict access to credit, complicate international transactions and create ripple effects that reach ordinary livelihoods: employment prospects, currency stability and service delivery.

These costs are not abstract, and they do not wait politely at the border for political disputes to end.

A constitutional order that takes sovereignty seriously must, therefore, ask, without apology, how Executive authority can be secured against capture by strategic orientations that align with external pressure rather than domestic resilience.

Sovereignty is not a slogan; it is a constitutional responsibility - and a developmental prerequisite. This is also why imported models must be approached with caution.

Western liberal democracy is often presented as the apex of governance - a finished product to be copied, not a contested tradition to be adapted.

Yet its global record is uneven, especially where competitive multiparty systems were introduced without the institutional maturity needed to prevent fragmentation, coalition deadlock and chronic policy inconsistency.

Democracy cannot be reduced to the frequency of elections; it must be assessed by outcomes: social cohesion, economic progress, institutional durability and public trust. A ballot can express choice, but it cannot, by itself, manufacture capacity, discipline or a coherent national strategy.

From this vantage point, Zimbabwe's constitutional evolution reads as part of a broader Global South question: Should governance models be mechanically imported, or adaptively constructed?

The former flatters external expectations; the latter answers internal necessities.

Amendment No. 3, at minimum, signals an intention to treat constitutional design as a tool of nation-building rather than a ritual of borrowed certainty.

Yet structure alone cannot do the work.

Continuity without performance becomes complacency; predictability without reform becomes  protected mediocrity.

Here, the Chinese example again offers a hard lesson: Party dominance was accompanied - at least in its most effective phases - by technocratic discipline, performance metrics and periodic campaigns against corruption and inertia.

If Zimbabwe is to move towards a stability-oriented constitutional framework, ZANU PF must entrench meritocracy, policy sophistication and measurable developmental outcomes - not as public relations, but as governing culture.

Liberation legitimacy is historical capital; developmental legitimacy must be continuously earned.

Ultimately, Amendment No. 3 can be interpreted as an attempt to reposition Zimbabwe as a developmental republic rather than an electoral theatre - a recalibration of political tempo that prioritises strategic patience over cyclical agitation.

The deeper constitutional question is not whether elections occur every five or seven years; it is whether the State's architecture enables sustained national progress, protects sovereignty and produces a governing rhythm capable of compounding gains across generations.

Nations that master continuity tend to master development; nations trapped in perpetual contest often pay for it with stagnation disguised as activity.

Zimbabwe now stands at a constitutional crossroads.

If stability is consolidated, sovereignty defended and governance professionalised, Amendment No. 3 may be remembered not as a partisan adjustment, but as the moment the nation chose structural maturity over inherited orthodoxy and chose to treat constitutional time as an instrument of progress rather than a calendar of recurring disruption.

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Dereck Goto is a Harare-based political analyst.