Why I slowed down once before - And why Zimbabweans must choose courts over the streets now

I went to school with a man who now sits as a serving Justice in Zimbabwe. Years later, our paths crossed again - not as classmates this time, but as a journalist and the judge who once tried to warn him off a story.

That encounter, and the lesson I took from it, is why I am writing today about the calls for a national shutdown on July 31.

Asking the wrong questions at the wrong time

At some point after we finished school, I became politically active - not as a partisan, but as someone asking pointed questions about the independence of Zimbabwe's judiciary, its media, its civil service, its security forces, its central bank, and its electoral commission. These are not fringe concerns. They go to the heart of whether a democracy functions or merely performs the appearance of one.

The government did not appreciate the questions. At one point, word reached me - relayed through a then-serving Vice President - that I should not set foot back in Zimbabwe unless I first cleared my name with the ruling party's politburo. It was not a subtle message.

A judge's warning, and an honest one

Not long after, my old schoolmate - by then a serving Justice —- called me into his office. He did not threaten me. If anything, he spoke to me the way an old friend does when he's genuinely worried.

He told me to slow down on my publications. Then he said something I have never forgotten: in Zimbabwe, if Parliament passes a law declaring that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, you are obliged to respect it, because it is the law of the land. He said he understood why I questioned policies that struck him too as bizarre - we were friends, after all - but as long as something was law, he had no discretion. If the police brought me before him over my publications, he told me plainly, he would have no choice but to find me guilty and send me to jail.

I took his advice. I slowed down.

I share this not to relitigate old grievances, but because that conversation taught me something important about how power actually works in Zimbabwe - and about timing, which is the reason I am writing now.
CAB3 is now the law - and that changes the terrain

Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3, popularly known as CAB3, is no longer a bill. President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed it into law on 7 July 2026, after it cleared the National Assembly, the Senate, and a final vote in the lower house over the preceding weeks. It is now the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Act - Act No. 6 of 2026.

Its effects are sweeping. It scraps the direct popular election of the president in favor of a vote by a joint sitting of Parliament. It extends presidential, parliamentary and local government terms from five to seven years - keeping Mnangagwa in office until 2030 rather than 2028. It strips the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission of its role in voter registration and constituency delimitation, handing those functions instead to a presidentially-appointed Registrar-General and a new Delimitation Commission. It abolishes the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission. Each change moves oversight further from independent institutions and closer to the executive.

The process that produced it drew genuine resistance. Civil society groups, the Law Society of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches all made submissions against it. Court challenges were filed, including one arguing that the changes required a referendum under Section 328 of the Constitution and should not proceed without one. Even Vice President Constantino Chiwenga made unusually public interventions suggesting the process needed broader participation. None of it stopped the bill's passage.

My advice: the courtroom, not the street

Now, activists - under banners like the M31 Movement and a coalition of political parties, churches, war veterans and civic groups - are calling for a national shutdown on 31 July 2026. I understand the anger behind it. I do not think flooding the streets now is the right response, and I say this as someone who has paid a price for asking hard questions, not as someone comfortable with the status quo.

My advice is this: people should not abandon the fight to challenge CAB3 - they should take it to court, because that is the lawful channel that remains open. There was a time for street pressure. That time was during the public consultation period earlier this year, or while the bill was still moving through Parliament, when disruption of the legislative process itself might plausibly have changed the outcome. Organizing mass protests then - before assent, while the law was still being made rather than already made - was the sound and reasonable approach.

Waiting until after the president's signature, and only then trying to fill the streets, changes the legal character of the act entirely. A protest against a bill is a democratic act. A shutdown against a signed, gazetted law is, in the government's eyes and quite possibly in the courts', already a different matter - and it hands ZANU-PF exactly the framing it wants.

The trap being set

This is the part organizers should weigh most carefully. The government has already signaled how it intends to treat 31 July. Home Affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe has publicly warned that "law enforcement agents will be ready and waiting" and insisted Zimbabwe is "not a banana republic." Politburo members have urged citizens to "unite" now that the bill is law and to channel grievances through "lawful platforms." Reports over the past two weeks describe a sweeping police operation that saw more than 2,000 people arrested within 48 hours, alongside the arrest of at least one activist linked to shutdown mobilization - actions rights groups say fit a familiar pattern of pre-emptive crackdowns ahead of planned demonstrations.

None of this is accidental. A confrontation in the streets gives the state a pretext to arrest organizers, justify a heavier security posture, and portray the entire opposition to CAB3 as lawlessness rather than legitimate grievance. It shifts the story from "an unconstitutional law was rushed through" to "protesters defied the law and were dealt with." That is a trade Zimbabwe's democratic movement cannot afford to keep making.

My old friend, the Justice, was not wrong about one thing: as long as something is the law, the state will enforce it, however bizarre the law may be. The way to change a bad law in a country that still has functioning courts - however imperfect - is to challenge it there, through the referendum arguments already before the judiciary, not to hand the government a street confrontation it has been openly preparing for.

Zimbabweans have every right to be furious about CAB3. That fury will serve them better in a courtroom than in a standoff the government has spent two weeks getting ready to win.