Tendai Ruben Mbofana
The recent intellectual gymnastics performed by Runyararo Richard Mahomva, a former top official in the Information Ministry, regarding Constitution Amendment Bill No. 3 (CAB3) are not merely perplexing; they represent a calculated heist of Zimbabwe’s foundational democratic principles.
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In his defense of the proposal to scrap the direct election of the president in favor of a selection by Parliament, Mahomva has attempted to redefine “universal suffrage” and the liberation-era mantra of “one man, one vote” with a level of semantic audacity that should alarm every citizen.
According to Mahomva, universal suffrage was never intended to ensure every person chooses the president, but rather that every Zimbabwean is allowed to “appear on the voters’ roll.”
This is not just a revision of history; it is a clinical dissection of the right to vote, leaving it as a hollowed-out shell that serves the elite while disenfranchising the masses.
To suggest that the pinnacle of democratic participation is simply having one’s name printed on a government list—regardless of whether one’s preference has any bearing on who wields the ultimate power of the state—is an insult to the intelligence of the Zimbabwean people.
If we are to follow Mahomva’s logic, the right to vote is comparable to holding a ticket for a lottery where the winners have already been decided in a backroom.
Why, one must ask, would any rational citizen care to appear on a voters’ roll if they are legally barred from exercising that registration toward the most significant office in the land?
We must be clear about the stakes: the President of Zimbabwe is not a ceremonial figurehead like the late Canaan Banana, whose role was largely symbolic while power resided with the Prime Minister.
The current office is an executive presidency of immense proportions.
This individual is the Head of State, the Head of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
In any functional democracy, the individual who holds the keys to the armory and the treasury must be the one most directly accountable to the people.
If anything, given the sheer concentration of power in that office, a direct vote for the president is the only safeguard we have.
In fact, in a worst-case scenario, I would rather vote for the president, who will then handpick MPs, than have a small, capture-prone group of parliamentarians pick the president.
The people’s mandate should flow from the top down for a role of such gravity, not be filtered through a legislative sieve that often fails to reflect the popular will.
The “universal” in universal suffrage cannot be reduced to administrative inclusion.
It is a promise that every vote carries equal weight in the selection of leadership.
Under the proposed CAB3 amendments, proponents argue that since citizens elect Members of Parliament, those MPs can then represent the people’s choice for president.
This logic is fundamentally distorted because it ignores the reality of Zimbabwe’s “winner-takes-all” electoral system.
In a constituency-based, First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system, the votes of the losing side are effectively discarded.
Consider a typical Zimbabwean constituency: if Candidate A receives 3,000 votes and Candidate B receives 2,500 votes, Candidate A is declared the winner and goes to Parliament to help choose the president.
But who does Candidate A represent in that presidential ballot?
Only the 3,000 people who voted for him.
The 2,500 people who voted for Candidate B have their voices completely erased.
Their choice for president is never heard, and their “universal suffrage” becomes a participation trophy that counts for absolutely nothing.
When you aggregate this across the entire country, nearly half the electorate could find themselves with zero say in who leads the nation.
There is nothing “universal” about a system that bins the preferences of millions of citizens.
If the government were truly sincere about aligning parliamentary selection of the president with the principle of “one man, one vote,” they would simultaneously propose a move to total Proportional Representation (PR), similar to the system used in South Africa.
In a PR system, there are no individual constituencies and no “wasted” votes.
Citizens do not vote for individual candidates; instead, they vote for a political party of their choice.
Seats in Parliament are then distributed based on the total national vote count.
Every single vote—whether cast in a remote village or a bustling city—contributes to the party’s seat tally.
To see how this would transform the fairness of the proposed 360-seat joint sitting of Parliament (consisting of the National Assembly and the Senate), we can look at a hypothetical distribution.
If Party X receives 190,000 votes, Party Y receives 143,500, and Party Z secures 23,000, the total vote count is 356,500.
In a true PR system, the seat distribution in a 360-member body would be: Party X receives 192 seats, Party Y receives 145 seats, and Party Z receives 23 seats.
In this scenario, every citizen’s vote is alive and active within the chamber that selects the president.
Without such a systemic overhaul, moving presidential selection to Parliament is nothing more than a mechanism for elite consolidation, ensuring that a minority can dictate the leadership of the majority.
Beyond the structural flaws lies a more insidious danger: the vulnerability of a small group of 360 people to external capture and corruption.
We are currently witnessing the “commercialization” of Zimbabwean politics, exemplified by the actions of figures like Wicknell Chivayo.
He has already attempted to “buy” MPs by offering $3.6 million supposedly for “constituency development.”
When individuals can openly brag about “gifting” high-end vehicles and massive sums of cash to MPs—as seen with the recent Toyota Fortuner and US$50,000 handed to Budiriro North MP Susan Matsunga—the integrity of our legislative body is shattered.
Matsunga was elected by people in Budiriro North under the then Nelson Chamisa-led CCC, believing she represented an alternative to the current administration—yet today she is abusing that trust by singing the praises of the very system her voters sought to challenge.
If an MP’s loyalty can be bought for the price of a luxury SUV and $50,000 cash, what is to stop a wealthy mogul or a foreign interest from “buying” the presidency by bribing a majority of the 360 electors?
This isn’t just a threat to the opposition; it is a double-edged sword that could eventually decapitate ZANU-PF itself.
The ruling party might think they are securing their future, but they are creating a marketplace where the highest bidder wins.
What if the ruling party wins the 2030 parliamentary elections, yet another mogul with even deeper pockets than Chivayo and his fellow Zvigananda “gifts” these MPs to vote for an opposition presidential candidate?
Those are the dangers of trying to cheat, as one day you may be the one cheated.
As my late beloved father used to say, “matsotsi haagerani”—thieves can not trust one another.
By building a system based on deception and the bypass of the popular will, you ensure that someone, somewhere, will eventually use those same loopholes to cheat you.
“Universal suffrage” is not a bureaucratic checkbox; it is the cornerstone of democracy.
It requires that every adult is not only eligible to vote but that their vote actually counts in the final tally of power.
We cannot allow deceptive semantics or legal gymnastics to strip the people of their right to choose their Commander-in-Chief.
The liberation struggle was fought for the substance of the vote, not the administrative trivia of a name on a roll.
If CAB3 proceeds in its current form, it will mark the official death of “one man, one vote” in Zimbabwe, replacing the voice of the people with the checkbooks of the elite and the whims of a few hundred bought-and-paid-for politicians.
We must reject this dilution of our rights; for a presidency this powerful, nothing less than a direct mandate from every Zimbabwean will suffice.
- 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
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