12 March 2026
The Clerk of Parliament
Parliament Building Mt. Hampden
Harare
clerk@parlzim.gov.zw
Dear sir
RE: SUBMISSIONS BY ZIMBABWEAN RETIRED GENERALS AND SENIOR CIVIL SERVANTS WHO ARE EX COMBATANTS
We must first begin with revolutionary salutations.
On the Proposed Constitutional Amendments Number 3 Bill (H.B 1, 2026) and the Sanctity of the People’s Will we are responding in terms of Section 328 (4) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which reads in part:
“(3) Parliament must invite members of the public to express their views on the proposed Bill in Public meetings and through written submissions and must convene meetings and provide facilities to enable the public to do so” this is in response to calls by the Clerk of Parliament for submissions as we now do in writing.
We write to you today not as rebels, not as dissenters, and not as enemies of the Party to which we have given our entire lives.
We speak as men who were present when this nation was being born in blood and fire, men who commanded comrades to their deaths with a solemn promise: that the people of Zimbabwe would one day govern themselves.
It is now clear that promise is now under threat we have in the recent past restrained ourselves and we cannot remain silent. We take this opportunity now through our submissions.
Let history bear witness to what we endured we shall not be labour Zimbabweans with accounts of a war they are well acquainted with, a war they lived through a war against Smith and his regime our children have been told of on many occasions.
Thus, it began:
1. In 1977, it was Gore Re Musangano the year of the people’s party Zanu
2. In 1978, Gore Re Vanhu the year of the people.
3. In 1979 was the year the party moved towards the new dawn of an independent Zimbabwe
4. And in 1980, Gore Re Masimba Evanhu, the year of the power of the people.
These were not mere slogans and programmes. They were the covenant we made with every Zimbabwean living and dead that sovereignty would rest with the masses, not with the privileged few.
We remind those with short memories some of whom sit in Parliament today as members of ZANU PF:
In the earliest days of our party, there was no President after the removal of the late Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole.
Power was held collectively, by the people and their representatives. It was not until 1985 at a Congress convened at Borrowdale Racecourse in Harare that a party President was formally elected in the person of the late President Robert Gabriel Mugabe who until then was Secretary General.
(It was the people who voted for the President) of ZANU and the position of 1st secretary was established separately from that of Secretary General.
This was by deliberate design. The founding principle was unambiguous: power derives from the people and belongs to the people, and the people alone choose their leaders.
That is the philosophy upon which this revolution was built and must remain the same.
We therefore ask, with heavy hearts: are we now reversing everything we bled for through these amendments?
Are we returning to the era of Ian Smith, when only a privileged elite the Zvigananda as we called them the likes of Mazaiwana, Gumede and others had the right to participate in governance?
Zvigananda have since re surfaced.
Under that shameful system, only Africans of means were permitted to vote.
The majority were told, in effect, that their lives did not matter, that their voices were irrelevant. We took up arms to destroy that system.
We will not stand by and watch it be quietly rebuilt under a different flag.
Today we are being told only a select few in the persons of Members of Parliament will choose a leader on behalf of 17 million Zimbabweans. This is totally unacceptable.
In the year 2002, through the late General Vitalis Zvinavashe a soldier of immense honour, we as senior commanders made our position clear to the nation.
We declared that the leadership of Zimbabwe must fit into a straitjacket of principle.
The party does not reshape itself around the appetites of its leaders. Leaders reshape themselves around the values of the party and the will of the people.
Today, we watch with sorrow as Zvigananda attempt to invert this entirely by bending the nation’s foundational law to serve their own ambitions and protect their own interests. This is the very corruption of purpose that we warned against. The liberation struggle rested on two fundamental pillars: Land, and the universal adult suffrage to vote that is one man, one vote. These were not negotiable then, and they must not be negotiable now.
We did not fight for a Zimbabwe where the majority are spectators in their own country’s affairs. We fought so that every Zimbabwean regardless of wealth, status, or political affiliation would have an equal and inviolable voice.
In the year 2000 we as ZANU PF championed a constitution at the time Parliament did what was true and correct by referring the constitutional proposals to the people through a referendum. The result was the people rejected our proposal, and we accepted the outcome thus respecting the will of the people.
In 2012, Zimbabweans voted for their Constitution. They spoke clearly, deliberately, and with dignity during the tenure of a government formed by the Global Political Agreement.
In Section 212 of that Constitution, the people of Zimbabwe themselves charged the Zimbabwe Defence Forces with the duty to uphold and defend the Constitution. That was not our idea alone it was the expressed will of the nation.
Now, men and women who did not endure a single night in the bush, who never buried a comrade, who did not witness what we witnessed these individuals seek to strip away that constitutional mandate without so much as consulting the people. They seek to do this quietly, without a referendum, without the people’s voice being heard. We frown upon this.
The President of the Republic of Zimbabwe His Excellency Cde Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa has said himself, he is a constitutionalist, he respects the will of the people and has said on numerous occasions The Voice of the People is the Voice of God and yet we see brazen disobedience by ambitious opportunists today attempting to undo the will of the people.
We will defend our Presidents position, he is our Leader and so should Members of Parliament.
It is for precisely this reason that in November 2017, during Operation Restore Legacy, we deferred to the Constitution. We did not act on personal ambition or factional interest. We acted because the Constitution was the people’s document decided by the people, for the people and it provided the only legitimate framework for resolving the crisis the nation faced at the time as the G40 Cabal attempted to temper with the constitution.
That same logic applies today. We are aware that some of these characters in the G40, opportunists, Zvigananda and Johnny Come lately characters are now at the forefront of usurping the will of the people expressed through their constitution.
If these amendments are truly in the national interest, let them be put to the people.
Call a referendum. Let the same Zimbabweans who gave us that Constitution speak again. If the amendments have merit, the people will affirm them. If they do not, the people will reject them. Either way, the will of the majority must be the final word.
We wish to be clear on one matter: we are ZANU-PF. We have always been ZANU-PF. We will die ZANU-PF. We are not merely members we are stockholders. This is our party, forged in our sacrifice.
ZANU-PF may govern its own internal affairs as it sees fit, that is the party’s sovereign right.
But the national Constitution is not ZANU-PF’s property. It belongs to every Zimbabwean including the millions who have never held a party card in their lives.
We went in the full knowledge that death was the most likely outcome.
The only opportunity before us was the opportunity to die for our people’s freedom.
Those championing these constitutional changes are driven by a different kind of opportunity, the opportunity for personal enrichment, for the consolidation of power, for the protection of privilege.
We ask them plainly: what of the generality of Zimbabweans? What of the mother in Binga, the farmer in Chiredzi, the young man in Mbare, our daughters who can only dream of a better future? What is there in these amendments for them?
We are not rebelling.
We are exercising the most fundamental right in any democracy the right to speak.
We remain loyal to the party, loyal to the nation, and loyal above all to the people of Zimbabwe, in whose name every sacrifice of the liberation struggle was made.
We call on Parliament to do the right thing and submit these proposed amendments to a national referendum, as democratic principles demand. Anything less is not a constitutional amendment.
It is a betrayal not of us, but of every Zimbabwean who ever dared to hope for a better country.
For and on behalf of the Retired Generals and Senior Civil Servants who are Ex Combatants
Air Marshal (Retired) Henry Muchena.
Written during the Constitutional Amendment Public Debate Period.