Rewriting Presidential Tenure: How Constitutional Amendments Have Become a Tool of Executive Entrenchment in Africa

[Sanjna Jain is an International Law and Human Rights Fellow at the International Commission of Jurists in their Africa Regional Program]

After months of deliberation, on 7 July 2026 Zimbabwe’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has signed into law a constitutional amendment that will that will keep him in office until 2030, delaying the originally scheduled 2028 presidential election. The constitutional amendment fundamentally reshapes Zimbabwe’s electoral system and the rules governing presidential tenure and will therefore have lasting effect well beyond President Mnangagwa. The amendment replaces the direct election of the President by universal suffrage with election by a joint sitting of Parliament and also extends presidential terms from five to seven years.  

In 2013, Zimbabwe adopted a constitution that introduced important democratic safeguards in response to the country’s decades-long history of authoritarian rule. However, continued governance concerns in the years that followed raise questions about the effectiveness of those protections in practice. The new amendment has attracted constitutional challenges from registered voters, war veterans and political actors on the ground that it permits the incumbent President to benefit from changes to the rules governing his own tenure, raising broader questions about constitutional amendments and political incumbency.

Zimbabwe is not an isolated case. Across Africa, constitutional amendment procedures have increasingly been used to revisit the rules governing presidential tenure through the extension of terms and the removal of term limits, enabling incumbents to remain in office beyond originally contemplated limits. While the amendment process is an essential feature of constitutional democracy, it also creates a structural tension: those empowered to alter constitutional rules may simultaneously benefit from doing so. In the context of presidential tenure, this raises a question extending beyond legality: whether constitutional change may legitimately be used to reshape the conditions of incumbency in ways that entrench existing power.

Zimbabwe’s Amendment

Beyond presidential tenure and election, Zimbabwe’s constitutional amendment introduces broader institutional changes affecting electoral governance. The amendment increases the number of senators the President may appoint and reconfigures several constitutional commissions and electoral institutions. Although these changes may appear technical, they have broader constitutional implications because they affect the distribution of political authority and the independence of institutions responsible for administering elections and safeguarding constitutional compliance.

The reforms also raise broader concerns about executive accountability. While supporters argue that extending presidential terms remains constitutional because the two-term limit is retained, critics contend that the amendment allows the incumbent President to benefit from changes to the rules governing his own tenure. More fundamentally, the replacement of direct presidential election by universal suffrage with election by a joint sitting of Parliament marks a fundamental shift in the constitutional logic of executive legitimacy, moving from a model grounded in direct popular mandate to one mediated through parliamentary selection.

The Challenge Before the Constitutional Court

The proposed amendment was first challenged before the Constitutional Court while it remained under consideration in June 2026. A central basis of the challenge was that, if the amendment was enacted in its original formulation, it would infringe political rights protected under section 67(1)(a) of the Constitution, which guarantee citizens the right to participate in free, fair and periodic elections. The challengers of the amendment also argued that, by altering the framework for electoral competition and restructuring the timing and form of presidential elections, the amendments would undermine the principle of regular democratic accountability.  They relied on section 328(7) of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits amendments to presidential term limits that would have the effect of benefiting an incumbent President, arguing that the proposed reforms were exactly the type of amendments that this section was designed to prevent. 

A further aspect of the challenge concerned the President’s role in the legislative process. Invoking section 196(2) of the Constitution, which requires public officers to avoid conflicts between their personal interests and their official duties, the challengers argued that the President’s documented participation in Cabinet deliberations approving the amendment created an impermissible conflict of interest given that the amendment would extend his tenure.

On 17 June 2026, the Constitutional Court rejected the challenge, holding that neither section 196(2) nor the President’s broader constitutional responsibilities imposed a specific legal obligation requiring recusal from Cabinet deliberations. While recognizing broader concerns of constitutional ethics and good governance, the Court held that the challengers had failed to identify a legally enforceable obligation.

Following President Mnangagwa’s assent to Constitution Amendment No. 3 on 7 July 2026, the amendment was subsequently challenged in fresh proceedings before the Constitutional Court, brought by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an opposition political party in Zimbabwe. They argued that the amendment was enacted in contravention of the constitutional amendment procedures, including the protections contained in section 328 of the Constitution governing amendments affecting presidential tenure. At the time of writing, those proceedings remain pending.

This litigation leaves unresolved a broader constitutional question at the heart of the dispute: the extent to which constitutional safeguards designed to regulate incumbency and ensure democratic accountability can meaningfully constrain constitutional amendment processes where reforms are adopted through ostensibly lawful procedures. The Constitutional Court’s eventual determination will provide an important indication of the extent to which Zimbabwe’s judicial system is willing to police the constitutional limits on amendments that benefit incumbent political actors.

The Constitutional Function of Presidential Term Limits

As many political scientists have highlighted, term limits are “precommitments through which the polity restricts its ability to retain a popular executive down the road”. Term limits can therefore be described as mechanisms through which a constitutional system “bind[s] itself in advance”, recognizing that the political incentives facing future officeholders may diverge from the principles that originally informed the constitution. Presidential term limits, therefore, serve not merely as electoral rules prescribing the duration of office, but as safeguards intended to prevent the concentration and indefinite retention of executive power in the same hands.

This logic reflects the broader functions of presidential term limits. They promote political competition by guaranteeing opportunities for leadership renewal, reduce the likelihood of personalized rule and encourage peaceful transfers of power through regular electoral cycles. Their purpose is not to deny the electorate’s ability to select its leaders, but to acknowledge that extended incumbency can reshape the conditions of electoral competition in ways that favor those already in office.

Yet these constitutional safeguards on presidential terms and elections gives rise to an inherent paradox. Because presidential term limits are themselves constitutional rules, they remain susceptible to amendments. Scholars have therefore observed that amendment procedures may become a vehicle for “constitutional manipulation”, enabling governments to weaken one of democracy’s key institutional safeguards while remaining within the formal framework of constitutional legality. The current Zimbabwean constitutional amendment illustrates precisely this dilemma: the same constitutional procedures designed to facilitate lawful constitutional change may also be used to weaken one of the Constitution’s principal constraints on executive entrenchment.

It is this tension that places Zimbabwe within a broader continental pattern. Across Africa, constitutional amendment procedures have increasingly been used to revisit the rules governing presidential tenure. While some amendments have pursued genuine institutional reform, others have extended terms, removed limits or created transitional exceptions that permit incumbents to remain in office beyond what was originally contemplated. The key question is therefore not whether constitutions should permit amendment – they clearly must – but whether amendment powers can lawfully be exercised in ways that directly benefit those already in power, and where they are not, whether courts will be willing to intervene to strike them down.

Constitutional Change Across Africa

These dynamics have emerged through a range of constitutional strategies across the continent. In Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni has remained in power since 1986, lawmakers are currently considering a constitutional amendment that, much like Zimbabwe’s, would extend the terms of both the President and Parliament from five to seven years. Although presented as institutional reform, such measures reduce the frequency with which incumbents must seek a renewed democratic mandate, illustrating how extending the length of terms can achieve many of the same practical consequences as extending the number of terms.

Other states have pursued more far-reaching reforms. The Central African Republic adopted a new constitution in 2023 that extended presidential terms from five to seven years while simultaneously abolishing the two-term limit, removing the principal constraint on presidential tenure altogether. Rwanda demonstrates yet another approach. Through a 2015 constitutional referendum, Rwanda formally reduced future presidential terms from seven years to five, yet transitional provisions simultaneously enabled President Paul Kagame, who has been in power since 2000, to contest an additional seven-year term followed by two further five-year terms.  Rather than abolishing term limits outright, the reform effectively reset their operation for the incumbent President.

Kenya provides an important counterpoint: proposals to extend the terms of the President, Members of Parliament and governors were ultimately rejected, illustrating that constitutional amendment remains a contested political process rather than an inevitable vehicle for executive entrenchment. These examples demonstrate that the central question is not whether constitutions may be amended, but when amendment powers cease to serve constitutional adaptation and instead facilitate the retention of political power.

Amendment Powers and the Role of Courts

Constitutional amendment is an essential feature of democracy. As countries evolve, so too should the constitutions that govern them. However, concerns arise where those exercising amendment powers are also the primary beneficiaries of the change. Amendments affecting presidential tenure occupy a distinctive constitutional position because they regulate the very conditions under which executive power is retained. When incumbent governments alter those rules while remaining in office, the distinction between constitutional reform and political self-interest becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

Zimbabwe further illustrates that courts may be institutionally constrained in responding to these disputes. The Constitutional Court did not endorse the amendment on its merits; it held only that the challengers had failed to identify a sufficiently specific constitutional obligation capable of judicial enforcement. The result is that some of the most significant constitutional questions surrounding presidential tenure may ultimately be resolved through politics rather than litigation.

The Court’s reasoning also highlights a broader debate about the role of judicial review in responding to constitutional amendments affecting executive power. While the Court held that the challengers had failed to identify a specific constitutional obligation capable of judicial enforcement, this approach leaves unresolved whether courts should play a more substantive role in reviewing amendments that, although formally enacted through constitutional procedures, may undermine democratic accountability. Constitutional amendment powers are not unlimited simply because they are exercised through legally prescribed processes; courts in many systems have grappled with whether constitutional principles constrain amendments that fundamentally alter democratic governance.

The limits of domestic judicial review also point to the importance of considering responses beyond national legal systems. At the regional level, the African Union has increasingly recognized that attempts to alter or evade presidential term limits are not merely internal constitutional matters but may constitute broader challenges to democratic governance. Under instruments such as the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, member states have committed to constitutional order, democratic principles and regular, transparent, free and fair elections. From this perspective, constitutional amendments that weaken mechanisms of political accountability or enable the entrenchment of incumbents may engage regional standards beyond the domestic legal order. Where domestic judicial enforcement is limited, regional human rights mechanisms, including the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, may play an increasingly important role in articulating the regional standards against which attempts to entrench executive power through constitutional amendment can be assessed.

Conclusion

Zimbabwe’s constitutional amendment therefore raises a question that extends beyond presidential tenure: whether constitutional systems can meaningfully constrain amendments that are formally lawful but substantively weaken democratic accountability. The resolution of the pending challenge to Constitution Amendment No. 3 will provide an important indication of the extent to which Zimbabwe’s constitutional safeguards can withstand efforts to reshape the limits of executive power.

Photo by Tanner Marquis on Unsplash