Nomuzikayise Ngwenya is a legal practitioner and the Group Strategy Lead at the International Centre for Political Campaigns. Her work spans political campaign strategy, political communications and war-room operations across Africa.
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THERE is a quiet arrogance in declaring a Bill unconstitutional while refusing to confront the one judgment that settles the question once and for all.
The Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations (ZHOCD), the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) and the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference (ZCBC) have mounted a serious challenge to the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment No. 3) Bill, 2026.
Their strongest objection rests on section 328(7) of the Constitution. They argue that clauses 4 and 9—which extend the presidential and parliamentary terms—violate that section and therefore require a national referendum.
They present this view with the confidence of revealed truth. Yet it is mistaken. It collapses, brick by brick, under the binding authority of the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe delivered five years ago—an authority the church groupings neither cite, nor distinguish, nor appear to have read.
That authority is Mupungu v Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs & Ors, Judgment No. CCZ 07/21.
It remains the clearest and most authoritative statement in Zimbabwean law on exactly what section 328(7) means and how any court must decide whether a constitutional provision qualifies as a “term-limit provision.” Properly understood, Mupungu does not merely weaken the ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC case. It dismantles it.
Section 328(7) prevents an amendment to a term-limit provision—one whose effect would be to extend the time a person may hold public office—from applying to anyone already in that office. ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC focus entirely on the phrase “the effect of which.” The Bill lengthens time in office, they say, therefore section 328(7) is triggered and a referendum is mandatory.
The error is fundamental. Section 328(7) does not apply to every or any amendment that lengthens the time of a term. It applies only to an amendment to a term limit provision that first meets the strict definition in section 328(1): “a provision of this Constitution which limits the length of time that a person may hold or occupy a public office.” That definition is the gatekeeper. Only if the provision being amended is a genuine term-limit provision does the protection in subsection (7) ever come into play.
The decisive question is therefore not “what is the effect?” of any provision of the Constitution but “what is the provision?” One must first classify the section being changed. ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC skipped that essential step entirely. They assumed the very conclusion they were required to prove.
In Mupungu, the Constitutional Court faced an almost identical argument. Constitutional (Amendment No. 2) Act of 2021 had raised the retirement age of judges from 70 to 75. The Chief Justice, Deputy Chief Justice, judges of the Constitutional Court and judges of the Supreme Court could now serve longer.
The High Court had ruled that this offended section 328(7), reasoning that any fixed period or age-based limit concerns time, so raising the age varied a term-limit. That is precisely the logic that ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC now advance.
The Constitutional Court rejected it outright and set the High Court judgment aside.
The Court’s reasoning is straightforward and binding. Whether a provision is a “term-limit provision” is decided by its text, read in its plain and grammatical sense—not by the practical consequences of the amendment.
The phrase “term-limit,” the Court explained, “refers to the limitation of a specific length of time as opposed to the non-specific effluxion of time”: a clear, determinate period with a known beginning and a determinable end. Age, by contrast, is “a variable attribute” that “does not and cannot denote any particular length or portion of time.”
From this the Court drew the governing rule that every Zimbabwean court, law-maker and commentator is bound to follow:
“Thus, a provision that prescribes an age limit for the holding or occupation of a particular office is not a ‘term-limit provision’ within the meaning of subss (1) and (7) of s 328 of the Constitution. Any other interpretation would be contrary to the ordinary and grammatical meaning of the phrase ‘term-limit’.”
The test is textual, not consequential. Effect matters only after the text has been correctly classified. The church groupings have reversed the very order the apex court prescribed.
Read section 95(2)(b) of the Constitution—the provision clause 4 seeks to amend. It states that the presidential term of office “is five years and coterminous with the life of Parliament.” That wording is decisive. The section does not impose any personal tenure cap on any individual.
It does not say “no person shall serve as President for longer than five years,” or that “a person shall serve for a term of five years, renewable once or for a maximum of 10 years”. Instead, it inextricably ties the President’s term to the life of another institution—Parliament.
In the language of Mupungu, this is tenure measured by a variable external or contingent reference point, not “a specific length of time” fixed to the individual.
The real term-limit on the presidency sits untouched in section 91(2), which bars any person who “has already held office as President under this Constitution for two terms.” Clause 4 does not touch that section. Clause 9 simply governs the lifespan of Parliament as an institution. Neither clause amends a “term-limit provision” as Mupungu defines it. The gatekeeper test in section 328(1) is not satisfied; section 328(7) is never engaged; the demand for a referendum therefore fails at the first hurdle.
ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC treat the new “notwithstanding section 328(7)” wording in clauses 4 and 9 as an admission of guilt. If the drafters did not think section 328(7) applied, they ask, why mention it at all? Mupungu already answered this exact objection. Constitutional Amendment No. 2 inserted almost identical “notwithstanding” language into section 186 for the judges’ retirement age. The Constitutional Court held that such wording was inserted “to clarify and reinforce the position that” the amended provisions “do not constitute amendments to any term-limit provision” and therefore occasioned “no infringement of s 328(7).”
Far from proving unconstitutionality, the clause is a prudent drafting device that places the matter beyond doubt. The drafters have followed the very precedent employed by Parliament when it amended section 186 under Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment No. 2) Act 2021, and the Constitutional Court has examined that amendment and upheld it.
Here ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC make their most fundamental mistake. Law-making belongs to Parliament (section 117). Constitutional interpretation belongs, finally and exclusively, to the Constitutional Court (section 167). No church body, however respected, has the standing to pronounce a Bill unconstitutional and demand its withdrawal or a referendum. A submission to Parliament is an opinion—an important voice of conscience—but it is not a judgment. It creates no legal duty.
On the precise issue the churches raise, the binding authority already exists. It is Mupungu. And it says the opposite of what they claim.
There is no disrespect in noting that spiritual authority and legal authority are distinct. The church may—and should—speak to the nation’s conscience, call for prayer, honesty and peace. In that realm its voice needs no permission. But the construction of section 328(7) is not a matter of revelation. It is a matter of legal interpretation, governed by the canons the Constitution itself sets out and decided by the court the Constitution appoints.
A bishop is no more entitled to deliver a binding reading of section 328(7) than a judge is entitled to consecrate the Eucharist.
Strip away the scriptural language and the case of ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC rests on one claim: that clauses 4 and 9 amend a term-limit provision and therefore require a referendum under section 328(7).
Tested against Mupungu, that claim fails. Section 95(2)(b) links the presidential term to the life of Parliament; it fixes no limit on personal tenure. The true cap lives in section 91(2), which the Bill leaves untouched. Section 328(7) is simply not engaged.
The three church councils have not engaged Mupungu. They have not distinguished it. They appear not even to know it exists. They have offered an effect-based analysis without naming it, and presented the result not as an argument but as a pronouncement. That is not constitutional interpretation. It is constitutional impersonation.
Parliament’s mandate is to make law. The judiciary’s mandate is to interpret it. Only the voice of the apex court binds the Republic—and on this question that voice has already spoken clearly. It runs against the position taken by ZHOCD, ZCC and ZCBC.
No group, no conference, and no body of clergy may stand before Parliament and declare “withdraw this Bill, for it violates the Constitution” when the only court empowered to decide has already laid down the test that shows it does not. On this question the court has spoken, and its voice—not theirs—is the one the Constitution commands the nation to heed.
* Nomuzikayise Ngwenya is a legal practitioner and the Group Strategy Lead at the International Centre for Political Campaigns. Her work spans political campaign strategy, political communications and war-room operations across Africa.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.