HARARE – A former opposition legislator and lawyer has filed an urgent application in the Constitutional Court seeking to block parliament from processing two clauses in the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill, 2026, arguing they are designed to extend the terms of sitting office-holders in direct violation of the country’s supreme law.
Prince Dubeko Sibanda, who represented the Binga North constituency in the 2013, 2018 and 2023 general elections, filed the application on March 10, 2026.
Sibanda is represented by the Harare law firm Mbidzo Muchadehama & Makoni.
The application takes direct aim at two provisions of the Bill – Clause 4(b), which deals with the presidential term, and Clause 9(b), which deals with parliament’s duration. Both clauses contain identical drafting language declaring that their term-extension effects shall apply “notwithstanding section 328(7)” of the Constitution.
That formulation is the crux of Sibanda’s challenge. Section 328(7) explicitly prohibits any amendment that extends the length of time a person may hold public office from applying to anyone who held that office – or an equivalent office – before the amendment. It is, in the applicant’s framing, the Constitution’s own anti-incumbency safeguard.
“The Bill the Respondent published in readiness of the process of constitutional amendment nevertheless contains provisions that purport to operate ‘notwithstanding section 328(7)’, and to apply term-extension effects to the continuation in office of incumbents,” Sibanda states in his founding affidavit.
“This is not a mere interpretive disagreement. It is an explicit legislative declaration that the Respondent intends to do what s 328(7) of the Constitution forbids.”
The Bill proposes replacing the existing five-year presidential and parliamentary terms with a seven-year framework and then applying that change not only prospectively but to current office-holders, through the contested “notwithstanding” language.
Sibanda argues this represents a structural assault on Zimbabwe’s constitutional order, not a policy disagreement about term lengths.
He says that he is not asking the court to weigh in on the merits of any particular term duration.
“I do not ask this court to decide the wisdom, popularity, or political desirability of any constitutional change,” he states. “I ask the court to enforce a purely legal boundary.”
The constitutional boundary he invokes is section 328, which he describes not as a procedural checklist but as the legal architecture that simultaneously creates and limits Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution.
A clause framed as an override of that architecture, Sibanda argues, is not an exercise of the amendment power – it is an attempt to escape it.
“Any drafting device whose purpose and effect is to override, neutralise, suspend, or contract out of section 328(7) is not a normal amendment proposal,” the affidavit reads. “It is an attempt to defeat the Constitution’s own limitation on the amendment power by legislative language rather than by constitutional compliance.”
He further warns of the systemic danger posed by tolerating such drafting. If parliament can neutralise section 328(7) by inserting “notwithstanding,” he argues, nothing would stop a future Bill from declaring “notwithstanding section 328(5)” to pass a constitutional amendment by simple majority rather than the constitutionally required two-thirds vote.
“The Constitution cannot rationally be read to permit such self-destruction,” Sibanda states.
The application also challenges the timing of Parliament’s conduct, arguing that the harm begins not at the moment of assent but the moment a constitutionally incompetent Bill enters the legislative process.
Publishing and advancing such a Bill, he argues, is itself conduct inconsistent with Parliament’s obligations under sections 119 and 324 of the Constitution, which require the legislature to protect the Constitution and perform its obligations diligently.
The relief Sibanda seeks is to deliberately narrow. He is not asking the court to halt the Bill in its entirety, but to have Clauses 4(b) and 9(b) severed and declared of no force or effect, leaving the remainder of the Bill – including any constitutionally competent term-length proposals – free to proceed.
The draft order asks the court to declare those clauses inconsistent with section 328(7), and to direct Parliament to either withdraw and re-introduce the Bill without them, or proceed with them treated as excised.
Parliament has 21 days from service of the application to file a notice of opposition and opposing affidavits, failing which the matter will be set down as unopposed.
