“I Am Not a Guy Who Can Be Intimidated”: Mnangagwa Breaks Silence on Secretly Signed Constitution Changes
President Mnangagwa has characterized the passage of Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3 (CAB3) as an expected legislative outcome, stating that parliamentarians simply executed "the correct thing."
The comments came during a wide-ranging State House interview featuring senior state media journalists, including ZBC chief correspondent Reuben Barwe, following the formal signing of the bill into law.
When asked directly by Barwe how he felt when the Parliament of Zimbabwe passed the legislation—which Barwe misstated as "CEB 3 into CEB"—Mnangagwa indicated the result was never in question:
"I felt they had done the correct thing. I expected them to pass it and then they did. So I was happy."
The President’s explicit phrasing "I expected them to pass it" strips away any remaining pretense of legislative suspense regarding the bill.
To amend the constitution, Zimbabwe law requires a strict two-thirds voting threshold in both houses of Parliament. The ruling ZANU-PF party effectively marshaled its supermajority to clear that bar in late June with 216 votes in the National Assembly, making the subsequent presidential assent on July 7 a formality.
By declaring that lawmakers did the "correct thing," Mnangagwa explicitly aligned the executive branch with the structural overhaul.
When pressed by state media editors on how the extended timeline alters his immediate governance strategy, Mnangagwa stated that the framework was a collective evolution of the state's political process rather than an individual agenda item.
