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Zimbabwe - Government

According to Zimbabwe's constitution, the president is head of state and head of government, and is elected by popular majority vote. Constitutional Amendment 19 requires that the president consult with the prime minister on many key issues of state, including senior appointments. Parliament is bicameral and sits for up to a 5-year term.

The Constitution of Zimbabwe is the supreme law of the Republic of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe used the a constitution negotiated at the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement as Zimbabwe became independent of the United Kingdom after a protracted war of independence. The 16 constitutional amendments enacted from 1980 to 2000 increased greatly Mugabe's power relative to the legislature. Originally a prime minister elected by the Parliament, he has become a president directly elected by the population. Constitutional Amendment 9 authorizes the President to declare unilaterally a state of public emergency for a period of up to 14 days. Amendment 10 grants the President sole power to dissolve Parliament and to appoint or remove a vice president and any minister or deputy minister. Amendment 10 also allows the President to appoint 20 of the 150 M.P.'s, including 12 nonconstituency M.P.'s and 8 provincial governors who sit in Parliament. The President also exerts great influence on the process by which the country's chiefs (traditional rulers) select 10 of their number to sit as M.P.'s. All 30 of these M.P.'s have been consistent ZANU-PF members.

On October 1, 2007 Constitutional Amendment 18, which provided for significant changes in the country's electoral dispensation, went into effect. The amendment set out the framework to harmonize presidential and parliamentary elections, to reduce the presidential term of office from 6 years to 5, to increase the number of seats in the House of Assembly and in the Senate, to empower parliament to serve as an electoral college should the office of president become vacant for any reason, and to empower the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to delimit parliamentary and local constituencies.

The 214-member House of Assembly was filled by direct election in 210 constituencies and the appointments of 4 other MPs. Sixty of the 100 Senators were directly elected by voters. Other Senators include 10 provincial governors, 5 others that were appointed by the president, 7 new appointments created by Constitutional Amendment 19, 16 chiefs that were elected by other chiefs, plus the president and deputy president of the Council of Chiefs.

In 2000, an attempt was made to create a new constitution but the proposed constitution, drafted by a constitutional convention, was defeated by a constitutional referendum held from on 12 to 13 February 2000. Following a contested election result in the 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, the country's 3 major political parties, ZANU-PF, MDC-T and MDC negotiated a new proposed constitution after a constitutional outreach program.

The document was drafted by the Constitution Parliamentary Select Committee (COPAC). COPAC comprises 25 members, appointed by the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders of Zimbabwe’s Parliament from the three political parties represented in the Parliament. Those parties are Mugabe’sZimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, and Welshman Ncube’s faction of the Movement for Democratic Change.

On February 10, 2009, in line with the power-sharing arrangement reached between Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF, and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change, the Zimbabwean Parliament passed a key constitutional amendment that will made Tsvangirai the first Zimbabwean Prime Minister.

Zimbabwe's latest constitution was voted for in and approved in a referendum of 16 March 2013. The new Constitution of Zimbabwe was passed by the Parliament of Zimbabwe on 15 May 2013 and assented to by His Excellency The President on the 22nd of May 2013. Since the advent of the new constitution in 2013, a large number of legislative tasks faced the Zanu PF government. These can be divided into two categories: ensuring the conformity of all existing statutes with the new constitution (“alignment”), and operationalising the new institutions required by the constitution. Under the guise of alignment and operationalising the new institutions, government sought to claw back executive power which the constitution intended diminished.

The presidency and presidential powers:

• limitation of the President’s term of office to two five-year terms (without retroactive application, however, making 89-year-old Mugabe, who has served as President since 1980, eligible to run in the next election and potentially able to remain in office for another ten years);
• the requirement that presidential decrees be backed by a majority of the Cabinet and that any declaration of emergency rule or dissolution of Parliament be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Members of Parliament;
• the requirement that, during the period of the first ten years of the Constitution’s implementation, if the President dies or resigns from office, the new President will be selected by the (former) President’s party (critics point out that this means that a President not voted for by the citizenry could take power); and
• a new provision, in the article on presidential immunity, allowing the possible use of the defense of good faith in any proceedings brought against a former President for anything done or omitted to be done in his or her official capacity while he or she was President.

The judiciary and dispensation of justice:

• formation of a Constitutional Court, but for the first seven years after the Constitution takes effect, it will be composed of judges of the country’s current Supreme Court (who, according to some press accounts, have been discredited due to their lack of independence from the Mugabe government);
• strengthened restrictions on use of the death penalty; and
• a prohibition against all forms of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

The legislature:

• increase in the number of members of the National Assembly (formerly called the House of Assembly) from 210 to 270 for the first two parliaments after the effective date of the new constitution, due to the addition of 60 female members;
• decrease in the number of members of the Senate, from 93 to 88; and
• elimination of the five Senate seats allotted for appointment by the President and of two of the ten seats set aside for governors, and inclusion of two seats set aside for persons with disabilities.

The Office of the Speaker is the highest and most important in the House. The Speaker occupies the foremost place and commands respect internally from among Parliamentarians and also externally from the public in general. The election of the Speaker is provided for in the constitution of the country. The Speaker is elected by members of Parliament at the first sitting of a new Parliament. The Constitution says,When Parliament first meets after any dissolution of Parliament and before it proceeds to the dispatch of any other business, it shall elect a presiding officer to be known as the Speaker. The candidate for speakership should be a person who would have once been or is a current Member of Parliament. The person should not be a cabinet or Deputy Minister.

The Chairperson of Committees, who is usually the Deputy Speaker, has the principal responsibility of chairing proceedings in the Committee of the Whole House when bills are considered in detail and amendments are made in the House. The Chairperson and Temporary Chairpersons (5 are nominated by the Speaker) may be asked by the Speaker to take the Chair of the House from time to time.

The ceremonial position of The President of Senate is ranked fourth in order of precedence, after the two State Vice Presidents of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The President represents Parliament at international and regional conferences and leads Parliamentary delegations to other nations, as well as receives delegations from other nations. The President of the Senate also receives courtesy calls from heads of Diplomatic Missions and Embassies based in Zimbabwe and other important dignitaries.

The Zimbabwean constitution institutionalizes majority rule and protection of minority rights. The elected government controls senior appointments in the public service, including the military and police, and the independent Public Service Commission is charged with making appointments at lower levels on an equitable basis.

The judiciary is headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court who, like the other justices, is appointed by the president on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission. The constitution has a bill of rights containing extensive protection of human rights. The bill of rights could not be amended for the first 10 years of independence except by unanimous vote of the parliament.

Zimbabwe is divided into 10 provinces, each administered by a provincial governor appointed by the president. The provincial administrator and representatives of several service ministries assist the provincial governor.