Hon Getrude Mutandi

This gentleman did it better than most of us… He clearly EXPLAINED the issue of TERM LENGTHS & TERM LIMITS in a simple but BRILLIANT MANNER. For the benefit of those who do not understand Shona, let me try to Anglicise his explanation. x.com/chidawaTee/sta… He said: The law when being interpreted rests on what the LEGISLATURE (or framers of the Constitution) had in mind when they wrote the law. In the case of Zimbabwe, there is a clear distinction between term limits and term lengths. For instance, a person who serves 3 years as President, & get recalled by his party will be deemed to have served a FULL TERM. If he comes back again with a new party & serve 4 years before being recalled, the law will say he has served 2 TERMS and is no longer eligible to serve as president again. This means the person only served a total of 7 years but the law says he served 2 terms. Yet, the same constitution, also allows someone who was president for a year or 2 to serve another 2 five year terms because the 2 years won’t count as a term. In this instance, the person will serve for a total of 12 years but the law will regard it as 2 terms. What this implies the limit imposed by the constitution were not defined in terms RIGIDLY as the number of years but the number of terms which are 2. Changing this requires a referendum. However, changing the length of the term from 5 years to 4 years or from 5 to 7 years doesn’t require a referendum. The number of years (term length) is very different from the number of terms (term limits). Another analogy: A truck owner says to his drivers: Per day, you can only do trips & go home. No one is allowed to do more than 2 trips. As much as the trips are defined in terms of distance from one point to another, a driver going a shorter distance will be deemed to have done the two trips just like the driver who went to a far away place. In this case, the limit imposed by the Truck Owner is THE NUMBER OF TRIPS, not the overall distance travelled. *************** These analogies clearly capture what Zimbabweans are facing now. The framers of the Constitution LEFT ROOM for changing the term length, but they RIGIDLY SET the “number of terms at 2.” You may not like that, but that’s the reality. And as such, there is no legal requirement for a referendum in this case.