Zimbabwe Diaspora Community Condemns Submission Omission from Parliament CAB3 Report, Demands Inclusion

Harare - The Zimbabwe Diaspora Vote Initiative (ZDVI) has expressed deep disappointment with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, accusing it of erasing critical public input from its final report on the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Number 3 Bill (CAB3).

The diaspora organisation, which originally filed its comprehensive, clause-by-clause constitutional submission to the Clerk of Parliament on March 24, 2026, discovered upon reviewing the committee's newly published report that its key arguments had been entirely excluded.

In response, the group has dispatched a formal letter of protest to the Committee’s Chairperson, Honourable Edison Mudadirwa Zvobgo, demanding a wholesale reconsideration of the committee's legislative recommendations.

The ZDVI, a registered community organisation based in Australia representing an estimated four million Zimbabweans abroad, proved that its original hard-copy submission was officially received and stamped by Parliament on May 13, 2026.

Despite this verified receipt, the group’s unique, expert arguments against several sweeping constitutional changes were completely missing from the committee's final analysis.

The initiative noted that it remains unclear whether the omission was driven by human error, technical glitches or a systemic disregard for diaspora voices.

To illustrate the severity of the omission, ZDVI Chair, Rosewiter Mangiroza, highlighted the committee’s handling of Clause 8, which proposes increasing the Senate's membership from 80 to 90 through direct Presidential appointments.

The parliamentary report claimed that a "strong majority of support" was garnered for the clause under the pretext of injecting specialised knowledge and broadening the pool for Ministerial appointments.

However, the ZDVI’s detailed counter-arguments were completely blacked out.

In the original March submission, which the group has now forced back onto Hon. Zvobgo’s desk, the ZDVI explicitly rejected the clause.

"In our view, the country does not deserve additional Senators to widen the skills base. Subsection 3 of Section 104 of the Constitution allows the President to appoint up to seven Ministers and Deputy Ministers from outside Parliament, chosen for their professional skills and competence.

There is, therefore, no justification in allowing the President to appoint an additional 10 Senators for the same reasons," the submission reads.

The group further noted that because Permanent Secretaries are already hired for their technical expertise and the President already selects Ministers of State for all 10 provinces, a bloated legislature cannot be justified under the guise of economic development0.

"Perhaps it was a position reached without your committee having sighted our contribution," Mangiroza wrote in her follow-up letter to the Chairperson.

"Zimbabwe cannot afford an additional 10 Senators for the purpose of appointing them to be Ministers when the constitution already allows the President to appoint up to seven people to lead Ministries," she wrote.

The omission has reignited the diaspora group's fierce resistance to Clause 4 and Clause 9, which seek to extend the terms of office for the President and Parliamentarians from five to seven years.

The ZDVI re-emphasised that altering the rules mid-stream is a profound violation of the law.

They reminded the committee that under Section 328(7) of the Constitution, any amendment extending a term limit cannot legally apply to an incumbent official who held office prior to the amendment.

Challenging the committee's recommendation to adopt the tenure extensions, the ZDVI demanded that the report be amended to protect constitutional order.

"Increasing the length of time the President, Parliamentarians and Councillors stay in office when they were elected under a constitution that gave them a five year stay in office is unconstitutional unless a referendum is held to increase their stay to 2030, and there is no two ways about that," the ZDVI chief declared.

The group insisted that any extension must only apply from the 2028 election cycle onward, unless the current leadership subjects the changes to a direct public vote.

The group's original March submission also detailed a systematic rejection of the rest of the Bill, including Clause 2, which aims to take voter registration away from the independent Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and return it to the Registrar-General's Office.

The ZDVI had warned that the Registrar-General answers directly to the Minister of Home Affairs, a political actor and beneficiary of elections, making the transfer of duties highly inappropriate.

They likewise rejected Clause 3, which seeks to eliminate the direct public election of the President, recalling that the liberation struggle was fought specifically for the principle of "one man one vote".

Compounding their frustration over the alleged flawed report, the ZDVI condemned the absolute exclusion of transnational citizens from the broader consultation process.

The group pointed out that during the Ninth Parliament, virtual mechanisms like Zoom were successfully deployed to capture the views of citizens unable to attend physical hearings.

They noted that the diaspora's massive fiscal contributions are formally acknowledged within the Government of Zimbabwe's National Budget, making their administrative exclusion unacceptable.

The ZDVI has called on Parliament to act transparently, correct the allegedly skewed report and guarantee that the diaspora is permitted to vote in the mandatory referendums required to advance the Bill.