How I found a man in exile and what he taught me about Zimbabwe’s slow constitutional coup

There’s a chilling phrase that has stayed with me. Someone had sent a message to a political activist from Zimbabwe,” You have to go to the police, or you will come to the police with flowers on your chest.” This is the stark reality of those speaking out against the Zimbabwean government.

For months, I’d been watching reports come out of Zimbabwe, arrests, intimidation, the quiet suffocation of dissent. Then public hearings on the constitutional amendments turned violent. People who showed up to speak against the bill were beaten. Students were arrested. And the hearings kept going anyway, the government apparently unbothered by the optics. So I went looking for someone living through it. After searching, I found Youngerson Matete, who’s been moving between safe locations, in hiding, and fearing for his life. He shared his story with me, of how he landed up in exile after fearing death and violence in Zimbabwe. He’d been sleeping under bridges on bad nights, and trying to escape the shadow of the state security agents. All because he stood up against a proposed constitutional change in Zimbabwe that critics say could keep President Emmerson Mnangagwa in power till 2030 and beyond.

The man in hiding

He’s been a political activist for over ten years, promoting democracy, mobilising communities, doing the slow unglamorous work of civic life. He has been training and organising young people to attend the public hearings on the constitutional amendments, to show up and make their voices heard. That work made him a target. The government accused him and his network of inciting violence and of training young people outside the country to destabilise Zimbabwe by force. He told me that it is all a fabrication. But fabricated or not, the consequences were real. I asked him to walk me through his journey of how he ended up in exile.

“It’s because from the beginning of March to where we are now, I’ve seen increased threats around me using my family, my brothers, being tortured by people who claim that they are from the president’s office, looking for me. I really do not have a sense of freedom because the ghosts of the state security agents who have been harassing me for the last three weeks, still follows me. Sometimes I still have nightmares when I’m sleeping. I hardly step out of the door. I can’t go anywhere because I don’t know if I’ll be safe. The government has got a network of state security agents around the region, which they follow people, abduct them, kill them or do whatever that they want to do.” - Youngerson Matete

State security agents visited his family. They showed up at every place he tried to sleep. He ran out of money. The border crossing to safety was its own ordeal. This was actually his second time fleeing, he’d briefly left in October last year during street protests, then gone back. Going back cost him. And even after making it out this time, the fear still stays with him. I asked him what it costs, emotionally, mentally, to keep speaking out knowing the risks. His answer was careful and heavy. He talked about the psychological toll of constant surveillance, the way it strips away ordinary life. He mentioned comrades who have developed PTSD, some who broke down entirely. Female activists sexually assaulted and left without any rehabilitation support, carrying the damage alone. He said he’s currently attending counselling himself, trying to stay functional.

“It’s something you really don’t wish on someone else,” he told me. “But it’s where we are.”

His matter of factness took me aback. I could see he was shouldering a great burden, but still insisting on fighting for his country, despite the immense risk that has followed him.

The constitutional coup?

Matete’s story is set against the political backdrop of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now 83, who came to power through a military coup in 2017, orchestrated largely by his then-ally and current vice-president, Constantino Chiwenga. He was re-elected in 2018 and again in 2023. His current term was supposed to end in 2028. The proposed amendments, which critics have dubbed “Agenda 2030,” would push that to 2030. The proposed changes go further than just extending Mnangagwa’s term. They also include scrapping direct presidential elections altogether, replacing the public vote with a parliamentary one, where ruling party MPs would effectively choose the next president. Given Zanu-PF’s long-established grip on parliament, this would move Zimbabwe closer to a system where power circulates almost entirely within the party. Other proposals would expand the senate, redraw constituency boundaries, and return the electoral commission to an official widely seen as partisan. Critics say each of these changes, taken together, is about locking in one-party dominance for the long term. In a bold statement, Matete called this a constitutional coup.

“So what you are seeing now is an unconstitutional attempt to violate the constitution. Some are calling it a constitutional coup, just an extension of the 2017 coup that we saw in Zimbabwe. What they’re trying to do is just creating a precedence of amending the constitution further and civilian future. We are not going to have elections in 50 years, we are not going to have elections in a 100 years. We are now in a dynasty. Cecause once you open that gate, you can’t close it.”

Matete told me that under Zimbabwe’s constitution, changing presidential term limits requires a referendum. And if the sitting president would personally benefit from that change, a second referendum is required, one that cannot happen less than six months after the first. Those rules exist specifically to prevent what critics say is now happening. On paper, Zimbabwe has a 90-day consultation process. In reality, the government compressed in-person public hearings into just four days across roughly 60+ locations, often giving people only a few hours to speak. I asked Matete what he thought the constitutional hearings means for the legal process being used as a way to further authoritarianism in Zimbabwe. His answer stopped me in my tracks.

“Yeah so what the government has done is that they’ve abandoned pretences of democracy and rule of law. They are forcing people through the chaotic and shambolic public hearings that are being organised by parliament, where those opposed to the Bill are not allowed to speak, they’re physically being beaten up, being hunted. We are seeing young people, students being arrested who are opposed to that and actually have some students are currently behind bars. It’s like a worker who extends his own contract before consulting the employer and then comes back and says, ‘I’ve awarded myself this extension, is it okay?’ And you’re not allowed to say it’s not okay. You’re beaten up.” - Youngerson Matete

The hearings were packed with bussed-in ruling party supporters. Zanu-PF structures controlled the microphones, handing them only to those they approved of. People who came to oppose the bill were sidelined, ignored, or worse. By the second day, the main coalition of civil society groups defending the constitution had walked out, declaring the process a charade. This followed a pattern going back months, when in October 2025, a civil society meeting to discuss the amendments was firebombed.

Takunda’s story

In a tragic tale, Matete told me about a student leader named Takunda, affiliated with the Zimbabwe National Students Union. Takunda attended one of the public consultations in Harare. He hadn’t even spoken yet, he’d just arrived to observe, when he was grabbed by what Matete described as state security agents or their proxies and assaulted him. He is currently in custody. His crime, as Matete put it, was simply showing up.

As Matete described it plainly: the government has abandoned the pretence of democracy. And he has a pointed way of framing what’s at stake, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the region. Millions of Zimbabweans already live in South Africa, driven out by poverty and political instability. If the constitutional order collapses further, that pressure only grows, and the consequences spill across borders. What neighbouring countries forget is that Zimbabweans are just trying to make a living and survive. But Matete told me that he still fights for a Zimbabwe that will welcome its people from South Africa and the diaspora back home.

The power struggle within Zanu-PF

What’s less visible from the outside is that these amendments aren’t just about Mnangagwa vs. the opposition, they’re also about Mnangagwa vs. Chiwenga. The two men have a complicated history. It was Chiwenga, as military chief, who made the 2017 coup possible. The informal understanding at the time was that Mnangagwa would go first, and Chiwenga would follow. Extending the term to 2030 effectively kills that arrangement, blocking Chiwenga’s path and consolidating Mnangagwa’s hold and his family’s influence, before any transition can happen. Zanu-PF’s factional tensions, never far below the surface, are being pulled tighter.

Beyond these internal divisions, what we’re seeing in Zimbabwe is part of a wider trend recently, where leaders who came to power through military or dominant-party systems using legal changes to extend and consolidate power. Across the continent and beyond, leaders have used legal mechanisms, constitutional amendments, court appointments, referendum manipulation, to entrench themselves. What makes Zimbabwe’s situation particularly grim is the duration. From the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s to the violent suppression of protests in 2019, speaking out in Zimbabwe has always carried a cost. The current moment is not a departure. It’s a continuation.

“Since 1980, speaking out against the government, you will get killed, arrested, disappeared. We have comrades we don’t know where they are, 10 years, 15 years, since 2000. Some since 1980. What it has done is it is put a climate of fear among the ordinary people in Zimbabwe “ - Youngerson Matete

What I keep thinking about

Matete said something near the end of our conversation that I’ve been turning over ever since: “What Mr Mnangagwa is failing to understand is that Zimbabwe cannot be placed in his pocket. It is a country that was fought for by many people and many people still believe in it, despite that many things are not working and we would want to make sure that our country works. It’s an existential threat that we are facing, so we are fighting for our lives.”

He said it almost matter-of-factly. He’s been threatened, chased out of his own country, separated from everything he loves and he still believes Zimbabwe belongs to its people. That it can be saved. That young people can save it. He used another image that stayed with me too: once you open the gate on constitutional manipulation, you can’t close it. He’s not just fighting for 2030. He’s fighting for what comes after. What struck me most, though, wasn’t the scale of what he’d lost, it was the humanness of what he wants back. He wants to go home. He wants to garden. He mentioned flowers, which felt unbearably poignant given the threat he’d received. He loves his country. He wants to keep fighting for it.

Whether the amendments succeed is not certain. Analysts point to the fractures within Zanu-PF, the lingering question of what Chiwenga does next, and a fragmented but present opposition provides complications that the ruling party hasn’t fully resolved. But uncertainty about the outcome doesn’t mean safety for the people caught in the middle of it. My conversation with Matete made me realize that what’s happening in Zimbabwe raises a bigger concern: how easily legal systems can be reshaped to extend political control and how ordinary people are left to live with the consequences.

Somewhere, Matete is attending counselling sessions, trying to sleep without nightmares, waiting for the moment when it might be safe to go home and plant something. He’s not waiting to give up. He’s waiting to go back home.