Zimbabwe - April 11, 2026

In the face of the ZANU-PF Constitutional Reform bill

To conquer bread and defend the broadest democratic freedoms:

Out with Mnangagwa, the IMF, and his Bonapartist regime!

To reclaim the ZCTU from the collaborationist bureaucracy:
Let’s build Committees of trade unions, poor peasants, and rebel youth!

We must clear the way for a revolutionary general strike!

With a phenomenal deployment of the repressive apparatus throughout the country, the "Reform bill No. 3" to the 2013 Constitution began to be debated in the Zimbabwean parliament in early April. Through this reform, the Parliament—where ZANU-PF holds more than two-thirds of the votes—will grant full "Napoleonic" powers to President Mnangagwa. Parliament will abdicate before him so that, among other reforms, the president may extend his term from 5 to 7 years; eliminate the direct vote; and hand-pick judges and a series of officials.
We are facing a true self-coup. It is not based on a military coup, like that of 2017, but on the "democratic" Constitution itself, which provided the possibility of presenting these amendments. This is a new Bonapartist leap by a government of hunger and misery, shielding itself against a possible mass uprising like those seen in Madagascar or Mozambique.

This ultra-reactionary Constitution and its new amendments are defended with fire and blood by the praetorian guard of Zimbabwe's millionaire bourgeoisie. These lackeys of imperialism, submissive to the IMF, guarantee super-profits for multinationals and fabulous business deals for native bourgeoisies, while dumping the crisis and the worst plans of hunger, super-exploitation, and national looting onto the backs of the exploited.

Faced with the inflationary economic blow deepening the crisis and Mnangagwa’s looming Bonapartist self-coup, the ZCTU (Zimbabwe's trade union federation) bureaucracy is trying to polish its image. They are posing as "critics" of the government, threatening mobilizations and popular consultations to pressure ZANU-PF into dropping the Reform!
However, for years this bureaucracy has sustained the government by accepting 2% bargain agreements; leaving emigrating workers to their fate; keeping the working-class ranks torn apart, separating the minority of formal and unionized workers from the absolute majority, leaving the them in precarious and wretched conditions that would shame 19th-century British slaveholders.

The ZCTU bureaucracy has guaranteed Mnangagwa's governability all these years! They are the "ministers without portfolio" necessary for this attack by the capitalists and the government to succeed.

The MDC and CCC Dust Off Their "Opposition" Suits

Amid inter-imperialist disputes over Africa and the deepening crisis, the bourgeoisie of the CCC and a sector of the MDC seek to re-legitimize themselves before the masses by showing their rejection of the ZANU-PF Reform. Yet, this same bourgeoisie, now posing as the "democratic opposition," was part of the national unity government with ZANU-PF between 2008 and 2016. During that time, they were responsible for taking the exploited off the streets and disorganizing the mass offensive, thus allowing ZANU-PF to regain control of the situation.
The CCC, founded by Chamisa, has legitimized and strengthened the regime in its role as "opposition" by participating in the last presidential elections and later in parliament. They contain sectors of the masses who hate the government and seek a way out of their suffering. The MDC and CCC merely seek to be an alternative government to manage the share of business profits kept by the native bourgeoisies. They only want to defend their "democracy for the rich"!, which rests upon millions of increasingly hungry workers and poor peasants who are brutally repressed, imprisoned, or killed when they fight for their demands. We cannot fight submitted to the exploiters and their political organizations!

No “Agenda 2026”!: The task at hand is to build up the fighting organizations of the working class and the exploited

After leaving the CCC, Chamisa has launched "Agenda 2026," a "democratic" front of class collaboration. This front includes organizations like the ISO, which, under the premise of defending democracy, ends up defending the "lesser evil" of the ultra-reactionary 2013 Constitution.
Unfortunately, ISO’s proposals do not even include fighting for a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly—one with a representative for every 50,000 inhabitants, earning no more than a worker's wage, and subject to recall at any time. Such an assembly would need to be based on the working class leading all the nation's exploited to end this dictatorial regime and its institutions. Even the most basic democratic rights can only be conquered by fighting to end this foul system. Therefore, we call upon every organization and leader claiming to be combative and part of the workers' movement to organize committees of employed and unemployed workers, poor peasants, and rank-and-file soldiers, in order to expel imperialism and expropriate land from the bourgeoisie to end the hunger of the exploited.

UFAWUZ (Zimbabwe food union) and the nurses fighting for wages have the authority to call for a great National Workers' Congress with mandated delegates. This is necessary to break the isolation imposed by the treacherous ZCTU bureaucracy, end the state control of unions, and sweep away the bureaucrats who allow this brutal attack on workers and exploited peoples’ movement.

Against the tariff hikes, the rising price of oil, and the high cost of living, we socialists call for a socialist-worker’s pole to raise a revolutionary alternative. We must fight as they have in Madagascar and Mozambique, using the revolutionary general strike as the path to conquer full democratic rights in Zimbabwe. The lackey bourgeoisie only prepares more repression and hunger.

Down with the Mnangagwa dictatorship!

State hands off our workers' organizations—we organize as we choose!

To end with poor people's hunger:

Let us break with the IMF and expropriate the expropriators of the people!

Nationalization without compensation, under workers' control, of imperialist mines and banks!

Let us set up committees of trade unions, poor peasants, rebel youth, and rank-and-file soldiers!

Let us dissolve the Army officer caste and all repressive forces!

We socialists affirm that only a revolutionary workers' and peasants' government will be able to guarantee full democratic freedoms to even convene a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly, which will be but a moment in the battle to place Zimbabwe at the forefront of the struggle for socialist revolution throughout Africa! For the unity of the African working class!

Our best allies are our class brethers in the US and Europe who take to the streets to stop the imperialist war machine that is massacring in the Middle East.

The capitalist catastrophe is here! For the people to eat, imperialism must die and the workers' socialist revolution must triumph!

For a Federation of Black Workers' and Peasants' Republics of Central and Southern Africa!

Workers International League (WIL), Zimbabwe, member of the FLTI