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Zimbabwe is on the brink of amending its constitution to give the president more time in office, a change the government said will bring stability – but which opponents have labelled a “constitutional coup”.

The upper house of Zimbabwe’s parliament voted on Wednesday 75-4 in favour of the constitutional amendments, which would allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to stay in office until 2030 by extending presidential terms from five to seven years.

The vote followed the lower house last week passing the bill, which would replace direct presidential elections with the appointment of the president by parliament. The government said the president is expected to sign the bill into law next month.

Opposition figures feared the changes would further tighten the hold on power of Mnangagwa, who is known as “The Crocodile”, and his Zanu-PF party, which has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

Mnangagwa, 83, won a second term in office with 52.6% of the vote in the 2023 presidential elections, amid criticisms from international observers and opposition figures.

Critics of the constitutional changes claimed Zimbabwe could slide back to the repression seen under Robert Mugabe, who resigned in 2017 after 37 years in power, after a coup led by Mnangagwa.

“It is a calculated constitutional coup against the people of Zimbabwe,” said Makomborero Haruzivishe, spokesperson for the Constitutional Defenders Forum (CDF), a group campaigning against the amendments. “It strips citizens of the fundamental right to directly elect their president, replacing popular sovereignty with parliamentary selection by a captured legislature.”

Nick Mangwana, permanent secretary in Zimbabwe’s information ministry, said: “To characterise this legitimate legislative exercise as a ‘coup’ is not only factually incorrect but deeply disrespectful to the sovereign parliamentary processes of the Republic of Zimbabwe.”

He said: “The primary objective is to enhance political stability and ensure policy continuity … We are not removing presidential term limits; we are simply adjusting the electoral cycle to reduce the frequency of highly contested, polarising elections.”

Mangwana also rejected suggestions that constitutional amendments had to be approved in a referendum, saying the attorney general had found “no legal basis” for a people’s vote.

Opponents of the constitutional amendments said they had been subjected to harassment and prevented from campaigning. Tendai Biti, one of the CDF’s convenors, said security forces had barged into his office six times since October 2025.

Responding to a claim that Biti’s driver had been assaulted in one such incident in March, police said that officers had been sent to Biti’s office “for the maintenance of law and order”.

Also in March, Lovemore Madhuku, a lawyer who had filed a constitutional court challenge to the amendment bill, said he was beaten by a group of balaclava-wearing men, who then drove off in unmarked vehicles followed by two police vehicles. Local media published photos of Madhuku with large welts across his upper back.

“The police were not involved in the alleged incident,” Zimbabwe’s police force said in a statement.

Mangwana said: “If any individual – whether Pro Madhuku, Mr Biti, or anyone else – possesses credible evidence of assault or harassment by state agents, my office urges them to formally lodge a complaint with the [police] or the relevant judicial authorities.”

Jameson Timba, a former minister during Zimbabwe’s government of national unity from 2009 to 2013, said he and his allies had been prevented from speaking during the public consultation events. Mangwana said the consultation process had received 537,000 submissions, with an “overwhelming majority supporting the constitutional changes”.

“We are just the tip of the iceberg,” Timba said. “In almost every district that [the government] went to, people were being denied an opportunity to speak … Those public hearings are not a representation of anything. They are a fraud.”

Zimbabwe became internationally isolated during the 2000s, after Mugabe’s government confiscated more than 4,000 farms from mostly white farmers. Economic output plunged, resulting in hyperinflation in 2008, after which Mugabe was pressured into a coalition government with the opposition at the time.

Many Zimbabweans view Mnangagwa’s rule as a continuation of Mugabe’s. In 2024, the US imposed sanctions on Mnangagwa, his wife Auxillia and nine others, accusing them of corruption.