By Cde Honest Vhura Hombe
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga walked into a Roman Catholic gathering in Murewa this past Saturday and delivered what congregants initially mistook for a routine sermon.
By the time he reached the Book of Isaiah, however, it was clear this was less a Sunday service and more a spiritually packaged press conference aimed somewhere very specific — State House specific.
With the calm authority of a man fluent in both scripture and command structures, Chiwenga invoked Saint Francis of Assisi, urging leaders to embrace humility, simplicity, and compassion — virtues rarely spotted in the wild ecosystem of Zimbabwean high office.
Observers noted that several politicians in attendance reportedly checked under their chairs, just in case humility had slipped there unnoticed.
Then came the main course, the story of King Hezekiah or, as it translated in certain attentive pews, “The Perils of Ignoring Your Expiry Date.”
Chiwenga recounted how Hezekiah, after a long and successful reign, treated death less like a certainty and more like a negotiable deadline.
When the prophet Isaiah informed him that his time was up, the king responded in a manner familiar to modern politics — disbelief, resistance, and an urgent appeal for extension.
“He even questioned God,” Chiwenga said, pausing just long enough for the message to land where it was meant to.
God, in what might now be considered a policy misstep, granted Hezekiah an extra 15 years.
But the extension came at a cost of declining judgment, strategic blunders, and eventual disgrace.
In short, a cautionary tale about the dangers of overstaying, ancient in origin, but strikingly current in application.
Congregants nodded solemnly.
A few exchanged glances that suggested this was no ordinary sermon, but rather a carefully coded communiqué.
True Patriots, in today’s Zimbabwe, history does not always speak through speeches.
Sometimes it whispers through sermons.
Back in Harare, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s loyalists ate reportedly refining the Constitutional Amendment N0.3 (CAB3).
Critics says this document reads less like legal reform and more like a manual titled “How to Stay in Power Without Technically Saying So.”
Its highlights include removing the direct election of the president, after allwhy involve millions when a manageable handful can decide?
It also includes extending presidential terms from five to seven years, because governance, like fine wine, apparently improves with longer storage, and expanding appointed positions in Parliament — presumably to strengthen the nation’s already impressive capacity for coordinated agreement.
Perhaps most significantly, the proposed changes dilute the vice president’s previously clear path to succession.
What was once a political escalator now resembles a maze — part lottery, part loyalty test, part auction.
Analysts warn that, under such a system, the presidency risks becoming less a reflection of public will and more a function of internal arithmetic, where influence is measured not in votes, but in leverage.
Meanwhile, defenders of the amendments insist everything remains perfectly constitutional, arguing that extending a term is not the same as exceeding it.
Well, well , well, True Patriots, this distinction feels a bit like claiming a longer queue is not actually a delay.
Chiwenga’s sermon, against this backdrop has taken on a life of its own.
The nation is now parsing biblical references like encrypted messages, searching for meaning between the verses.
Was it a warning, reminder or simply a well-timed reflection on power, time, and the illusion of permanence?
Whatever the intent, one thing is increasingly clear: in Zimbabwean politics, even the pulpit has become a battlefield, of course not taking into account Nelson Chamisa’s cryptic religious posts, which are a high-sounding nothing
Scripture now carries subtext, sermons double as signals, and the line between the sacred and the strategic grows ever thinner.
Because when power clings too tightly to time, even the gospel begins to sound like a countdown.
