{"id":223696,"date":"2026-02-13T12:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T10:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/zimbabwe-no-referendum-no-legitimacy-freezim-congress-leader\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T12:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T10:30:15","slug":"zimbabwe-no-referendum-no-legitimacy-freezim-congress-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/zimbabwe-no-referendum-no-legitimacy-freezim-congress-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe: &#8216;No Referendum, No Legitimacy&#8217; &#8211; FreeZim Congress Leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"35\">Opposition FreeZim Congress party has condemned proposals to amend the country&#8217;s Constitution to allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to remain in office until 2030, warning that any such move would amount to a return to dictatorship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"29\">In an interview with 263chat, FreeZim Congress president <strong>Joseph Makamba Busha<\/strong> said the proposed changes lacked public consent and were designed to preserve the ruling party&#8217;s grip on power.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">&#8220;This is a ZANU-PF agenda to preserve ZANU-PF itself, to preserve what has been&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202602130128.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zimbabwe\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/\">Zimbabwe<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opposition FreeZim Congress party has condemned proposals to amend the country&#8217;s Constitution to allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to remain in office until 2030, warning that any such move would amount to a return to dictatorship. In an interview with 263chat, FreeZim Congress president Joseph Makamba Busha said the proposed changes lacked public consent and were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[258,256,6634,53647,7079,14058,257,9345,254,4686,421],"class_list":["post-223696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zimbabwe","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-congress","tag-freezim","tag-leader","tag-legitimacy","tag-news","tag-referendum","tag-south-africa-today","tag-zimbabwe","tag-zimbabwe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}