Copac: Elitism vs majority views

leads to the suppression of the views of the majority especially by those who wield power.
The question of where power resides is very controversial in politics. Many political scientists question whether it is appropriate to study institutions or structures in order to find out where power lies in any political system.

They further query which model, that is, whether pluralist, elitist, or Marxist, best describes the acquisition and dispensation of power.
David Easton in his systems analysis defines politics as “the authoritative allocation of social values”. Politics organises collective decisions and announces the victors and the vanquished. Because human interests are often as incompatible as they are highly charged, these distributions cannot be voluntary.

Politics is a world in which there must be a last word and it must be binding. That last word usually comes from those who wield power. Social values or resources are always in short supply in any given state and therefore a mechanism for their distribution is mandatory.
Social values range from budgetary allocations, distribution of resources, and implementation of various programmes, projects and plans within a given political system. Politics is therefore the struggle between various groups and individuals for dominion over these social values. In other words, politics becomes a struggle to determine who gets what, when, and how.

This therefore brings us to the controversial question of whose social values are being propagated under our constitution-making process. Are they the views, hopes and aspirations of the majority Zimbabweans or these are merely the views and interests of a small elitist group?
Democracy is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and co-operation of their elected representatives. The drafters of the Zimbabwean constitution who happen to be the privileged few should be accountable to the masses.

In most democratic states there are always some privileged individuals who always come up with decisions that are binding on the general populace. These privileged few, made Rousseau to question whether the majoritarian democratic tenet was applicable in governance issues, bearing in mind the fact that, the world over, there happens to be no such state where the majority govern and the minority are governed.
Aristotle himself was suspicious of “mob rule” or of a government where the majority would govern instead he preferred a group of intelligent people to rule the mob. In reality, the opposite is always true. The minority will always rule the majority. This cannot be avoided.

However, when the majority chooses a few to rule them it does not necessarily mean that they should abuse this privilege.
They should always consult those who chose them so that whatever decision is made represents the views and aspirations of the people. This is the reason why Zimbabweans who made their input during the constitution making process are very bitter about the way the new constitution is being drafted.
The few seem to have hijacked the whole process thus grossly undermining what democracy really stands for. Modern day democracy has been perfected in such a way that the majority should at least be heard in any democratic state.

The Copac outreach programmes in Zimbabwe were intended to capture the people’s views on the contents of a new constitution. The whole essence of this exercise was to come up with a people-driven or people-centred constitution.
The people’s inputs clearly transcended political party affiliation as at most outreach meetings the masses would proudly speak in defence of their land, mineral resources and cultural heritage. What the people said at these gatherings had absolutely nothing to do with neo-liberal views.
The masses spoke of a document that would defend their Africaness, a paper that would preserve Zimbabwean norms and values and above all a constitution that they could relate to as Africans.

The Zimbabwean masses have that democratic right to shape their destiny basing from where they came from to where they are going.
What these people said was not about party politics or mere political rhetoric but it was about how Zimbabwe should be governed for the benefit of every citizen irrespective of his or her political orientation. The American constitution is there to serve American citizens not political parties.
It transcends political party membership. A constitution that is political party-centred and not people-driven will overwhelmingly be rejected by the mob or masses.

In a democracy, constitutional representatives and political parties must at least agree to meet the demands of the masses and they should not use their temporary superiority or privileges conferred to them by the people to further their own selfish interests.
It is the people who should decide what they want in a constitution rather than leaving it to a few technocrats to conclude. Should they have left the drafting of the new constitution to only three lawyers, or should the process perhaps have included representatives of chiefs, economists, political scientists, human rights experts, journalists, politicians, security specialists, lecturers from various institutions, teachers, farmers, youth groups, the disabled, vendors, women groups and so on?

There seems to be nothing inclusive on the drafting stage of the Zimbabwean constitution as evidenced by the few elites who have been privileged to decide on the fate of the country’s laws ignoring the views of the masses in the process.
The drafters of the new constitution were given too much unmonitored freedom which they happily abused. The leaked chapters of the new constitution speak volumes of how the drafted document has been turned into an elitist-neo-liberal-centric piece of paper negating what Zimbabwe and its people really want.
They should have seriously considered the inputs that came out from the Copac meetings rather than changing what the people wanted to be included in that draft paper. To make matters worse, they heavily borrowed from other constitutions defeating the whole purpose of why they consulted the masses in the first place.

The people wouldn’t have wasted their time attending Copac meetings had they known that the drafters would actually cut-and-paste from other constitutions. One wonders whether African beliefs, values and aspirations are uniform from Cape to Cairo.
We might share a lot in common as Africans but there are always some distinctive features which make us Zimbabwean than South African or Kenyan. These are the issues and views which were supposed to have been captured by these drafters rather than painting us with one false homogeneous human rights and cultural brush.

The Zimbabwean people’s demands for a people driven constitution seem to have come to naught. Though it might sound a bit pessimistic the truth is that the elites have triumphed over the wishes of the majority. Demands in any political system drive the motor of politics, and politics operates to convert these demands into authoritative policy outputs.
Although it cannot be disputed that all political systems establish filtering devices that select and limit the demands coming from the masses this cannot be used as an excuse to disqualify or throw away what the people said.

The political elites usually disqualify the people’s demands that do not conform to very severe specifications of importance, consensus, and feasibility. It will be a bit naïve if we were to say that these few legal experts who were conferred with temporary powers to draft the new constitution had the right to discard what the people said replacing it with copy and paste material from other constitutions.

What Zimbabweans wanted to be included in their constitution will never be similar to what the Ugandans, South Africans, Kenyans and Malawians incorporated in their own constitutions. The “copy and paste”, “cut and paste” or one size fits all mentality is specifically for people who want others to think for them.
A constitution is unique in its own way and that uniqueness is what makes it a binding document. A cut and pasted constitution is nothing more than a forged and finite document.

The American founding fathers took their time in writing their constitution making sure it would not be abused in the future. The Zimbabwean draft constitution seems to have been abused right from its conception up to its soon to be premature birth and possibly death.

The three Zimbabwean “wise men” seem to have ignored the direction to which the star was leading them preferring instead a different direction altogether. When the masses took part in the Copac meetings they were made to believe that they had power, but in reality they haven’t since the reality of the drafting stage actually shows that a few legal technocrats are actually in control.
This kind of politics is known as “power behind closed doors”, and the individuals or groups exercising power do so by preventing those who take up decisions by limiting the amount of decisions they are allowed to take.

The statement that A has power over B to the extent that A can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do can best define the drafting stage of Zimbabwe’s constitution. This statement also shows how people with power tend to exercise their authority by making those with less power do things that benefit the powerful.

This applies to the drafters of the constitution who want the public to believe that it was the masses’ democratic right to take part in the Copac meetings when in actual fact the whole constitution making process seems to be more of a one sided neo-liberal document that will benefit a few at the expense of the many.

A few people in positions of power had the ability to shape and manipulate the desires of different social groups. Some Zimbabweans were persuaded to accept or wish for certain situations like dual citizenship without realising that sometimes it was not for their benefit.

The draft constitution, though it is still very premature to judge it until the final copy is published, seems to be elitist basing from the few chapters which have been brought under public scrutiny.
Dear reader, it is up to you to infer whether it should be a case of “the big fish swallowing Jonah or Jonah swallowing the big fish.”

• Bowden Mbanje and Darlington Mahuku are lecturers in international relations, and peace and governance with Bindura University of Science Education.