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Copac has admitted that negotiations watered down people’s views. Instead of having people’s views incorporated into the draft, political parties compromised.
Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana, Zanu-PF Copac co-chairperson, recently said it was wrong for Copac to negotiate when people had clearly made a pronouncement on issues they wanted included in the new constitution.
“My conscience was telling me that we should not negotiate on the people’s views, but the MDCs would argue that this is a modern world, let’s use the best practice,” said Cde Mangwana.
The constitution was supposed to be people-driven but with these revelations and the deadlock, it shows that it is driven by politicians.
The constitution commission led by then Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, now Chief Justice, came up with a draft constitution in 1999 which was, however, later rejected in a referendum. This was an independent commission.
As the stand-off on the latest draft continues with little hope it would soften, Zimbabweans are wondering how best they could have gone in coming up with a new constitution. Some analysts say an independent constitutional commission could have yielded better results than the current process led by political parties. Others argue that the problem is not about the method of drafting the constitution but the polarised political atmosphere in the country.
A Bulawayo lawyer, Mr Thabisa Sibanda of James, Moyo-Majwabu and Nyoni Legal Practitioners said the cause of this stalemate is that Copac failed to produce a summary of people’s views gathered during the outreach exercise. He said people preferred constitutionality rather than constitutiona-lism. Constitutionality is the law or regulations that make up the constitution and constitutionalism refers to the moral compass or the conscience within the human being.
“The problem is that these politicians don’t trust each other. That is why they want to spell out everything in the constitution. They are afraid of leaving a lacuna because they do not know who will fill it,” said Mr Sibanda.
He said political parties always fight for relevance. Everyone wants people to recognise them, he said, and this is the reason why each political party does not want to negotiate away their ideas.
“They are afraid that one party might use the flaws in the constitution to their advantage,” he said.
Observers accuse MDC-T of trying to use the constitution to gain popularity without putting people’s views into consideration. They say the party wants to use the constitution to solve immediate problems affecting them without anticipating problems that might arise in the future.
Dr Lawton Hikwa, the Dean of Students in the Faculty of Communication and Information Science at Nust, said political parties should have been left out of the current process.
“At first there was criticism about political parties leading the drafting of the constitution. I think there was going to be a better outcome if the process was led by an independent body.
“An independent body will mean that the constitution will not be seen through the political lens and will at least be considered as independent,” said Dr Hikwa
He said all political parties are claiming to be representing people’s views and no one knows who is telling the truth. If it was led by an independent body, he said all these issues would probably not have been raised.
National Constitutional Assembly chairperson, Dr Lovemore Madhuku, has a different view. He said it is impossible to exclude politicians in drafting the constitution.
“We can have an independent body which will also have politicians. They cannot be completely left out,” said Prof Madhuku.
Mr Sibanda agrees with Prof Madhuku saying politicians could not be left out because they represent people.
Asked about experiences from other countries, he said it is bad for Zimbabwe to adopt other countries’ approaches because we could be doing ourselves a disservice. We could only adopt guidelines, he said, not to import their constitutions because the constitutions are written in different contexts.
He said: “We can draft the constitution without politicians but legitimacy problems will arise. Politicians are important because they are deemed to be representing people.”
In the final analysis, Mr Sibanda said the problem with our constitution-making process is not about the drafting procedure but the complex situation that the country is in.
“Someone once said Zimbabwe is one of the most highly politicised countries on the globe; an increase in the bread price can be explained politically without looking at the market problems,” said Mr Sibanda.
“Kenyans are under the same arrangement like us (inclusive government) yet they drafted their constitution peacefully and 67 percent adopted the constitution.
“Unfortunately, Kenyans are reported to be complaining about the constitution because of the dark cloud left on the horizon. People are not satisfied at this early stage; this might be due to the political mayhem in Kenya,” said Mr Sibanda.
He also said principals to the Global Political Agreement have held people to ransom as each of them is saying he is representing people’s views. With this controversy no one knows who is telling the truth, he said, adding the same people cannot say two different things on the same matter.
Mr Sibanda urged political parties to bring the impasse back to the people during the second all-stakeholders conference so that all stakeholders who will be present can air their views on behalf of people.
Online Reporter