‘It was NCA, not Madhuku’s request to form party’

Last week National Constitutional Assembly chairman Professor Lovemore Madhuku declared the NCA a political party under his leadership. He immediately said the organisation would continue to fight for constitutional reform and social democracy. Our Senior Reporter Fortious Nhambura (FN) spoke to Prof Madhuku (LM) about this and other issues.

FN: Professor Madhuku on Saturday you declared the NCA a political party. Can you briefly tell us what the party stands for?
LM: It is not Madhuku who declared the political party. It is something which I read in the papers. It was the NCA membership which decided that they would be better able to pursue the goals they have been always pursuing now under the framework of the political party rather than a non-governmental organisation.

We were all along a civil society organisation and we want to continue but continue as a political party to seek the democratisation of the society.

FN: Throughout your constitutional advocacy you always said politicians have no role in the constitutional making process but here you are, now forming a party to champion constitution making. Is this not hypocrisy?
LM: That is not hypocrisy. People have failed to understand the NCA position. What we have been saying as the NCA is not that political parties should not be involved in the making of the Constitution but that political parties should create a space for the people to come up with a Constitution of their own.

We have been calling for a people-driven constitution. It is unfortunate that some of our former colleagues joined hands to sideline the people in that process. What we had was a party driven programme. People did not vote for the document because they did not know what was in the draft.

What we have is not a people’s constitution but a legal document. I call it a legal document because that is law that is in use in the country. As the NCA we will give people an opportunity to come up with their own constitution and I am sure people will accept the opportunity to do the constitution in the near future.

FN: Declaring a civic organisation political, is this not just a confirmation that the civil society is made up of quasi-political organisations masquerading as NGOs.
 LM: That is not the case at all. What is true is that from time to time people change, from time to time civic organisations change, when we were in civic organisation we were truly a civic organisation, very genuinely civic organisation. But the country is moving on, political circumstances changed and there is no rule that says if you are a civic organisation you are always a civic organisation. If you are a political party you are always political.

We will soon witness political parties transforming to civic societies. I mean there are so many people who have left politics and who are doing civil work so the same way that people leave politics to do civic work there should be room for leaving civic work to do political work.

So it’s completely relevant that kind of conclusion to draw from what the NCA has done. This is not the first time it has happened the liberation struggle there did not start as a political party they started as a series of civic activities so you have the 1948 struggle which has been the first major seed of nationalism in our country.

So that’s why you saw that all these people Joshua Nkomo, the Msikas and so on started as workers’ leaders in the country. So the transfer of civic to political processes is as old as humanity

FN: We saw you Prof Madhuku attend for the first time Heroes Day celebrations after the harmonised elections. You also started saying you respect the liberation struggle, and heroes also for the first time. Is this a sudden realisation or if not why have you not said these things before at the height of donor funding?
LM: Well I think it is a distortion for the media to say I was attending the Heroes Day for the first time after elections. I have been attending Heroes Days various times. And also this notion that why did we not say it before was not reported before. There should be a difference what the people say and what is in the media.

It is not correct to judge people on the basis of what the media is portraying. There has been absolutely no change in terms of our beliefs. The fact that that the NCA fought for a new constitution at a time when there was not much talk from our side on nationalist ideals and so on, it was at that time an appropriate technique but we have always believed in the values that we stand for right now.

FN: The NCA has a reactionary history. It was used by Morgan Tsvangirai as a launch pad and has been generally associated with Western aligned politics. How do you intend to sell your party to the people who for over a decade have been struggling under Western imposed sanctions?
LM: I think that you must always know that the people are not always standing on one position. Some people are dying some people are being born. This party is not for today it is for today and tomorrow. Now if the current group of Zimbabweans refuses to accept the party we can assure you that other people coming on board, the young people that we are talking to. It’s not that our history is always the determinant of our future history.

Our party will be sold on the basis of what it is saying now which is to build a social democratic environment where the state is clearly caring for the poor. The state is actually genuinely committed to those things that affect everybody. That’s what we will be doing so with time people will accept us.

That history you are referring to will not be a determinant of our support base, we will be able to explain our history, present and future.
FN: The NCA and its allies campaigned for a “No” vote in the Constitutional Referendum of 2000, not because of any perceived weaknesses in the draft produced by the Constitutional Commission but because the Western donor community was opposed to Section 57 that provided for the acquisition of white-held farms without compensation.

Can your party be taken seriously in its claim to respect the people wishes?
LM: It is not true that our campaign for a “No” vote was based on our opposition to the land reform. That was another distortion from the media. We campaigned against the draft in 2000 because of too many reasons, the first one was that the constitution had not been people driven.

It was just a Zanu-PF document at the time the Commission was a Zanu-PF commission and we said that was not people-driven. The second thing is that we were not happy with the number of aspects in the draft and the most important thing — the concentration of power in the Presidency or Executive power.

If you want to see our position on the land clauses in the constitution you need to read the NCA draft constitution which was published in 2000. It does provide for the land reform so it is not true, these are distortions that we will always clarify with time.

FN: What difference is there between the NCA and the MDC formations given the fact that the organisation helped give birth to the party(ies)? What is fundamentally different between the NCA and the MDCs?
LM: Our differences are just in two broad perspectives in terms of social and economic focus. The MDC has become a neo-liberal party and you see that from the way they do things we are genuinely social democratic. There will be a world of difference between the NCA and MDC as long as the MDC continues to be neo-liberal.

The second thing relates to our political outlook, we emphasised for example that we do not support political party driven agendas which come from the top. We believe in bottom up approaches that is why you see we differed on the constitution making processes. So we will continue having political differences but those two are the ones that are sufficient for now.

FN: People are saying you are just trying to hoodwink Zimbabweans by talking the language of Zanu-PF while at the helm of a western funded organisation. What is your comment?
LM: No I think that people are clever they will be able to analyse us just like they analyse any other party around. But there is a very important point that I would like to make to Zimbabweans. Things of values are not supposed to be understood on the basis of either Zanu-PF or MDC or other parties.

Values and systems are not owned by political parties. So the association of a social democratic agenda it’s not owned by anyone, it’s just a set of values. If you believe in let’s say for example gender equality, it is an independent value if some other party supports it you cannot then say well that is a Zanu-PF programme.

There are things that are not necessarily Zanu-PF, there are independent of that party. So social democratic ideals you know like supporting land reform or anything, these are not Zanu-PF. They stand alone as programmes but which at one point happened to be Zanu-PF.

For just your own emphasis Zanu-PF is good at the rhetoric, they are not able to address these things genuinely. They were lucky that in the last election that the MDC was unable to be rhetorical enough to articulate the same issues that would matter to the ordinary people but it is not only Zanu-PF in this world that can talk about the kind of things they  talk about.

FN: Some people are saying now that the constitution is in place the NCA cannot to talk about the constitution and donors can no longer pump money into your agenda hence your decision to go political party. Could you please respond to that?
LM: Whoever is making those comments is giving us a lot of credit for thinking outside the box that we must continue to be there and ensure that we are relevant to the country. The time that we fought for a new constitution we were the ones responsible for creating consciousness in the country about the whole question.

Without the NCA there would not even be any talk about constitutional reform in this country. We paid heavily for that even though we were criticised by others saying we were looking for donor funds but the fact that many of our members were arrested and all the things happening.

So we achieved in creating consciousness we were only undermined by the inclusive Government which then brought a programme that went against us, they cheated the people. So we are taking another form as a long term programme, 10 years down the line when we are a bigger party you might find this country going into the root of a genuine new constitution.

The NCA will be around and will seek to revisit the fraud of 2013.

FN: The NCA was donor driven. Is this still the case? Is this not the reason that you have gone political to continue getting support from the west?
LM: We are not donor driven. We have actually suffered at the hands of the donors as the NCA. It is true that at one point we were supported by the west. We have always made that point but four or five years ago after we started opposing the Copac process we lost all the donor money that we used to get.

I think there have been headlines before in your newspaper where you say “Madhuku dumped by donors”. That was a true. No amount of thing on our part would attract donor or western donors to our side. We have not received money to do what we are doing but are focusing on raising money from our members.

Our members will be paying a joining fee of  US$5.Those who cannot and are shown not to be able will pay just a dollar and that will be enough to sustain our activities. After five years I am sure that we will raise enough support to qualify for state funding. So our agenda now is to raise funds from our own members, get enough votes in the next election to qualify for State funding and build our selves from that. We do not accept foreign funding for our activities.