The Copac Deception

each day that goes by, neutral Zimbabweans who have for the most part given the ill-fated process the benefit of doubt are finally beginning to better understand that a major reason behind Copac’s failure is that apart from being irretrievably flawed in its conception and design the Copac process has also been driven by dreadful dishonesty.

However you look at even with the best of intentions, Copac has fundamentally been a dishonest process. The latest example of this sad reality is how Copac’s co-chairs have been seeking to abuse the Copac constitution making process to pave the way for abolishing Zimbabwe’s National Flag, National Anthem, Public Seal and Coat of Arms while denying their otherwise blatant and totally unacceptable treachery.
It is an undeniable and self-evident fact that Clause 5 of Chapter One of Copac’s draft unofficially published by this newspaper on May 1 and controversially endorsed as it is by the two MDC formations against the views of the people clearly fails to entrench the protection of Zimbabwe’s four key national symbols, namely, the national flag, national anthem, public seal and coat of arms by putting each and all of them at risk of being abolished as part of a vulgar and treacherous campaign for what Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC T calls a “new Zimbabwe” in opposition to the legacy of the liberation struggle out of which a truly new Zimbabwe was born in 1980.

When President Mugabe warned in Gwanda on May 15 that any political party that seeks to abuse the constitution making process to erase the memory of our fallen heroes by removing the red colour from our National Flag will not live, the co-chairs of the two MDC formations, Edward Mkhosi and Douglas Mwonzora respectively responded by falsely charging that President Mugabe was misinformed about claims that there’s any Copac plot to change the four key national symbols.

While pretending to deny that their Copac draft constitution seeks to abolish the national symbols, Mwonzora went on to confirm the self-evident plot by claiming that, “the Japanese flag was changed after Hiroshima and that might also happen to Zimbabwe in the future if something significant were to take place because Zimbabwe’s history will not end with the liberation struggle”.

In essence Mwonzora confirmed that Copac’s latest draft constitution has left the doors wide open for the replacement of the four key national symbols on treacherous grounds that “Zimbabwe’s history will not end with the liberation struggle”. The point that the sellouts who are trying to abuse Copac to attack Zimbabwe’s African roots in aid of regime change is that Zimbabwe’s history of independence as a constitutional State starts, not ends but starts, with its independence. Any constitution must recognise and respect that start failing which those purporting to be making the constitution must go to hell and forget it.

It is in this context that in typical keeping with the now customary tradition of dishonesty in Copac, Mkhosi and Mwonzora know only too well that Clause 5 of Chapter One of Copac’s latest draft of the co-chairpersons speaks for itself such that it does not require any specialised semantic interpretation.
For the record, Clause 5 of Chapter One of the widely condemned Copac draft constitution entitled, “National Flag, National Anthem, Public Seal and Coat of Arms” provides that “Zimbabwe must have a National Flag, a National Anthem, a Coat of Arms and a Public Seal, details of which are to be prescribed in an Act of Parliament”.

The mischievous essence of this treacherous Clause is that the all too important founding symbols of our nation, which have defined our national independence, are mentioned in the Copac draft not as part of the proposed constitution but only to be prescribed in an Act of Parliament and therefore to be changeable. This is worrying considering, among other things, that the MDC T does not in fact sing the Zimbabwean National Anthem at its functions and events but sings Ishe Komborera Africa if at all.

To understand why this clause is treacherous and thus objectionable in the extreme, compare it with Section 9(1) of Chapter Two of the new 2010 Constitution of Kenya from which Copac has stolen devolution ideas and provisions with reckless abandon which provides that, “The national symbols of the Republic are: (a) the national flag; (b) the national anthem; (c) the coat of arms and (d) the public seal. Section 9(2) of the new Kenyan Constitution then provides that “The national symbols are as set out in the Second Schedule”.

What this means, whose import has been lost to Copac against the views of the people, is that the new 2010 Constitution of the Republic of Kenya recognises, affirms and entrenches the fact that Kenya has been an independent nation since 1961 with national symbols that define the history of that independence and that these symbols cannot simply be prescribed in an Act of Parliament amenable to change by a simple majority vote in Parliament but must be part of the Constitution itself and must therefore be subject to amendment only through an entrenched process either like any other amendment or even better might require the addition of a referendum to amend.

While Clause 5 of Copac’s latest draft that is dramatically at variance with the views of the people might read like an innocent provision, it is in fact sinister and very treacherous not only because it opens Zimbabwe’s sacrosanct founding national symbols to very easy replacement by prospective parliamentary sellouts through an Act of Parliament whose vote would require only a simple majority but also because it fails to recognise the fact that Zimbabwe actually has a National Flag, a

National Anthem, a Coat of Arms and a Public Seal that must be affirmed by any new constitution and whose constitutional protection must necessarily be entrenched beyond manipulation or replacement by a vote of a simple majority in Parliament that might be given to treachery.
In what was a clear demonstration of its embedded dishonesty which has become incurably deep-seated, the Copac co-chairs proposed at a the full Select

Committee meeting on Monday to respond to the public outrage at the attempted murder of our national symbols to amend Clause 5 by only deleting the word “must” and replacing it with “shall” for the amended Clause to read, “Zimbabwe shall have a National Flag, a National Anthem, a Coat of Arms and a Public Seal, details of which are to be prescribed in an Act of Parliament”.

This response is typically of the semantic games that Copac has been playing since the release of its preliminary draft constitution in January prepared by its now forgotten drafters whom Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana said they smuggled at least 70 percent of their own content onto the draft against the views of the people. That smuggled 70 percent of the content included Clause 5 which is not based on any view of the people. What is very worrying, and this is the point that tellingly

demonstrates the staggering dishonesty of the Copac process, is that the 70 percent of content that Cde Mangwana rightly pointed out as having been smuggled by the drafters in the preliminary draft released in January, which includes Clause 5, has not been corrected beyond semantics in the first April draft prepared by Copac’s co-chairs which is now the subject of public outrage.

When Copac decided to refer the co-chairperson’s April draft which contained the same 70 percent content that did not reflect the views of the people, such as Clause 5, the Zanu-PF Copac Caucus diligently responded by correcting that 70 percent which was without doubt not based on the views of the people and hence the 29 page submission from the Party whose essence is unassailable in view of the public record arising from the anomalies of Copac’s preliminary January draft of the drafters who became drifters.

There’s a bottomline here. If after 32 years of our national independence the latest Copac draft constitution does not get right the basic fundamentals of that independence as defined by our four key national symbols based on our liberation struggle, why should anyone believe that it can get right any other important fundamental about our country? Your answer is as good as mine.