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themselves and their white sponsored donors instead of standing for the interests of the people of Zimbabwe expressed through the Copac outreach evidence.
Now, Copac’s most recent damage control adventure called Constitution Update demonstrates beyond any doubt that this donor-driven outfit has become not only a public provocation but an insult as well.
Let me begin with a radio version of the show aired on Radio Zimbabwe in the early evening of Friday 27 April 2012. Two of the co-chairmen, Honourable Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana and Honourable Douglas Mwonzora, were the guests. Among the things they said to the whole nation were the following:
l The people of Zimbabwe had no right to complain that Copac had delayed the constitution making process (now almost three years) since their Government was not funding that process. Instead, the people should thank Copac for its ability to convince mostly Western countries to pour millions of dollars into Copac’s coffers through UNDP for the purpose of producing a people-driven constitution.
l So far Copac had received and spent more than US$36 million dollars on this process but this was still not enough. Copac still needed to receive an additional US$10 million in order to do its job.
l Constitution making was too complicated and too specialised to be understood by academics, professors and writers who are not learned in law. That is why Copac was receiving so much wrong and unjustified criticism. Its critics were not lawyers but ignorant academics and writers who specialised in Divinity, Theology, History, Literature, Mathematics, Political Science, and all sorts of inferior subjects which are not law.
In the very first episode of Constitution Update on ZTV the week before the radio version, all three Copac co-chairmen were involved and at that time they said that all those who criticised their handling of the constitution making process were evil people who did not have the interests of Zimbabwe at heart.
The following week, on 27 April, Copac changed that description a little bit in order to claim that all the people who criticised its handling of the constitution making process were ignorant and unqualified to question Copac’s conduct because they did not specialise in law. So, in one week we are told that the critics of Copac are treasonous and evil, in the following week we are told that the same critics are just ignoramuses who were too dull to study law at university!
Failure of Constitution Up-Date
The fundamental problem which Copac faces in its Constitution Update blitz is that its approach to the public has degenerated from an outreach (public information) mode at the start to an advertising (marketing) mode now. From the point of view of the supremacy of the people in national affairs, this degeneration in Copac’s performance and message is easy to demonstrate. Put in Shona the Copac message has progressively degenerated in the following manner.
From: “Tinoda kukunzwai nokuti pfungwa dzenyu ne zvido zvenyu zvinokosha”
To: “Takakuzwai, saka chimirirai Bumbiro re mitemo yenyu yemwakatipa”
To: “Hamunzwi, uye hamunzwisise zviri kunyorwa nenyanzvi dzougweta nokuti hamuna kufunda mutemo kudai ndisu isu vana mazvikokota vemutemo.”
The full weight and meaning of this public provocation is hard to put into English, but let me try as follows: During the outreach phase, the Copac message was heard to mean more or less the following: “We want to hear your views, based on your daily lives and your historical experience, because you, as the people who created and now own Zimbabwe, are supreme.”
After the outreach, the Copac message came across more or less as follows: “We heard you and we recorded your views honestly and correctly. Therefore you should trust us to produce a constitution which is truly people-derived, people-driven and reflecting the fundamental aspirations of the majority, for independence, for autonomy, for sovereignty, for economic liberation, for indigenisation and for popular empowerment.”
Now, almost three years after the start of the constitution making process, the Copac message, based on the marketing gimmick called Constitution Update, now comes across as follows:
“The majority of the people of Zimbabwe are fickle, unthankful and inconsiderate. They also lack elementary intelligence and understanding, especially in those areas where laws are at stake. The majority of the people of Zimbabwe are so ignorant that they have been misled by academics, writers, and mere activists whose knowledge is limited to such useless disciplines as Divinity, Theology, History, Political Science, Mathematics and everything else except law.
Constitution making and constitutional issues should be left to fundis like us who are experts in law. Therefore it is not surprising that no one seems to understand or appreciate what we have achieved with the help of our progressive and generous donors mobilised through UNDP.
Apart from this glaring degeneration in the mode and content of Copac’s message, another fundamental problem is that the message appears like the advertisement of that “Boom” powdered soap a couple of years ago which ran so far ahead of the product that people remember the acting and actors and yet they have never seen the product. Apparently there was no soap yet.
It was either not manufactured at all or it was not distributed. All we got were the riveting adverts. But the Copac damage control effort in Constitution Update is far worse than the Boom powdered soap adverts in that the three actors are poor performers, even as mere actors. What we mean is that Constitution Update is selling a non-existent product or misrepresenting bits and pieces of an intended product as if they were the finished product; just as the Boom powdered soap was no more than just empty bright coloured cartons.
Objective Look at Some of the Claims Made In Constitution Up-Date
The first claim I want to examine is the idea that the people of Zimbabwe lost their right to complain against Copac when their Government failed to finance the constitution making process. Therefore Copac and its UNDP-driven donors have the right to carry out the process in any manner they see fit and for as long as the donors want.
It is important to point out that UNDP together with USAID are also the drivers of the chema economy against Zimbabwe, drivers of that system of criminal humanitarianism intended to deny the reality of illegal sanctions and to assuage the conscience of those who imposed the illegal sanctions which are mainly responsible for the people’s failure to fund their own constitution making.
It is also important to say two of the political parties in Copac were responsible for inviting the illegal sanctions which made it impossible for the people to pay for their own constitution making.
And it would be enlightening to find out how much it cost to produce the Kariba Draft Constitution from which Copac’s drafters were plagiarising some of the bits of constitution they produced. Did the Kariba Draft Constitution cost anything close to US $36 million?
The idea that all lawyers support Copac’s deceit is laughable. I happen to know that it was a team of lawyers chosen by Zanu-PF who exposed the cheating by Copac’s drafters which led to the latter’s dismissal. Those lawyers do not support what Copac’s lawyers are doing. We may laugh at the arrogance shown by the two Copac co-chairmen on the Radio Zimbabwe programme on 27 April 2012, and yet the attitude shown there is typical of certain extreme fringes of a number of professions. Readers may remember my African Focus instalment for 25 September 2011 (Sunday Mail) where I dealt at length with this problem.
The Uses of the So-called expert or Professional by Imperialism
The Anglo-Saxon onslaught on Zimbabwe, like the Medieval terror against heretics and independent communities, must rely on the creation of specialised orders or single-issue organisations and “professionals,” such as Stanford Moyo, Beatrice Mtetwa, Jestina Mukoko, Dewa Mavinga, Farai Maguwu, Sydney Masamvu and Sydney Chisi. So it is not just lawyers who think their profession is the most intelligent and most important in the world.
Quoting Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, Mary Daly observed that:
“Laymen might not accept all the esoteric details supplied by the experts, but they accepted the general truth of the theory (and doctrine of the professional crusaders), they were unable to argue against its more learned interpreters. So the experts commanded the field. For two centuries the clergy preached against witches and the lawyers sentenced them . . . Confessors and judges were supplied with (expert) manuals incorporating all the latest information.”
It is no accident that the Anglo-Saxon onslaught on Zimbabwe in the last fifteen years has capitalised on multiplying the members and organisations who not only claim to hold a stake in Zimbabwe’s destiny but also claim the purity of being experts, professionals, specialists and consultants on everything to do with Zimbabwe’s fate.
The combined message of these busybodies as “stakeholders” is that:
l Zimbabwe should not have allowed a spontaneous African land reclamation movement to take land from white settlers without the blessing of a blue-print conceived by experts and funded by donors.
l Zimbabwe cannot hold elections without first bringing in experts to design a voters roll, forge a roadmap and define its media policy.
l The status of Zimbabwe’s diamonds on the global market should not be defined by Zimbabwe, its allies and the normal Kimberley Process. Rather it must be defined by foreign sponsored “diamond rights experts.”
l Zimbabwe should not hold elections before turning its defence forces into “professionals” who, like consultants and mere technicians, should not be concerned about the close link between security, patriotism and the political direction of the nation and its leadership.
This is to say, Zimbabwe should reform its defence forces into a mercenary outfit which will obey anyone who promises the most money and best benefits.
l Zimbabwe cannot enjoy good governance until everything that really matters is turned over to an “independent” commission, separate from the state and staffed by independent experts and specialists. The list is endless.
Ivan Illich is an Austrian-born priest, scientist and historian. He understands the link between capitalist repression through the use of “professions” on one hand and the repression carried out by the Catholic church-empire through the use of similar experts and professions in Medieval times.
In 1978, Illich published a book called Toward a History of (Human) Needs. He wrote: “Let us first face the fact that the bodies of specialists that now dominate the creation, adjudication, and satisfaction of human needs are a new kind of cartel . . .
“A profession, like the priesthood, holds power by a concession from an elite whose interests it props up. As a priesthood offers salvation in the train of an anointed king, so a profession interprets, protects, and supplies a special this-worldly interest to the constituency of modern rulers.”
For 15 years Zimbabwe has been besieged by the desperate fringes of the panicking priesthood of a dying Anglo-Saxon empire.
Recently this priesthood has been praying for the sudden death of the founders of our revolution in the belief that death is the remaining reliable ally of the dying empire and its scared stooges.
The prayers for Chimurenga revolutionaries to die arises from the belief that the African revolution will also die at the imperial stake together with the mortal bodies of its founders.
Online Reporter