Why Zanu-PF had to amend draft

government, Zanu PF has its origins in the liberation struggle of Zimbabwe.
Its heroic participation in the emancipation of the country reposes more responsibilities on it to continue safeguarding the country from possible subversion through constitutional processes or by any other means.
Zanu-PF’s liberation war credentials position the revolutionary party on a national pedestal that empowers it to become the political compass that guides the country into a better and secure future. This is what guided it to take its time to analyse and make the necessary adjustments to the flawed document.
Leaders from other political parties without a similar historical background impetuously rummaged through the document, which they approved in minutes without any due regard to its futuristic repercussions on the governance of the country and the sanctity of our humanity as Africans.
Really, it would be foolhardy that after vanquishing colonial practices that sought to undermine our African values, the former freedom fighters, who constitute the majority of the politburo, would allow the current constitution-making process to become a conduit for smuggling back unsavoury practices that sought to corrupt our moral fabric.
It is an open secret that colonialism sought to obliterate our cultural practices, religion and heritage by arbitrarily introducing alien practices that seek to degrade our humanity.
By defeating colonialism, revolutionaries managed to forestall sustained efforts to contaminate our African practices. These liberators cannot now be seen to acquiesce to subtle efforts to reintroduce alien and detestable practices like homosexuality in the name of constitution-making.
They cannot accede to irreverent calls from the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, for African countries to adopt and legalise homosexual practices.
More so, after fighting to regain control of our land from the colonial grip, these freedom fighters cannot now allow the new Constitution to become an avenue for the blatant reversal of the land reform programme.
The Constitution should in fact openly safeguard these gains of independence and ensure they are not reversed. As such, there is nothing wrong with amending the draft constitution to add a clause that guarantees the irreversibility of the land reform process.
In the same vein, it is instructive to note that during the liberation struggle, Zipra and Zanla forces never fought for a splintered Zimbabwe.
They never fought along tribal lines but had in their ranks members of all ethnic groups. All they wanted was a united country that was free to chart its own destiny and could not now allow the constitution to divide Zimbabwe under their watch.
Also guided by glaring experiences from other countries like Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan where ethnic issues have caused internecine internal conflicts and in some cases led to secessionism, Zanu-PF could not allow provisions for devolution to set a fertile stage to nurture misguided calls for the division of the country along tribal lines.
Unfortunately, the seeds of divisions are being planted by discredited politicians who continue to talk about imagined marginalisation of some regions and others like Mthwakazi Freedom Party who are openly calling for the creation of an independent Matabeleland state.
Understandably, Zanu-PF could not be complicit to such divisive intents hence it dropped the provisions for devolution in the constitutional draft and replaced them with clauses for a unitary state with decentralised structures.
More importantly, the MDCs should learn to take the constitutional discourse seriously by refraining from infusing its political slogans and party ideologies into the national charter.
It is puzzling how the MDCs expected Zanu-PF to accept a constitutional draft containing shrouded references to party clichés like the use of the phrase “democratic society” in the constitutional draft.
Even political upstarts would have detected that this evasive cliché echoes with the “democratic change” mantra in the pro-Western parties.
Such puerile political ambushes to nicodemously incorporate party slogans into a national charter should be dismissed with the contempt they deserve.
Zanu-PF was apparently bound to detect and expectedly impelled to drop these political clichés in the interests of guarding against the hijacking of the constitution-making process by these political parties.
It is clear from the above observations that Zanu-PF should be commended for its judicious audit of the constitutional draft and for making the requisite amendments to the document.
Taking cognisance of the party’s liberation war background, it is indubitable that it was within Zanu-PF’s ideological ambit to make those adjustments to the Copac draft constitution and we urge other parties to take the amendments on board.