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This article participates on the following special index pages:
New Constitution-making process - Index of articles
Government
not serious about new Constitution
The
Zimbo Jam
February 25, 2010
http://www.zimbojam.com/culture/culture/1206-government-not-serious-about-new-constitution-artists.html
Things got heated
on the second day of the National Arts & Culture Indaba held
in Harare last week. Delegates lashed out at the Government and
the three main political parties in the country, accusing them of
politicking around the serious issue of making a new constitution
for Zimbabwe.
The day started
calmly enough with an address by the Swedish Ambassador, Sten Rylander.
He emphasised the importance of formulating a good culture policy
and reaffirmed the continued support of the Swedish International
Development Agency (SIDA) for the development of Arts and Culture
in Zimbabwe.
Temperatures
started shooting up when the speakers for the discussion on the
Constitution making process failed to turn up on time. This led
to a talk by Farai Mpfunya, an analysis on whether or not the Culture
Fund was a working model, being moved up on the schedule.
In the end,
one out of the expected three members of the Constitution Parliamentary
Committee (COPAC), Hon D. Mwonzora, made it for the session, much
to the disappointment of the indaba delegates who were looking forward
to this discussion. Hon P. Mangwana and Hon. Muhkosi could not make
it and only sent apologies with Hon. Mwonzora. The temperature in
the room went up a few more notches.
In Hon. Mwonzora's
speech he outlined the various challenges that the constitutional
reform team was facing- from a failure to meet the gender quotas,
to a need to pay the ZRP US$3million before they could get any support
from them and to pay ZBC for any awareness campaigns they wanted
to carry out. He also said that there were some members of the different
parties who seemed to want to delay the whole process so that they
could continue to enjoy the benefits of their current status and
positions.
As soon as he
was done there was an outcry from some of the Indaba delegates,
who accused the country's politicians of politicking at the
expense of everyone else.
Writer and filmmaker,
Tsitsi Dangarembga, aptly expressed the disappointment in the room
when she said the leaders of the country did not seem serious about
the process. She complained bitterly to Hon. Mwonzora that a process
which started in September 2008 was still going nowhere and that
there was no real information going out to the people, lots of misinformation
and no respect by the political leaders of the constituencies that
they represented.
Nyaya yacho
yakatengwa by other artists in the room with Walter Muparutsa, Dudu
Manhenga and Chirikure Chirikure making supporting statements and
accusing all the political parties of trying to use the process
to gain political mileage. "This process is about Zimbabwe,
and not MDC or ZANU (PF)," said an irate Manhenga.
There was also
a complaint about the fact that Arts & Culture was not initially
even a thematic area in the whole Constitution making process. To
this Hon. Mwonzora replied that it had been there all along, but
was under an inappropriate name and had been changed after the intervention
of artists' representatives.
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