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Machinda Marongwe on Rules for our Rulers
Lance Guma, SW Radio Africa
August 26, 2010

SW Radio Africa journalist Lance Guma speaks to the Deputy Director of the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (NANGO), Machinda Marongwe, who talks about the funding crisis facing the constitutional outreach. He expresses surprise that so soon after the controversial international sale of diamonds from Chiadzwa, the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee is seeking an extra US$5 million from donors to fund a 15 day extension of the outreach.

Lance Guma: Hello Zimbabwe and welcome to Rules for our Rulers the programme where we look at constitutional issues. My guest this week is the deputy director of the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations, Machinda Marongwe. Thank you for joining us Mr Marongwe.

Machinda Marongwe: You are most welcome. Thank you for inviting me to the show.

Guma: Now we are told the latest is that the constitutional parliamentary committee COPAC is meeting to try and get an extension for 15 more days of its outreach. Obviously you are not a part of COPAC but for those not familiar with developments could you just maybe explain what they are trying to do, who is meeting and what are they trying to achieve?

Marongwe: Well yes basically as you may be familiar with the structure of the funding for the constitutional outreach, there's been a basket which has been set up, being managed by the UNDP. This funding mechanism involves the key donors which are normally referred to as the Fish Mongers group.

They've put together some money which has been managed by the UNDP on behalf of the funders as well as crewing arrangement that involves government. So government agreed that they will set up mechanism that will ensure that this fund is properly accounted for and shall be used precisely for the purpose for which the fund had been established.

Now there is what they call (inaudible). As you will recall when this whole thing started there was some expenditure incurred in terms of advertising by COPAC which the donors refused to pay which the UNDP could not pay because it was not part of the quarterly plan so what they have basically is a mechanism where there will be submissions by the Select Committee secretariat parliament that has been mandated to push for the writing of the new constitution so altogether, with the UNDP secretariat put together a quarterly aid plan which covers the activities that they are supposed to be focussing on which will be then approved by the project board and then after the project board has approved they can then implement activities.

So essentially what is happening now is that the constitutional outreach teams, they have to stay in motels in the field because of delays, you know there are some meetings that had to be cancelled, there are a lot of challenges around mobilisation of constituency groups especially in the early stages of the outreach because there were certain elements who would go out there and ensure that the meetings don't take place. They would go out in advance of the outreach teams and ensure that the people do not attend the meetings.

So basically a number of meetings, especially in Matabeleland had to be cancelled and because of that they had to now put across the need for having more outreach meetings. This is the reason why we find that there's now a need for an extension. And again the special interest groups like the youth, it was found that the attendance has not been very . . . what would have been expected so they had to put that process where they could have more days.

But unfortunately because they are to have more days, the result is that is not covered in the quarterly work plan that had been submitted to UNDP by COPAC. Therefore they need to have the permission of, or rather the approval of the project board for them to be able to proceed to the outreach for the extra days that they need to cover. Hence we have this meeting taking place.

Guma: How serious though is the problem? Are they facing a situation where if they don't get this money it means an end to the outreach?

Marongwe: What it means is they will have to suspend all activities, what it means is that we don't have as the people of Zimbabwe a back-up plan which is outside, independent of the funding that we are getting through UNDP. What it means therefore is that if the funding is not, for one reason or another if the project board even if it meets and decides to disapprove the supplementary budget, it means that we need to go to the drawing board because essentially we will not have funding to carry out the work.

So this meeting is very critical because investments initially the problems getting the members of the project board to meet because you will find they are out, I think they are very busy people and secondly some of the people are not even really so much into the constitution, people like Professor Sadza for example who is purported to be representing civil society.

As you are aware we also have problems with the structure of the project board and we had protested that we need genuine civil society representatives. For sure now, if we had people who are supposed to be really in civil society at least the present project board might have been able to meet earlier but because we have people who are very busy with other things and they were just drafted in for political expediency the project board you have these problems naturally creeping in.

You need people who are accessible. Now because of this, we are not clear at this stage whether this project board has been able to meet and if they've been able to meet whether they have approved. If they've not approved the supplementary budget it means that as COPAC, COPAC will need to go to the drawing board, in fact they will need to suspend outreach.

Guma: Now we are told the constitutional parliamentary committee requires another five million US dollars to fund the 15 day extension. Now the surprising thing for a lot of Zimbabweans is they will really be wondering does it really mean our government cannot afford five million to fund the constitutional exercise.

Marongwe: It's not about whether they can afford it. It's about whether they are prioritising it because as you are fully aware we managed to sell our first tranch of diamonds and we managed to raise at least ten million dollars in terms of royalties which went first to the government so it means we have got money right now seated somewhere within government coffers that can be redirected towards that purpose.

It means it's an issue of whether as a government, the government that we have today, the inclusive government, is it prioritising this constitutional issue or they are simply depending solely on donors to push it? Now as some commentators would say that we want a wholly home grown solution, why can't we fund our own constitution where we have the capacity, like in this case, we have the money but it's an issue of just having the political will to do that because we cannot really be held at ransom by a project board. For heavens sake we have to be more Zimbabwean and focus on prioritising this very important process.

Guma: Now the cynics would say ah murikuona mari iriku dyiwa, these people are busy misusing money. Any possibility that this might be the case that money was used for purposes other than what it was set for?

Marongwe: That can never be ruled out but I have to emphasise that it would be very, very, I would find it very difficult to be convinced that someone in government or within COPAC managed to access that money because the money is being managed by UNDP and UNDP is paying through means of direct payment modalities so therefore it would be very difficult for either someone in parliament or someone within government to access the money.

And remember this is precisely why in January or when this project started, there were serious problems when government tried to pay parliamentarians hefty allowances, the UNDP refused to simply honour that and said no, no, no we are only going to pay rapporteurs professional fees and the rest are getting allowances.

So I think in terms of integrity of the process, in terms of whom about the financial stability of the whole mechanism, it's fairly sound. The only problem that we have however is that as a government, we are depending too much on the project board and donors to push the process for us whilst we can easily co-fund the mechanism.

In fact as you may be aware, the government, the Finance minister had announced a certain allocation towards COPAC but our understanding is that that money has not been forthcoming, even from government, even the ones who had even pledged that they would support so I think the appeal therefore is to government to be sincere about the constitutional reform process because political rhetoric without action will not yield results.

So I think what is important at this stage is to say fine, we have commitment by funding partners and interestingly most of the funding partners are people who, some elements in government think are very retrogressive like the Americans and the British. These are the key funders. As you know the British have pledged more than a million pounds into this constitutional outreach and constitutional reform process and these are the same people we are now appealing again to say can you increase the amount from one million pounds to whatever amount.

So what I'm saying basically here is that we need to show that as a government we are prioritising this because what happened to revenues from Chiadzwa diamond fields? Where are they going to if they don't fund such a national critical process? We need to be able to prioritise our issues and say fine, this is what donors have done for us and what are we doing as Zimbabweans? Are we just counting the money?

Guma: Over the weekend, Nelson Chamisa the MDC spokesman addressed a rally in Chitungwiza where he basically threatened that his party would campaign for a no vote campaign if the intimidation persisted and if the draft did not reflect the people's will. Do you think there's a bit of pessimism creeping in by a lot of Zimbabweans that this process will yield the results that they desire?

Marongwe: There's a lot of pessimism definitely because the problem that we are having is there's not been enough civic education. As you are aware NGOs and civil society players were barred from accessing rural constituencies, they were barred from conducting the very critical civil education so what is happening now is we had a lot of these quasi- governmental institutions campaigning for a position which is the Kariba Draft and what we've been having is recitations, people simply reciting the Kariba Draft in outreach meetings.

And because of that people now really start to feel that OK it appears as if people were coached or whipped into line to agree on certain things and at the same time you find that the majority of Zimbabweans were thinking that this is an opportunity for them to actually get a new constitution.

But we also realise that to some extent it might be political pressuring from the MDC because they are fully aware that without a new constitution, we fall back to the Lancaster House constitution which has been the reason why we have the situation where we have unlimited terms of office for the incumbent, the president has been there for ever.

So I think at the same time it means that we have been caught unawares by the regime, they have managed to arm twist everyone into coming into this thing and now that we are into this thing we are having problems to really position interest groups because the fact that we could not do outreach for example for the civil society groups, very few managed to go in and those who managed to go in faced serious problems because they were either arrested, as you would recall that even the monitoring process was a problem to the extent that we had to agree that it's not monitoring but it's observing the process.

So you will find that because of all these problems there are certain interests within the government, within ZANU PF in particular that are being protected and because of that there's been a lot of stumbling blocks in terms of ensuring that this process moves on smoothly.

Guma: Do you think some of these problems that are plaguing this process and are preventing it from moving smoothly will play on the donors' minds as these meetings are held seeking further funding for this process? Do you think they will say wait a minute, what sort of process are we funding here?

Marongwe: I see that coming definitely, I see that coming but the only problem that you will have now is that the donors to a large extent are also active participants whether we want to agree or not on that because by the mere fact that they are funding this process, they are now active participants therefore they have got a stake, they actually have a vote on the project board because they are active participants. This is where I was saying as Zimbabweans, we are relying too much on the donors.

As Zimbabweans we are refusing to prioritise the constitution. As Zimbabweans we have a group, a clique of people who are actually in government who seem determined (inaudible) to rely on funding. The kind of money that we are raising through diamonds is far and over the amount that is needed for constitutional outreach, the balance that they are looking for, so yes it is very possible that the funding partners will reach a stage where they will say no, no, no what are we funding?

Because if you look at it critically there's a lot of nuances that we are having to face day in, day out around the outreach, there's a lot of problems surrounding how the process is being administered and again there's a lot of political interference by political parties. Yes some will grant that give people the right to campaign, it's our right to defend our positions, any other interest group should be able to do the same.

The only problem we have here is, it's the right for a political party to campaign for a position but it becomes a problem when it coerces citizens to support a position that is pre-meditated, that is doctored somewhere and therefore the outcome will not be a just outcome especially when civic organisations, other than those aligned to certain political parties, like the war veterans are able to go around and do whatever civic education they want to do, the same cannot be said about others, civic society groups who have found that they constantly found barricades and they need to get permission and the permission either comes too late or never comes at all.

So these are the real challenges that we have with this process and I've got every reason to believe that at a certain stage the donors may sit down and evaluate and say no. no, no this is not the right way to go but at the same time I think there should be mechanisms, unfortunately there are none, to sit down as a nation and reflect. Where are we going wrong? How can we improve the process? Unfortunately the mechanisms that are in place tend to revolve around the political parties in government and does not include broader civil society groups.

In fact as you are still aware we were supposed to be part of the project board involved as civil society but again we were pushed aside which implies that a large extent this process is largely driven by the political parties in government and because of that there is limited voice of course by civics. Of course some of them were co-opted into the outreach teams but they were more or less appendages of certain parties because we never got into the outreach teams as civic society, that was very difficult.

Guma: Final question for you Mr Marongwe, how then do you see the parties involved in this process arriving at consensus because after the outreach, somehow they have to come up with a draft which is then taken to the people in the form of a referendum. How will they arrive at consensus and how will they agree that this is what the people during the outreach were saying?

Marongwe: It's going to be extremely difficult because there are seriously contested positions on the presidency, how many terms of, on the issues of property rights, there are serious gay rights, there are so many areas where there are serious contestation and areas where if ZANU PF is not careful it will actually, this document can then become a transitional document in the sense that it can be a regime change document.

So these are issues that ZANU PF obviously is wary about, they are wary about creating space where, I mean wary of the effect of a lot of electoral reforms where people are able to express their views in a way which is not coerced that will obviously imply that they can easily be removed by the new constitution so obviously the only thing that they can do at this stage is to try and influence the document.

If they cannot influence the document then they will ensure that this process is stalled at a certain stage. So the way I see it is at the end we are going to get a negotiated constitution not a people driven constitution because what will happen at the end of the day, the political parties have to sit down and agree, as you are fully aware, we have got three rapporteurs.

In each team and every day after the outreach they went to sit down, the three rapporteurs and they have to negotiate and have to agree on what people said and at times that negotiation is excruciating at that small level, I mean at that level of the outreach team which implies when it comes to the national process again we have a replication of the same when we have the drafters from the three key, from the three political parties in government where they will sit down and negotiate on the constitution.

This is what will happen, they have to agree. If they don't agree what will happen again is that if at the drafting stage there is no agreement we will still have a problem because as you are fully aware there are no clear mechanisms on passing this constitution except through the normal mechanisms set out in the current constitution where they tend to pass a normal bill which means parliament has to agree which means the president has to accent to the constitution.

These are serious issues that you'll not find likely at the drafting stage we are going to have a lot of political negotiation to the extent that we'll not get a perfect document, we'll get a document that will be reflective of the interests of the political parties in government. That will be reflective of the interests of those that actually hold the sway in terms of negotiation.

So at the end I think what we are going to get is simply a document that to some extent will open up space for possibly elections to take place but how credible will these elections be? It's another issue but basically you have a document that we'll call a constitution, that again most likely will be changed again maybe in the next ten years.

As you have, as you will realise in Zimbabwe I think we have a history of every ten years we are having this constitutional debate and we are coming up with new constitutions. I see it coming again later where we will sit down again and discuss another constitution.

Guma: That was Machinda Marongwe. He's the deputy director of the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (NANGO) joining us on Rules for our Rulers. Mr Marongwe, thank you very much for joining us this week.

Marongwe: You are most welcome.

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