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Initial thoughts on the Matabeleland constitutional outreach
Solidarity Peace Trust
November 01, 2010

http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/870/initial-thoughts-on-the-matabeleland-constitutional-outreach-experience/

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I have on my desk, a silver, two-shilling, 1947, Southern Rhodesia King George VI coin, and two big copper pennies with holes in the middle, one from 1949 (Southern Rhodesia) and one from 1956 (Rhodesia and Nyasaland). These are prized souvenirs of my time in a COPAC outreach team, physical memorabilia for one of many fascinating memories that my trips into the farthest corners of rural Matabeleland have left me enriched by.

I came by these coins in a remote rural village (that shall be kept nameless to protect its inhabitants) where we had a very outspoken and ebullient meeting with around 150 people, unbelievably squashed into one school classroom. [1] It was one of those windy days that one gets in late winter, ahead of the rains - gusting dust across a dry and barren landscape. People in this area harvested very little last year, there is no grazing left now, and every living creature is hungry and waiting for the rains - desperately waiting for them. As was our usual experience, scores of people were patiently sitting in the sparse shade of the thorn trees, looking out for our convoy of four 4x4s to arrive from Bulawayo to give them their turn to speak out, to tell us what they wanted a new Zimbabwean constitution to say. We also, predictably, had the usual clutch of plain-clothes police and secret police, who had arrived in a vehicle ahead of us.

This was a typical COPAC gathering for Matabeleland - out of well over one hundred participants, only sixteen people were visibly aged under twenty five, with the majority aged over fifty, and a good smattering of octogenarians. There is simply a missing generation out there - nearly all the young adults have gone to Johannesburg or elsewhere in search of work. Many people were skeletally thin. Most were dressed in their best, in recognition of the importance of the occasion - old suits held together with careful, obvious stitches on the corners of pockets and along the frayed ends of jacket sleeves; beautiful but often thread-bare dresses, along with coats and scarves. Some had shoes that were so cracked and torn that it was hard to believe that they still remained on a pair of feet. A scattering of mostly very well behaved babies sat on their mothers' laps, breastfeeding and dozing, and occasionally coughing with that hacking cough of winter. As the meeting progressed the numbers swelled, as people who had walked many kilometers to be there finally arrived, and as word spread that the COPAC team really had arrived for the advertised meeting.[2] And towards the end of the meeting, as evening approached, women began to filter out, to go and begin cooking what could well have been the only meal for that day, before the light disappeared entirely, leaving them in the electricity-less dark of their huts.

This particular grouping was anxious to speak out immediately - they were unstoppable in their opinions on everything. From the minute the national anthem was over, they began to express their views on how they were being governed. They were angry, but in a polite and orderly fashion. One after another, they stood up and blamed the government for their poverty, for their lack of development, for the fact that their children had all had to leave the area in order to survive, and had had precious little schooling in the last few years. There were no skills training opportunities locally, there were no jobs, there was no food, there had been no government sponsored development projects of any kind since 1968 . . .

Yes, but in view of all this, what therefore do you want to see in the constitution, they were constantly reminded. What should the constitution say about your rights? about youth? about empowerment? about the media?

We want a constitution that does not let one person stay in power for thirty years!

We want a constitution that gives us compensation for Gukurahundi - we were murdered in this region more than twenty years ago, and there are widows and orphans from those years that have remained poor all their lives because of these murders!

Yes, yes! - this angry man had very obvious support, he was being egged on by many of those present.

An old man stood up with the aid of his walking stick and announced - I am more than seventy years old, and have no birth certificate. I lost it many, many years back and went to (main town in district) and was told that I must go to Harare to get a long birth certificate. To Harare! He waves his stick in disgust. How am I supposed to get money to go to Harare? I now accept that I shall die without a birth certificate - at my age! As if I had never been born. He sat down.

A woman put her hand up and then related that when her old mother went to the local government offices to apply for a passport, she was shouted at by a Shona-speaking youngster who ordered her to speak Shona. She could not, and so left the office in confusion.

This is Matabeleland, the woman politely pointed out to us, government officials must speak to us in our language, in SiNdebele! We want a constitution that says this. We want our children taught in their first language up to grade seven - and we want local radio stations in our language. Some people here speak Kalanga and others elsewhere in Matabeleland speak Tonga, and Venda and Sotho. They must all have radio stations, and schools, in their languages.

One of the few young men present, made a point about empowerment - we want local jobs for local people, and we want local control of our resources. Why do people come from Harare and show a paper that they say is permission from the government to chop down our trees, in this district so far from Harare? They do not even employ locally, they bring outsiders to chop our trees! And wild animals like elephants have more rights than we do - they trample our crops, even our children, but we cannot kill them, by law.

An old woman stood with difficulty, and smoothed down her skirt. We think we should be able to send someone from our village to Harare to see how the national budget is drawn up, and to make sure those who draw up the budget understand our needs. How is it that every year there is a government budget for roads, and schools and clinics, yet we have never seen any of these things built in our area, for how many years? Maybe they don't know that we need these things.

And so on, and so on. Our rapporteurs consulted and translated these issues into 'constitution-speak': language rights, minority rights, cultural rights, local rights, media rights, freedom from torture and murder, the right to compensation after government abuse - and the big one - devolution of power. People across the Matabeleland region expressed their frustration and indignation at the lack of accessibility to official services locally, the centralisation of power and processes in Harare, the opaque nature of decision making, far away, around issues that intimately affected their daily lives. The overwhelming request was for greater powers for local authorities, and local control of expenditure in the provinces across the board.

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