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Public perceptions on Constitutional reform in Zimbabwe
Afrobarometer
March 2011

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Introduction

Ideally, a country's constitution is that society's contract with its citizens and should be an expression of the aspirations and values of the people. Zimbabwe's constitution has a chequered history. It was crafted in London in 1979 as an elite ceasefire pact among warring parties and has been amended no less than 19 times in 30 years. Few have regarded this document as a national supreme law and many have agitated for its replacement. The only concerted effort to craft a new social contract was in 1999-2000 but it ended in a constitutional draft's rejection in a February 2000 referendum. Civil society, through the National Constitutional Assembly, produced its own "people-driven" draft which however was not presented to the people for their verdict. Then in September 2007, the three main political parties clandestinely negotiated their own draft supreme law, the so-called Kariba Draft which was quickly overtaken by the dynamics surrounding the 2008 elections.

Efforts to write a new constitution were revived during political dialogue between Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and two wings of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The September 2008 pact among the three parties in a self-styled Global Political Agreement (GPA) acknowledges that it "is the fundamental right and duty of Zimbabwean people to make a constitution by themselves and for themselves" (Article 6). The implementation of the GPA gave birth to the so-called Inclusive Government established in February 2009. A Constitution Parliamentary Select Committee (COPAC) was set up subsequently to spearhead and shepherd a consultative process resulting in a draft to be subjected to a referendum. In fact, the constitution-making process is the flagship agenda item in the GPA, the only Article in that elite pact that is time-framed and to have been completed within an 18-month period of the life of the coalition government. The Afrobarometer public opinion survey of October 2010 included questions on the constitution as well and the public consultation process and provides some insight into the Zimbabwean public's views on constitutional reform.

The Afrobarometer

The Afro-barometer is a comparative series of public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, markets and living conditions. It works through a collaborative effort of researchers in select African countries. The October 2010 survey was based on a randomly selected national probability sample of 1192 respondents representing a cross-section of adult Zimbabweans aged 18 years or older. A sample of this size yields a margin of error of ±3 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. All interviews were conducted face-to-face by trained fieldworkers in the language of the respondent's choice. Fieldwork for the Afrobarometer Round 4.5 in Zimbabwe, on which this paper is mainly based, was undertaken in Zimbabwe on 16-29 October 2010. Where appropriate, reference to and comparisons with the findings in earlier Afrobarometer surveys will be made in order to demonstrate trends.

At the time of the survey, the COPAC-led process of gathering people's views was in the final stages of completion except in the capital Harare where outreach meetings had been suspended due to politically-motivated skirmishes. This Afrobarometer bulletin focuses on perceptions of Zimbabweans on constitutional reform in terms of both the process and the content.

Popular Awareness and Sources of Information on the Constitution of Zimbabwe

The survey first sought to find out if the respondents were aware of the current constitution under which they are governed by asking if they had "ever heard of the Constitution of Zimbabwe". Apparently, popular awareness is impressively high with exactly three quarters (75%) saying they were aware of the existing constitution but the remaining quarter had not. Though awareness was nationally spread, urban residents (81%) were more aware than their rural counterparts (73%). A significant gender gap in awareness also existed as more men (79%) than women (71%) claimed awareness.

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