Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

New constitution draft inspection could end in chaos: ZLHR
Gift Phiri, Daily News
January 23, 2012

View this article on the Daily News website

A forthcoming Zimbabwean conference to inspect a draft on a new constitution could descend into chaos, rights lawyers warned this week.

Leading rights lawyers, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), said there was a high risk of the repeat of the chaos that erupted at the first all-stakeholders conference in Harare in July 2009 when riot police had to be called in to break clashes between rival delegates.

The clashes displayed strain within the troubled inclusive government.

Police drove the delegates out of the venue and cordoned it off, with both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his old rival President Robert Mugabe calling for their respective parties to close ranks and complete the process.

The second all-stakeholders' conference scheduled within the next two months will accord the public an opportunity to inspect the draft drawn up by legal drafters from information gleaned from countrywide public consultations. It is a key part of an ongoing process to the long cherished adoption of a new national constitution and fresh elections after that.

But the ZLHR is warning that the escalating friction portends deadly clashes, and that the operating environment in which the constitution is being drafted continues to remain polarised and repressive.

"Meetings to discuss constitutional issues continue to be banned or disrupted using repressive legislation which should be a phenomenon of the past," the rights lawyers said in a statement issued at the launch of a critique of the ongoing Article 6 process.

"Free speech has effectively been stemmed as a result of pressure from various interest groups whose intimidatory tactics have made it difficult - if not impossible - for other stakeholders to comment or put forward alternative views for fear of retribution.

"Having been present at the most recent media and civil society briefing of Copac, ZLHR is fearful that if urgent measures are not taken to address such behaviour, the second all-stakeholders' conference will collapse even more spectacularly than the first, and the conditions preceding the referendum will not be conducive to stemming violations of fundamental rights and freedoms."

ZLHR was speaking in the wake of the disruption of a press conference held at the Copac offices in Milton Park in Harare last week that was hijacked by war veterans demanding conclusion to the process.

Zanu PF Copac co-chairman Paul Mangwana pleaded with the boisterous ex-liberation war fighters, appealing for more time.

"Imi wee, joko iri rinorema (Please bear with us, this is a tough job)," Mangwana said.

"Tose tinoda kupedza basa asi zviri kutora nguva. Hazvinakidzi kugara une zviso zvose izvi zvakakutarisa, zvimwe zvinokutuka. Tinodawa kupedza tizorore. (We all want to wrap this process up. Its disorienting to have all this focus on you all the time, to take insults regularly. We want to finish this as soon as possible and rest)," Mangwana said.

This comes at a time the electoral cycle has just kicked off, and the two principals, Mugabe and Tsvangirai have been forced to go different ways because of political considerations.

The former ruling party is accusing drafters of "tampering" with views gathered during a tumultuous four-month long public hearings held in 2010; with Zanu PF claiming it has lost faith in the drafters.

The three principal drafters are former High Court judge, Justice Moses Chinhengo, and constitutional law experts Priscilla Madzonga and Brian Crozier - all of them consensus candidates agreed by the three ruling parties.

Mugabe's Zanu PF has made lot of accusations against the legal drafters amid allegations they had acted outside the mandate given to them by Copac in not looking at the national report during the drafting.

The drafters were accused of importing items that Zimbabweans had never talked about into the draft constitution chapters and attempting to emasculate the views of the people allegedly in the service of the MDC.

The rights lawyers said the process has been sullied by lack of free public participation and said the new constitution emerging from this process can only be a transitional document, and the struggle for a people-owned constitution must continue under a new government with one centre of power.

"This is so, because constitution-making presents moments of great opportunity to create a common vision of the future of a state, the results of which can have profound and lasting impacts on peace and stability in the country which has been blemished by so much political scars. Only with this common vision can we hope to move forward positively as one Zimbabwe."

The ongoing chaos surrounding the legal drafting reflects the deep divisions within the coalition government whose brief was to ease political tensions and reverse a decade of economic meltdown.

Political analyst Charles Mangongera said the ongoing chaos around legal drafting was part of Zanu PF's election grand plan, which is a build up on the party's Bulawayo conference resolutions.

"Zanu PF's immediate plan is to rubbish the Copac process as a precursor to pulling out of it and Mugabe calling for a snap election," Mangongera said.

"Their reasoning is that they can justifiably call for an election under the Lancaster House constitution once the Copac process has collapsed.

"I am not convinced that Zanu PF has a cogent and carefully thought-out political strategy in place beyond the elections. The party seems to be in fire fighting mode and is behaving like a clueless opposition political party. There seems to be an incessant disposition towards chaos as a means of survival."

Lovemore Madhuku, leader of pro-democracy pressure group, the National Constitutional Assembly said: "All that Zanu PF wants is to try and cripple the constitution making process so as to call for an election in the absence of a constitution in 2012."

Although Zanu PF appears to be issuing statements suggesting it wants a peaceful, free and fair ballot, that call could be short-lived.

The constitution that is currently being drafted by Copac will - if adopted - inevitably shape the legal, institutional and administrative framework of Zimbabwe.

It will be used as a standard to measure good governance, while its implementation will also be used to assess compliance with the rule of law in Zimbabwe, the rights lawyers said.

Observers are warning that the forthcoming all-stakeholder conference could witness more clashes between delegates given the polarised positions of the parties in the ruling coalition.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP