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Zimbabwe Briefing - Issue 86
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (SA Regional Office)
August 08, 2012

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SADC Must Look Beyond A New Zimbabwe Constitution

At the end of next week SADC leaders will meet in Maputo, Mozambique, to consider a number of weighty political problems including the Zimbabwe situation. Mozambique will take over the leadership of SADC for the next twelve months while Tanzania is expected to take over the SADC Troika leadership during the same period that Zimbabwe is expected to hold national, harmonized elections. Of interest to SADC leaders and to the broader international community is whether or not Zimbabwe is making sufficient reform progress towards credible, nonviolent, free and fair elections, and for that they will look to constitutional reform progress, among other issues.

The second draft of the Constititutional Select Committee of Parliament (COPAC) is out; both MDC formations have endorsed it while Zanu PF has demanded further amendments to the draft claiming that some of the proposed reforms are unacceptable. President Mugabe has again threatened to call for elections next year under the current constitution.

The Zanu PF position of rejecting the draft constitution in current form conceals the point that, in fact, the draft is not a significant departure from the current constitution in terms of the executive powers enjoyed by the president, particularly. It is most likely that Zanu PF is pretending to be unhappy with the draft constitution as a brinksmanship strategy to maximise on concessions and compromises from the MDC formations while conceding nothing in return.

Because huge sums of money and an inordinate amount of time has been spent in coming up with the draft constitution, a number of stakeholders are eager to see a new constitution - and this feeds Zanu PF's brinksmanship, knowing that their demands, no matter how unreasonable, are likely to be accepted for the sake of coming up with a new constitution. For this reason, the draft constitution to be subjected to a national referendum is unlikely to contain far-reaching reforms.

In the larger scheme of Zimbabwe politics, a new constitution is therefore, not the gamechanger, and, as such, there is need for caution not to invest too much faith in the ability of a new constitution to transform and level the political playing field. The game-changer for Zimbabwe, where SADC leaders must pay close attention to, is the roadmap to credible, free and fair elections to which a new constitution is just but one of the several components. Key elements of that roadmap include the total separation of the security forces from civilian and electoral affairs. The extremely politicized, partisan, and often violent role of the security forces in Zimbabwe's political and electoral affairs must come to an end first before Zimbabwe can be said to

be ready for a fresh start that begins with non-violent, free and fair elections. Recent, credible reports indicate that elements from the security forces disrupted the national census program demanding to take part in a process that has traditionally been run by teachers across the country. Until clear mechanisms are developed to remove the security sector for active, partisan participation in Zimbabwe's political affairs, it will be difficult to see how a new constitution alone, will remove violence and level the political field.

When SADC leaders meet next week, they should focus on how to enforce the implementation of the agreed roadmap to elections that goes beyond having a new constitution. President Mugabe and ZANU-PF should be clear that failure to timeously implement SADC resolutions attracts appropriate action from SADC. If SADC fails to come up with a robust enforcement mechanism for its decisions, and if the MDC formations continue to give in to Zanu PF's brinksmanship through making endless concessions on the draft constitution, Zimbabwe risks going for the next elections under the unfavourable, violent conditions that prevailed in 2008.

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