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New Constitution-making process - Index of articles
Hello Stevenson, said grinning Chinoz
Trudy
Stevenson
July 14, 2009
It was never going to
be a great success, this First All-Stakeholders- Conference:
any gathering of 4,500 people will fail to achieve very much except
provide a spectacle, and the logistics are mind-boggling!
Trouble started last
week when the thing was postponed - it was scheduled for the
weekend of 11-12 July, then Zanu PF announced it was postponed indefinitely
"due to lack of funds" or some such, and the Parliamentary
Select Committee had to put its foot down and announce that it would
take place on Monday & Tues 13-14 instead.
There was a rush of last-minute
preparations: lists of delegates and full-page announcements in
the press, organisations running around trying to get their delegates
on the list, etc., and it was only on Saturday evening or Sunday
morning that most of us knew registration would take place on Sunday!
Registration was a nightmare,
and very few of us managed, despite being there the whole day and
half the night! It was supposed to start at 8am, I first went at
9.45am and they weren-t yet ready, so I returned at 2pm, by
which time hordes were already gathered and struggling to get past
the first hurdle - registration on the first form.
That was nothing,
however, compared to the next stage: the photo-identity card to
get into the venue. There were literally thousands of people milling
around pushing and shoving and being told (or actually physically
pushed) to get into different queues going this way and that way
for number, signature, photo - it reminded me of the scrum
when sugar arrived at the supermarket a couple of years ago!
A policeman
kept walking up and down and in and out of rooms with bundles of
what looked like completed accreditation forms, complaining that
he was not responsible for accrediting people - but doing
absolutely nothing to control the chaos!
This already alerted
me that there was a parallel process going on, especially when I
saw a queue going into the photo room at the back of the Secretariat
room next door, and Nyasha Chikwinya slipping in and out -
memories of elections and the nonsense at some polling stations!
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