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Constitutional making process: The people-s participation
Admire Zaya
November 11, 2010

Like in the movie style, the actor will never die unless it is the reasonable end of the movie. I have watched a lot of movies starred by Jean Claude Van damme; this character subjects itself to torture, beatings even up to the point of death, even though sometimes he kills his opponents with one fist. Sometimes you wonder how he manages to destroy all his enemies and become a victor in all the battles he will be fighting, it could be in a war scenario, in the jail as an inmate, even when he acts as a policeman or a thug the outcome is always the same.

Zimbabwe has an estimate population of 15 million; supposedly the majority is the youth who constitute 65 % of the population. Of the 65% we can deductively say 25% are those who are below the legal age of majority who, by virtue of their age are not allowed to vote. If we would like to put figures into the words above, we could safely say plus 9 million people in Zimbabwe are youths, of which plus 5 million of these youth are above the legal age of majority. Those who are above 35 years are less than young people collectively, if we would like to take another dimension we could include women who are 52% of the total population to the matrix because they are also a disadvantaged group. According to reports ,at a meeting at Ngarwe primary school in Mudzi district, about 800 people attended a meeting and only 20 people spoke their views, of the 20 the majority were men, accordingly ,of the 800 ,550 were women, close to 200 youths and the remainder being men. It leaves me wondering whether women came from their free will to participate or they were coerced to add to the numbers. At Mai Musodzi Hall in Harare the issue was different; the majority of people present were jostling to make the same contributions in all thematic areas, with exact words as if they were narrating events of the past or reciting a poem.

When the constitutional outreach teams were organized, the stakeholders meeting coordinated, the majority of Zimbabweans ululated to their anticipation of a new dawn. The process was colorfully decorated a People Driven Process. Like in the Van damme style it seemed all people had an equal opportunity to air their views. Like a tortoise hiding in the shell ,sometimes the actor will run away to develop new strategies to engage the opponents, remember it is the same whether he is acting as a police officer, soldier or a gangster. The timing of the outreach teams was proper in the sense that, there were positive moves towards ascertaining the roadmap of national healing process which had its roots in the Global Political Agreement which gave birth to the Government of National Unity, which saw the enactment of amendment number 19 of the constitution of Zimbabwe which had names of principals to the GPA and names of political parties in it for the first time in the history of Zimbabwe to my knowledge. The national healing process provided for a conducive environment for people to forget about the past and concentrate on building a national foundation that will provide for an undisputed democratic dispensation that could guarantee freedoms, protection of rights and provide for a clear separation of powers that could provide for accountable leadership.

Like the Hollywood style, the portrayal of a film star proves that he beats everyone in the world, but the indifference comes when you see that there are so many stars like Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Rambo, and James Bond etc, of which these actors can only win in a movie one, will be staring in. The majority of Zimbabweans only saw COPAC vehicles in their neighborhood, heard and saw COPAC jingles on the radio and Televisions but could not see were the meetings were taking place, those who new could not attend because contributions were taken on partisan lines, there were no individual contributions but political parties contributions-, in some meetings the process was very hostile to deter and disenfranchise the majority of Zimbabweans from making their contributions. When these movies are being shot, the neighborhood will seldom know about the activity but it will be happening within their doorstep. Did the people really participate I wonder. Many will agree with me that since 19-o-long we accepted a principle of governance by substitution, that the Ward represented by a councilor will be substituted by a constituency represented by a member of parliament, a constituency will be substituted by a Province represented by a Governor, a governor by the cabinet, the cabinet by the politburo, the politburo by the president. The essence being, if the president speaks the people have spoken. If this could be the possible scenario, there are so many questions to the puzzle, who then is the people? if the people are substituted by a person or a political party. My views are equally shared in the local theater production called ,"The Election Day", written by Christopher Mlalazi .This piece explores electoral processes that subverts the peoples wishes in governance like in COPAC outreach team meetings for the purposes of collecting peoples views. Whose views were collected? My last question will be, is this not the Jean Cloud Vandem style again? That, when a film is made there are stars, guest actor and those called extras, they make the film lovable, watchable, horrible and enjoyable, but only to the whims and caprices of Van Damme to quench his insatiable appetite for victory, glory and honor.

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