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This article participates on the following special index pages:

Helping Zimbabweans to understand and write their own Constitution
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)
September 2009

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Introduction

Zimbabwe's current Constitution was written in 1979 as a cease-fire agreement. In 2000 consultations on a new constitution were carried out across the country but Zimbabweans rejected the draft constitution for two main reasons.

1) People did not have confidence that the words they had spoken in the consultation process had been respected and written into the constitution. The draft presented did not seem to capture the spirit of the people's views.

2) The draft did not reduce the president's powers, the presidential age limit or his term of office.

By rejecting the 2000 draft by voting NO, Zimbabweans voted to continue on with the Lancaster House Constitution that has now been amended 19 times and has increased the presidential powers.

Almost 10 years later we are once again beginning a constitutional reform process, but this time it is because of a political agreement signed between political parties. In the deal politicians are supposed to lead the constitution-making process. You will hear of the KARIBA DRAFT that politicians want to be the starting point and we will explain some of the points in this draft to help you see that the Zimbabwean people can write something better. WOZA and MOZA would like to help Zimbabweans to participate so that they can take charge of the process and help to write their own constitution. We believe that we should help to write our own constitution from the first sentence to the last and so we have written this booklet to help you do exactly that.

Please study the list of questions at the end of this document; they will help you understand the main issues about the Constitution.

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