Inclusivity is the key (28-06-07)

er accepting or rejecting this NVD.
Zimbabweans are fully aware of the capacity of the Mugabe regime to use and abuse the church and/or any other entity for its own ends. There is ample evidence indicating that the dictatorial Mugabe regime is keen to highjack the NVD as its own. Impeccable sources within the church leadership have admitted that state agents, without the sanction of the church leaders who authored it, doctored the NVD version now being distributed countrywide.
Further, the process of generating the NVD was fundamentally flawed as it excluded political parties, civic bodies, the business community and the generality of the masses of Zimbabweans. A flawed process will normally generate a faulty product. The changes made by the despotic regime to the original NVD clearly resulted in a product largely deemed to be tolerable to the Mugabe regime though a far cry from what the people of Zimbabwe demand.
Some of the changes that were made confirm that the original initiative was not made by the church leaders but by the Mugabe regime itself. State agents, for example, changed aspects dealing with the need for a democratic constitution for Zimbabwe, and Mugabe reinforced these changes by arguing that the Lancaster House Constitution was home grown.
State agents deleted references to pre-election violence from the NVD, presumably. References to such draconian laws as POSA and AIPPA as repressive were diluted to simply state that they were contentious. Also deleted from the NVD were references to such freedoms as of association, speech and expression. The Mugabe regime is well known to be allergic to these kinds of freedoms among the ruled subjects of the naked emperor. The desperation reeks to high heaven.
State agents also eliminated the distinction made in the original document between state controlled and the independent media. The original document alleged that the state-owned media promoted violence and the shrinking space for reconciliation, but the final document excluded all such allegations. The church leaders’ condemnation of Operation Murambatsvina was also deleted from the NVD, much to the chagrin of the clergy concerned. Indeed, this was an insult to the church leaders.
Sadly, the church leaders did not object to all these changes to the document that they claim to have toiled upon with sweat and tears. The reasons for their silence are, obviously known to them alone. But it is possible that they were not aware of these changes until it was too late in the day to cry foul. Is it possible that they agreed with the changes that the state agents had made to the NVD? That is very unlikely.
Perhaps the most plausible explanation may be that they realised that their efforts could only be successful if Mugabe accepted them. They were aware that the whole process could be futile unless it gets the dictator’s blessing. This is true, based on Zimbabwe’s numerous experiences in this regard.
What the church leaders need to urgently do now is to ensure that they bring into the process most of the key players, including leaders of the Christian Alliance, to participate in the drawing up of the final vision document. Nothing will be gained by appeasing the regime while alienating progressive forces.