True to what unfortunately has become our way of conducting national affairs, a spiteful wrangle has ensued between the government and the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) over the proposed new constitution, even before a single word of that document is written.The NCA, an alliance of various civic groups, churches and small
opposition political parties, has rejected plans by Parliament to take
the lead role in the writing of a new governance charter for Zimbabwe
and vowed to mobilise citizens to vote against the draft constitution
in a referendum scheduled for next year.
The civic alliance says politicians – many of them dishonest and
selfish by nature – cannot be trusted to lead the drafting of a
constitutional and wants a serving or retired judge in charge of the
process.
Parliamentarians insist that as elected representatives of the people
they should drive the constitutional reform process and that, in any
event, the draft constitution shall be submitted to Zimbabweans in a
referendum for their final say.
Both are correct, if only they would realise the simplest of things:
that you need Parliament, organised civic society groups and the
generality of Zimbabweans to achieve a credible and democratic
constitution.
It is so basic that one would have expected the patriotic legislators
and the do-gooders in the civic movement to realise that genuine
constitution making is about and should be about building consensus and
taking everyone on board and not about who occupies the chair.
For the sake of the people, we urge Speaker of Parliament Lovemore
Moyo, the three main political parties, the NCA and other civic groups
– if they do care about the future of Zimbabwe – to sit down now and
iron out their differences on the way forward regarding the new
constitution.
This school playground tactic of boycotting of each other's meetings as
we saw between the MDC-T and the NCA in the past two weeks is just that
– a senseless act that is only useful as a reminder to Zimbabweans of
how childish their leaders can be.
The NCA can go ahead and draft their own constitution but as they
learnt in 2000, no matter how good their document will be they cannot
impose it on anyone.
Likewise, the government can choose to go it alone and cobble up a new
constitution for the country. But as Mugabe and Zanu (PF) discovered in
2000, a document resulting from a process tainted by division and
unilateralism will be equally tainted.
Accepted, this time round the government could easily ensure its draft
constitution becomes law. But the contested origins of such a
constitution would make it vulnerable and as soon as the political
dispensation changes and a new government takes power it would be
amended or done away with altogether.
We believe that is not what Zanu (PF), MDC or Zimbabweans want. What we
want is a new and democratic constitution that has credibility now and
for generations to come.