a) Clearly spelt out and reduced executive presidency power, including an age limit, and removal of the president right to deploy troops and the right to make appointments.
b) More reasonable land and agricultural reform.
c) Traditional leaders do not belong in the legislature or Senate but in their home constituencies.
d) A clearly spelt out Dual citizenship clause.
WOZA will use the second all stakeholders’ process to campaign for the inclusion of these issues.
Consultations with more than 14,000 members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise in Harare and Bulawayo has highlighted concerns that the constitutional reform process is far too dependent on political negotiation.
Delegates, who represented the organisation’s 85,000 members countrywide, are also unhappy with the manner in which the Zimbabwe Republic Police continues to disrupt peaceful protests, thereby helping politicians to side-line citizens’ voices. During the WOZA ‘Occupy for Devolution’ series in Bulawayo members were beaten by plain clothed police officers with thorny twigs. One of the officers has been identified as Brain and is based at Pumula police station.
Although WOZA have submitted many complaints to the Joint Operating and Monitoring Mechanism (Jomic) they have done nothing.
As there continues to be no meaningful economic reform economic instability is affecting the cost of basic commodities. Job losses continue to be the order of the day in Bulawayo and in other centres and no concern is paid to this problem. To make matters worse, Police continue to loot from members trying to survive by vending.
The culture of impunity and the using of the ‘peoples name’ to loot from activities that should be genuinely conducted in the nations interest continue unabated. COPAC has become a liability and waste of resources which will continue through the second all stakeholders’ conference process.
Members were gravely concerned about the continued deployment of militia and war veteran in the community.
Are you registered?
The number of members registered to vote was:
Byo women 62%
Byo men 51%
Harare women 72%
Harare men 73%
Mat’land rural women 69%
Mat’land rural men 74%
The high number of registered members here is due primarily to ease of access to voter registration centres due to Zanu (PF)’s focus on rural areas. Members in rural areas also do not have proof of residence challenges.
Numbers in Bulawayo were significantly lower – with members not able to easily access documents for various reasons. Some members cannot afford to travel to the capital Harare to get their birth certificates and the local office is inefficient at providing these. Many people of this region were affected by the Gukurahundi massacre and lost parents for whom they cannot obtain death certificates and therefore cannot have their births registered. Mobile registration centres do not
Failure to register: reasons
Members gave the main reasons they have failed to register:
• Many are aliens, some who were registered in 1980 were de-registered for allegedly being alien.
• Not interested in elections
• Ignorance
• Were out of the country for a long time
• Do not have necessary documents
• Many are not home owners, as ‘lodgers’ they cannot prove residence.
• Face a long, difficult process to renounce foreign citizenship even though they do not like being classified as alien when they had previously voted as Zimbabweans.
• Have lost interest in voting due to political violence.
Post published in: Politics