Iden Wetherell
Zimbabweans are at each others’ throats over the ground rules for a poll next year that could decide the future of President Robert Mugabe’s 19-year grip on power.
At the centre of the controversy is a constitutional review process launched by the government in May in response to growing demands for reform to a framework designed to entrench the ruling Zanu-PF party.
The government has amended the Constitution 15 times since 1980, ostensibly to dump colonial anomalies but in reality to remove checks on its exercise of power.
Mugabe has centralised authority in his own hands by managing the electoral process, appointing 30 members of Parliament, and ensuring the only voice heard on radio and television is his own.
The 400-member constitutional review commission chaired by Judge President Godfrey Chidyausiku contains all 150 MPs, ruling party officials, mayors, and Zanu-PF allies.
The presence of a handful of academics, church leaders, and representatives of the business and agricultural sectors has enabled the government to argue that the commission is fully inclusive of society.
The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a civic body chaired by trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai which comprises opposition parties and a wide range of NGOs, rejects the commission’s claims to independence, dismissing it as hand-picked and unrepresentative.
“The government-led constitutional reform process is defective: it is not transparent and does not involve the people from the beginning,” Tsvangirai contends.
He has played hardball with the commission, refusing to participate in a process he says is open to presidential manipulation.
Mugabe recently described the current Constitution as “serving our needs well”. He has denounced members of his party calling for a limit to presidential terms as “witches”.
But a growing demand for reform at all levels of society has persuaded Mugabe to shift his position. It is suspected, however, – not just by the NCA – that he intends to retain control of the reform process through a largely compliant commission.
Eddison Zvobgo, the powerful Masvingo regional boss who heads Zanu-PF’s reform initiative, selected the commission’s members. Now he will be proposing what kind of reforms his party wants to see adopted. The government has promised a referendum on the outcome.
Jonathan Moyo, visiting professor in the political studies department at the University of the Witwatersrand and an outspoken critic of Mugabe’s regime, says the NCA is irrelevant. “They have been left behind, frozen in arguments about how to do something that is already being done,” he says.
Moyo is confident Mugabe will not interfere in the commission’s work.
“To argue that it is better for people to wait until they find out whether Mugabe will interfere or not,” the NCA’s Professor Welshman Ncube argues, “is like saying there is no reason to brake a runaway car until you are sure it is heading down the edge of a cliff.”
The NCA is planning protests against the commission and has advised the public to boycott its sessions while it draws up its own constitutional blueprint.
Many agree it is too early to trust a president with a record of skilful manipulation.
“Remember, when dealing with Mugabe you are dealing with someone with over 40 years of political experience,” cautions opposition activist Kempton Makamure.
Mugabe warned last weekend he would not allow anybody to interfere with the work of the commission.
As the country faces food and fuel shortages, the political temperature is rising. Moyo is quoted in last week’s edition of the Zanu-PF newspaper, the People’s Voice, as calling Tsvangirai a “hooligan and stone thrower” who is acting like an adolescent. He sdenies saying it.
Gay lobbyists have criticised both the NCA and the commission for the exclusion of homosexual delegates.
In an extraordinary turnaround for the government, Zvobgo said last week he would be happy to consider an application from advocacy group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.