Media is now the new battlefield for the two main political parties in the country who are trying to sell their views to the people on the new constitution. By just reading an opinion article in the press with regards to the new constitution one can easily tell which party the author belongs to. State media has roped in the services of some of Zimbabwe’s finest spin-doctors to write damning articles about the new constitution process. One prominent columnist who featured in the one of the state’s weekly bulletins went on to label the Constitution Select Committee (COPAC) as a ‘mafia’ and writing in support the other columnist also added venom to the onslaught by describing the first draft of the constitution published by COPAC a ‘regime change tool’. They are using the issue of “homosexuals rights” as a match winner for their campaign. A whole page full of nothing but anti-West sentiments is dedicated to the prominent and regular columnists who are now working full time to discredit COPAC.

What should be a people driven constitution like what Professor Lovemore Madhuku always called for is now turning into a party driven constitution. The views of the people are now slowly being disregarded and thrown out the window. Not to be outdone the opposition parties have taken their views to the private media and their battle is in support of the constitution drafting process lead by the COPAC team and hoping for reforms to some of the laws in the current constitution. Advocating for the early rejection of the COPAC process is like what some stakeholders and columnists are already doing clearly shows that the end result will be a negotiated constitution with some sections of it being borrowed from the Kariba draft and the current Lancaster House constitution.

If the predictions of the end results are correct why then did the three signatories to the Global Peace Agreement endorse COPAC and waste millions of donor funds on a document, which can be negotiated in the comfort of their offices. And if there is going to be a referendum as promised it will be used as benchmark in preparation for the promised elections just like what happened after the rejection of the 2000 draft constitution. Another government of national unity is the least that the people of Zimbabwe will expect after the next elections.

This entry was posted on May 21st, 2012 at 9:06 am by Lenard Kamwendo and is filed under Activism, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.