Zimbabweans’ priorities for the new Constitution

Given that both Zanu PF and MDC-T were campaigning for a Yes Vote in last weekend’s Constitutional Referendum, it’s not surprising that the Referendum passed by a wide margin, and the Draft Constitution will go before Parliament soon.

But as the case of Beatrice Mtetwa recently demonstrated, it’s one thing to have a Constitution, and another thing to follow it.

With this in mind, Kubatana recently solicited Zimbabweans’  priorities for the new Constitution via text message. We received hundreds of replies, and by far the most pressing concerns were for respect for human rights (including freedom of speech, media freedoms and freedom of assembly), adherence to the rule of law, security sector reform and free and fair elections. The word cloud above is a visual representation of all subscribers’ responses.

Where possible, we mapped this feedback as well, and we found over 200 points on a map of Zimbabwe, with subscribers sharing their priorities from across the country. Link to the interactive map below, and click on individual points to read these subscribers’ feedback in their own words, by location and category.

Open map in new window

This entry was posted on March 26th, 2013 at 9:47 am by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Constitution Referendum 2013, Governance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.