The Financial Gazette

Staff Reporter
THE gagging of participants in the constitution-making pro-cess especially in the rural areas has intensified as political parties pull all the stops to drive home their views for incorporation into the country’s supreme law. Latest reports to the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee (COPAC) and the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC), indicate that the coaching of people on what to say during the constitutional outreach has been rampant, threatening to turn the process into an exercise in futility.
In a report to COPAC, Zvanyadza Chirige of Wadzanai Township in Shamva stated that after airing her views in the constitutional outreach programme, a ZANU-PF councillor chased her away from a local market stall where she is a vendor, before her landlord was forced to evict her from a house where she was a tenant. In another complaint to the COPAC district liaison committee in Chikomba, Antony Mutodza of Chikomba West said at one gathering he was manhandled as known Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) activists were stopped from airing their views.
“After that another guy by the name of Mubaiwa stood up to contribute, the crowd of participants roared that he was not supposed to contribute because he was an MDC member despite the fact that he stays in that ward. Pressure mounted and he sat down without contributing,” wrote Mutodza.
“Mr Ward Nezi who was introduced as the COPAC team leader did not rebuke ZANU-PF supporters who openly blocked Mubaiwa from contributing because he is an MDC (member).
“Are we writing a ZANU-PF constitution or a people-driven constitution?”“How can COPAC teams engage themselves into singing and dancing in solidarity with their parties in front of participants, again without any discouragement from fellow members?”
In another report to JOMIC, the MDC-T provincial secretary in Mashonaland Central, Jonathan Kapasi, complained that a party activist, Elias Dzinesu, of Muzarabani had his house burnt down by suspected ZANU–PF activists after he had said he would not be influenced but would air his own views in the outreach programme.
Asked at a press conference last week about alleged violence at outreach meetings, COPAC co-chairpersons — Paul Man-gwana and Douglas Mwonzora — dismissed much of the claims as a creation of the media. Reporters however, quizzed Mwonzora who was seconded to COPAC as a representative of the MDC-T on why his views were contradicting those captured in the Prime Minister’s newsletter, which occasionally exposed violence in the exercise.
Writing an obituary for the late MDC-M vice president, Gibson Sibanda late last month, Welshman Ncube, the party’s secretary-general who is also the Minister of Industry and Commerce and one of the negotiators in the Global Political Agreement, said the constitutionmaking exercise risked becoming pointless.
“Particularly worrisome to him (the late Sibanda) were reports that people were being bused to COPAC meetings and that in many areas they had been thoroughly coached on what to say. He (Sibanda) wondered if the exercise was not one in futility; if it was true that political parties were frog-marching people to COPAC meetings and demanding that they merely echo the party views,” said Ncube.
ZANU-PF has flatly denied  it was coaching its supporters what to say during the exercise.
Meanwhile, logistics problems continue to dog the COPAC outreach with reports this week indicating it has run out of funds as it awaits fresh allocations from donors.
COPAC officials were allegedly kicked-out of a hotel in Bulawayo due to non-payment of bills while participants have not been paid their dues.

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