Constitutional process suffering from partisan media coverage

By Lance Guma
01 February 2010

Deputy Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs Jessie Majome has said the country’s efforts to craft a new constitution are being hampered by negative and partisan media coverage from the state media. Speaking on our Rules for our Rulers constitutional programme Majome said the state media was failing to appreciate that a tripartite government was in place and their coverage was not reflecting this.

This week Constitutional Parliamentary Committee co-chair Paul Mangwana from ZANU PF accused Constitutional Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga of delaying the outreach programme. He claimed Matinenga had entered into an agreement with the main donor, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) without the knowledge and consent of cabinet. Mangwana claimed there were a lot of ‘offending’ clauses in the agreement and this created delays.

Majome who is the chairperson of the Sub Committee on Information and Publicity in the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee however said at no point had the committee debated the matter and arrived at Mangwana’s conclusion. “The Select Committee has not dealt with this issue. I was at the last meeting and do not recall it ever being raised. The committee makes decisions by resolutions and at no point was the matter raised for debate. Mangwana was probably airing his views,” she argued.

Majome complained that co-chairperson Paul Mangwana from ZANU PF was being given a dominant voice in the state media and yet there was ‘no ranking’ in the Select Committee. Douglas Mwonzora (MDC-T) and Edward Mkhosi (MDC-M) are the other co-chairs in COPAC and are meant to be on an equal ranking with their ZANU PF counterpart. Majome’s Sub Committee met with the Minister of Information and Publicity to voice their concerns and were given assurances the state media would try and give a ‘national’ outlook to their partisan reportage. However, nothing has changed.

Despite the negative reporting Majome is convinced the process is on the right track. She said it was an ‘ambitious, open-ended process, designed for maximum input and it was not easy to manage a mass based project.’ Given the backdrop of the country’s economic situation the delays were ‘understandable.’ She contrasted the way Zimbabwe was drafting its constitution with the way similar documents were drafted in South Africa, Namibia and Uganda. In those countries a small group of experts played a more prominent role as opposed to Zimbabwe’s ‘mass based approach.’