By Lance Guma
16 June 2010
The country’s three political leaders, Morgan Tsvangirai, Robert Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara, appeared together at the Rainbow Towers conference centre in Harare on Wednesday to officially launch the public hearings for a new constitution. A few hours before the leaders had joined South African music legend Yvonne Chaka Chaka in launching the Day of the African Child at the same venue.
The constitutional outreach exercise is several months behind schedule owing to delays caused by endless squabbles over the composition of the teams, talking points to shape the hearings, donor funding and other issues. Even the police force, funded by the tax payer, shamelessly joined the ‘free-for-all’ mentality by demanding US$3 million to police the exercise.
Meanwhile the dates for the start of the outreach remain subject to change as meetings were still being held on Wednesday to finalize them. Provisionally the parliamentary team who are driving the process will deploy outreach members to the provinces for accreditation on the 23rd June. The teams will undergo an induction programme the following day on the 24th, before going into the communities for the actual consultations on the 25th June.
Douglas Mwonzora, one of the co-chairs of the parliamentary team, said earlier in the week; ‘Each outreach team is composed of 10 officers who will capture the views of the people. Each outreach team will be accompanied by five police officers whose duty will be to maintain peace at each of the gatherings. The consultations will take place in 65 days and we hope that it will be violent free.’
While Mwonzora remained optimistic on the issue of violence his own MDC-T party used its weekly newsletter to publish various incidents of violence, in different parts of the country. The party said ZANU PF had established bases at five schools in Maramba Pfungwe in Mashonaland East province, disrupting normal learning at the schools ahead of the constitution making process. Each school has either ZANU PF youth officers who are on the payroll of the Public Service Commission, self styled war veterans or ZANU PF councillors.
“The training is being done daily in the morning, which has seriously affected learning at the schools as the trainers disrupt lessons,” one of the teachers at the affected school who spoke on condition of anonymity said. “The youths are trained with wooden guns on how to handle military weapons. The investigations showed that if any of the children failed to turn up for training, ZANU PF youths would be sent to their homes to force them to attend.”
The MDC-T also said its Midlands North provincial chairperson, Cephas Zimuti, was arrested at Gokwe Centre on Sunday for mobilizing supporters to attend the public hearings for the new constitution. “By the time of going to press, he was still detained at Gokwe Centre police station,” the party newsletter said. Despite the obvious evidence of violence and intimidation in mainly rural areas Mugabe used the launch of the outreach to claim the leaders were united in denouncing violence.
According to a revised timetable a draft constitution should be ready by February next year, while a public vote on it is expected to be held in May next year. In theory, this should pave the way for elections.
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