Yet it is another thing when the heat of polarisation is on that tend to cloud better judgement and things swing dangerously from one phase to another in a short time.
By Tichaona Zindoga
Reading the story that MDC leader Professor Welshman Ncube, had said the envisaged new constitution for Zimbabwe would have to be "negotiated", one could come up with so many imaginations.
Impetuously, one could imagine the professor, who has continued to be a kind of fringe player in the supposed to be inclusive Government, wanting to have a say in the grander political scheme of things.
The same scheme, it will be noted, he has continued to be excluded from after fancying his becoming a "principal" following his ascent to the helm of his party.
His fight to become a "principal" is still on today.
One could also imagine Ncube, being an "intellectual" with the fine airs of learnedness trying to rubbish what the masses said during the outreach programme, which many people said was an exercise towards that glittering ideal called a people-driven constitution.
Still one could not forgive the professor for calling for a negotiated document after the hullabaloo over that Kariba Draft, which Zanu-PF, and MDC negotiators drew and annexed to the September 2008 Global Political Agreement.
Yet there was a degree of cogency in what Ncube said at a discussion in Harare effecting to the possibility, and even desirability, that the Constitution be a negotiated document.
He made the following observations:
- · that critical issues had not been captured because the outreach had been hurried, which led to core issues being overlooked.
· that there had been skeletal talking points, which do not address constitutional issues
· that only a fifth of the things that are supposed to be in the constitution were asked.
· that the time frame for making the constitution tentatively put at 18 months was inadequate.
These are arguments that even non-constitutional lawyers accede to, with both Zanu-PF and MDC-T officials all but admitting that the current process has a number of grey areas.
Of course for the many people that expressed their views, it is a different case altogether.
Even then, there have been reports that some people did not express their views freely as they were forced to adopt party positions.
That the constitution making process has run into all kinds of problems logistically and politically is a matter of public record.
That it is likely to become a political document for the expediency of the views of the dominant force is also a matter of fact, for better or worse.
To buttress this particular point, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai once revealed that his party would do away with the product of the present process, if his party got into power.
In a word, dominant views will carry the day, and there is nothing wrong about that as all historical eons and processes are so shaped.
Yet it is another thing when the heat of polarisation is on that tend to cloud better judgement and things could even swing dangerously from one phase to another in a short time.
That Ncube says the constitution should be a negotiated document - negotiated among the current main political players of this day - points to some form of expediency.
It does not matter that Ncube, a constitutional law expert himself, will conceivably be part of that.
Politics no matter how dumb can get the better of reason.
Ncube admits to the same with the 2000 draft in mind.
Suffice to say he joined the likes of another constitutional law professor Lovemore Madhuku to blow away a gilt edged chance for Zimbabwe and constitutionalism at large.
So what is to be learnt from the foregoing?
The one thing that Zimbabwe needs in relation to its constitution is sobriety.
A national constitution is vaunted, if hoped, to be a document for posterity.
It cannot; should not, be one to be reversed when a political player comes onto the scene not so many years after it has been drawn, the Morgan Tsvangirai way.
If one were to use Ncube's thesis, it cannot be one to be rushed, papered over, or otherwise be prone to the manipulation that befell the 2000 draft.
According to Ncube's submissions, contrary to the hot-headedness of the likes of MDC-T's secretary general Tendai Biti, the constitution cannot be rushed.
(Although it can be observed that he is not as eager now as he could have been before, as Ncube reported, having no doubt found more worth in delaying the constitution-making.)
This demonstrates the one problem that the current programme of making a new constitution in Zimbabwe had from the beginning: it was mooted with elections in mind.
It is a small secret that, as Ncube lets in, that Bit, and his party were at first too eager to see through the making of the constitution so that they could still use the currency of their marginal political popularity to win the subsequent election.
It did not quite turn out that way as the outreach was a reversal to the views of the MDCs as about 70 percent reportedly were for the position of Zanu-PF.
Then it was time for the latter to rub its hands in glee in anticipation of a victory in elections buoyed by the positive inertia of the outreach.
Naturally Biti who after all holds the purse had to recoil and dig in and stymie the progress of making the constitution which translated to hurrying a nemesis.
Tsvangirai even provided for a drawing of a new document altogether in the likely event that Zanu-PF, or perceivably so, had its way.
So presently Biti can all but welcome the three years that Zanu-PF's Patrick Chinamasa had calculated, as Ncube reported.
It serves the politics well, even on an intra-party level.
It is known that the MDC formations are not willing to go for elections and will do everything within their power to stop the holding of the same.
The delaying tactics, as they stand accused of, are meant to hold up the exercise of finalising the constitution, which is a benchmark towards the polls as stipulated in the GPA.
But given the fact that even without delaying tactics from the MDC formations in particular MDC-T, coupled with financial drawbacks entail Zimbabwe begging outsiders to draw its supreme law, the constitution cannot be done in say 18 months it calls for a different approach.
It should no longer be taken as a benchmark for holding elections, which elections are now overdue given the dysfunctionality of the inclusive Government.
In fact, it should run its full, sober course in spite of elections.
And, by the way, Zimbabwe has conditions and laws that conduce to the holding of free and fair elections.
Dating back to 2007 Zimbabwe has instituted electoral laws that make the country a leader as it was the first country to adopt the SADC Principles and Guidelines on Elections.
Zimbabwe incorporated this and in the Constitutional Amendment Number 18 which led to the holding of harmonised elections in March and June 2008.
The harmonised elections were deemed free and fair not least because the opposition MDC formations managed to upset the parliamentary majority that Zanu-PF had enjoyed since Independence in 1980.
That the results were delicately poised, with a hung parliament and without an outright presidential poll winner as required showed democracy, as defined by competition, at work.
It was only that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai purported to pull out of the logical run-off poll slated for that June.
Yet as his action was a nullity the presidential poll came and was won by President Robert Mugabe.
The one blight that assailed this latter poll was the confusion that Tsvangirai sowed in his purported pulling out.
On the other hand, Tsvangirai's MDC and its sympathisers still point to March elections as free and fair and a victory for democracy.
In this vein the same conditions that gave this can still be used, even with requisite additions.
Surely, the so democracy-friendly conditions (especially as a euphemism for anything that favours the MDCs) of March 2008 cannot have changed in such a short time?
As elections are held under the same conditions, the new constitution can wait to run its full course, probably to be useful in the next elections and the posterity hence.
It can only be hoped that, there won’t be any politicking of the matter as principally demonstrated by Tsvangirai who wants a national constitution that resembles his party’s.
It will be a sad day indeed because it is known that Tsvangirai can’t even follow his party’s law.
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