Constitution: Passing on Political Debauchery - Apart,
Politics Of Zimbabwean Opposition
23 March 2010By Reason Wafawarova
APART from the hazards of manipulation that come with
external funding, the proposed constitution faces
vitiation from political hawks, donor mongering
charlatans, over-zealous novice activists, and many
other swindlers that have wormed their way into the
constitution-making process.
Libertines from the political fraternity are clearly
more worried about creating a constitution that can
give the immediate gain of quenching their political
debauchery that is often driven by habitual lewdness
for power and self-aggrandisement.
These are the hawks whose pre-occupation is to design
a constitution tailor-made to advantage specific
political allies and to disadvantage political rivals.
Some of these people openly say they want a
constitution that will sideline certain political
personalities while ensuring that others will win the
next election.
The donor mongering charlatans are often experts in
the doctrine of truisms and good intentions.
Their primary motivation is to impress donors, and the
strategy is often to fulminate against the
establishment, portraying it as an irremissible
arrangement suffocating the rights of the masses.
The denunciations are often decorated in vociferous
rhetoric on matters such as freedom(s) of speech,
association, choice, and a lot of other political and
civil rights.
Any sane person cannot have a problem with the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or any of the
basic freedoms expected of citizens across the world.
The problem is when some people ride on the popularity
of these freedoms to defame their political rivals as
opponents to these freedoms; and to buttress their
case they manufacture scenarios that are designed to
convince donors into funding the facade that often
carries the title "struggle for democracy".
Donors funding the constitutional process are often
misled to believe that Zanu-PF is against the basic
freedoms of speech, association, choice, expression,
Press and so on and so forth.
This is despite the fact these freedoms are not only
in the current Constitution that was drafted by the
same party in 1979, but are also in the party’s
position paper for the proposed new constitution.
The overzealous political and civic activists are
usually the directionless noisy youths that are
clearly smitten by the zeal of the novice.
Their position is usually defined by affiliation to
political parties and all they do is wait to toe the
line of whichever charlatan hired them, absolutely for
the sake of it — and often in a rowdy and violent
manner.
These are often motivated by such things as
fanaticism, blind loyalty, ignorance, promises of
privileges, or they are simply purchased by money or
such goodies like liquor or even T-shirts and other
regalia. These youngsters are the sorry reality of
African politics — a reality of the undesirable mix of
democratic politics and poverty.
The common factor between political hawks, donor
mongering charlatans and overzealous political
activists is greed. They are all unrepentant rakes
devoted religiously to debauchery.
When elected to political office or when appointed to
public office or any position of power, these people
forget immediately the sweet and impressive rhetoric
they preach so thunderously on their way up. They
begin to change friends and acquaintances and they
establish their own elite networks designed to
accumulate as much lucre and influence as can be
accessed.
Elected with hardly a pair of shoes to their name,
they cruise in six different cars after a few months,
as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai publicly lamented
at a political rally recently.
This writer knows very well that only the collective
action of the populace will make a constitution work.
Words coined nicely and eloquently can impress lawyers
and academics but what turns the wheels is the action
of the masses. We must get the people’s commitment to
the constitution making process and it is only that
commitment that will make the constitution work.
Without it, the law can be flouted at will and it will
just not matter that there is a constitution in place.
In 1993, this writer and a few friends were at the
then Gweru Teachers’ College where it was agreed that
teachers from conventional teachers’ colleges across
the country were being undermined by lack of academic
dress.
This was after many complaints related to public
functions held by schools, where degreed teachers from
universities; by that time mainly from the University
of Zimbabwe — would attend public functions pompously
strolling in their academic gowns and caps of
knowledge — making their suit-wearing and
diploma-holding counterparts look like complete
inferiors. We all could not stand the prospect of the
feeling.
We agreed that this was intolerable degradation of
such excellent professionals as we told ourselves we
were. Then what to do, what to do? This writer told
his angry mates that if he was elected to the Student
Representative Council that year, he would ensure that
the Ministry of Higher Education would allow
diploma-holding teachers to graduate with an academic
dress.
The election came in April of the same year and this
writer won resoundingly on the motto "Voice of Reason"
— largely screaming about what we thought was equality
with our overrated degree-holding counterparts, who
never made a secret of their supremacy; assumed or
real.
Soon after assuming office this writer approached the
then Principal of the college, Mr Potipher Nhenga, and
sold his idea to the man; not that he had missed the
trailblazing campaign of Mr Voice of Reason, but just
to make him realise that we were actually not joking,
and that this issue was in our view a very serious
matter.
Like every other degree holder that this writer had
talked to already, Mr Nhenga laughed to tears and
struggled to gain his composure before he assigned his
deputy, Mr Chipamaunga to "tell this young man to go
and enrol at a university and get a degree if he wants
to dress like a university graduate".
From Mr Nhenga’s office we wrote all the other 15
teachers’ colleges across the country and we visited
more than half of them, before we took our case to
ZINASU, where students from universities clearly
thought we had no case whatsoever.
This writer and others then approached the then
Minister of Higher Education, Dr Stan Mudenge, who
also diplomatically told us that the best way to wear
an academic gown was to proceed and study at
university, as far as he knew.
We went back and mobilised ourselves and the campaign
gained momentum. It was after so much research into
practices across the world, and after convincing
sceptics even from amid our own student teachers, that
we decided to proceed and have the gown anyway. We
looked at the Education Act and we convinced ourselves
that there was nothing prohibiting us from having the
academic gown, just like there was nothing entitling
the university graduates to have monopoly over
academic dress.
We briefed Mr Nhenga about our plan, which was to look
for a supplier for the academic gowns for the
following year, and so we told him to factor in that
component in his preparations for the next graduation
ceremony. This is when the man noticed the
determination we had and he called this writer alone
for a deal.
We were supposed to lobby for Gweru Teachers’ College
to be upgraded to a university and that with the same
level of enthusiasm as we had for the gown, and that
way we would be guaranteed of support from the
Principal and his team.
We did a paper and we lobbied all tertiary
institutions, including Poly Technical Colleges and
everyone that mattered and, as all would know by now,
the college was eventually upgraded to Midlands State
University, just after we had graduated.
And as many would also be aware Gweru Teachers’
College was the first college to wear academic gowns,
minus caps, in May 1994. Then we had others like
Nyadire, Belvedere, Chinhoyi (later to become a
university too), and Seke following suit that same
year, before technical colleges and Poly Techs all
joined in, with private colleges and all others coming
on board.
This is what happens when something is people-driven.
The change is inevitable and unstoppable.
After this accomplishment, this writer was determined
to prove that it was not all about failure to attain a
degree, but about a just cause, or so he believed. So
the next stop after graduating and teaching for two
years was the University of Zimbabwe in 1997.
In no time after enrolment, this political animal was
busy scrutinising the way the Student Representative
Council was operating, and with people like Trust
Mamombe, Fortune Mguni (now Daniel Molekele), Divine
Morris, Livert Mugejo, Tsitsi Masvaure, Jethro Mpofu
and others we decided that the Union constitution
needed to be rewritten.
The establishment then did not take us seriously.
Learnmore Jongwe’s SRC, to which Mguni was vice
president, dismissed us for a bunch of jokers. The
Dean of Students, Dr George Madzima, thought we had a
case but he thought it was a long shot and rather too
ambitious.
We decided we were going to forego our holidays and do
a draft constitution that would go for a referendum.
We wanted to restructure the SRC to 10 executive
members, and to establish a broad-based Student
Representative Assembly that would oversee the work of
the SRC in terms of competence, accountability and
other things.
We were going to do away with the SRC and we would
introduce a trimmed Student Executive Council in its
place. We were derided by the establishment and others
as overzealous losers with nothing better to do, and
many times we were told to go to the library and study
whatever it is we had enrolled to do at the university
instead of wasting time writing a constitution that
was never going to be adopted.
We soldiered on regardless, and when the draft was
ready we learnt that we needed 50 percent of the Union
to take part in the referendum if it was going to
pass. People like Job Sikhala, who was later to become
the first SRA chairman, derided and ridiculed our
efforts so much that there was just no way we could
get 50 percent of the Union to participate in the
referendum. There was so much apathy towards the whole
thing that the guys against the new constitution did
not even bother to campaign for a "NO" vote. They
banked on the apathy for a victory.
We knew they were right but we had other ideas. We
knew the Union hated the unaccountability that was in
the SRC and we knew they wanted a change but they were
just too apathetic to take action. So something had to
be done.
The Dean of Students chose this writer and Livert
Mugejo as part of the presiding officers for the
referendum. We had a chunk of the ballot papers
together with the ballot boxes and nobody cried foul
about that. Lucky us!
It is hard to make a confession so let us call this
declassified information. I stuffed the two boxes at
the Faculty of Social Sciences while Mugejo took care
of the Faculty of Education and the School of
Medicine.
We went for counting and we had 60 percent of the
students "participating", over 90 percent voting "YES"
and more than twice the number of students from
Medicine, Social Sciences and the Faculty of Education
having voted.
Fierce protests from our opponents like Sikhala and
others were dismissed by Dr Madzima, whom this writer
had convinced to support our cause. The good dean was
not a big fan of Job Sikhala anyway, so we got it
through.
Once adopted, we had our first elections for a new
administration and Sikhala won the SRA chairmanship
after losing in the SEC elections where he had wanted
to be Secretary General.
So this is what we created for posterity. The
University then decided to weaken the union by making
members pay voluntarily as opposed to the traditional
system of compulsory deductions and this writer does
not know if the SRA has stopped the looting of funds
or not, but at least we tried something for future
students, by hook or crook. That was the least we
could do, for no monetary gain whatsoever.
One sure thing was that none of the people that
re-wrote the UZ Union constitution was driven by
personal ambition, or the desire to benefit materially
from the process. Those in the establishment never
bothered to join us and that did us well because we
focused on expressing what the Union was saying.
Had it not been for lack of space, this writer would
have gone on to narrate how, after graduating and
joining the public service, he and others went on to
establish the NYS training at the then Ministry of
Youth Development, Gender and Employment Creation. It
was the same story, no enabling Act, no budget, no
staff but only four officers, lots of ridicule and
criticism, but a thousand well-disciplined graduates
by December 2001 — all ready to be absorbed into the
public sector and many other sectors, and tens of
thousands by 2004, when this writer left.
It takes commitment and a bit of sacrifice to come up
with a home-grown product and this is the whole point
of giving these practical examples. There were no
donors for the gowns-campaign, no donors for a new UZ
constitution, and no donors for the NYS programme, but
results were achieved.
The processes did not enrich anyone, and this writer
does not recall getting paid for the first two
campaigns, while he was an under-paid employee for the
NYS campaign. That did not matter. What mattered was
the passion for all these causes.
This is what we want with the national
constitution-making process.
We want people ready to lose everything for the gain
in the attainment of the defined goal of living to
posterity a nation-serving constitution.
We really do not need mercenaries and monetary minded
people in processes like this.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments