After months of haggling on how to move forward the constitution-making process, it appears the principals of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) — President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his deputy Arthur Mutambara and lately Welshman Ncube — are slowly finding each other and speaking with one voice.NewsDay Comment Over the past 10 days, the principals have met three times and the outcomes of the meetings have been laudable.
The first meeting was on September 24 where Mugabe unexpectedly dropped Zanu PF’s demands that the principals should incorporate his party’s amendments into the Copac draft ahead of the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference later this month.
The Zanu PF summersault, though surprising, was the only trajectory to move the constitution-making process forward as the GPA has no provision allowing principals to tinker or tweak the draft charter. On Monday, the principals, minus Ncube, met again and further concessions were made, chief among them that Parliamentary and Constitutional Affairs minister Eric Matinenga must work with Copac to ensure that the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference would not be disrupted as happened in 2009.
The principals also agreed to engage the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Zimbabwe Media Commission on their preparedness for fresh polls next year.
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The following day after Cabinet, the principals, with Ncube present, met again to reaffirm their previous agreements and reiterated their position that they wanted to see progress on the constitution-making process and that they were determined to have elections next year at a date to be determined after a referendum. Indeed this was good news coming from the principals! However, our major concern is that history has a tendency to repeat itself. Two years ago, the political gladiators agreed on 21 of the 24 outstanding issues of the GPA, but alas, less than half of the agreements were implemented.
The failures to implement the agreed GPA outstanding issues were largely a result of an intransigent and stubborn Zanu PF, whose agenda is to cling to power tenaciously by hook or by crook. The challenge is for the MDC formations to work as a united front and confront Mugabe and Zanu PF to implement agreed positions. The war of attrition between the MDCs we have witnessed of late is regrettable, but not surprising.
There is an infantile quality to the behaviour of the men and women who are supposed to be leading the struggle and that is a shame because many ordinary people trust them with their lives.
It is regrettable because it shows them succumbing to the divide-and-rule tactics perfected for so long by their supposedly common adversary, Zanu PF. This war of attrition hands Zanu PF a position of advantage. We hope the MDCs will not join Zanu PF to turn this country into a prison where citizens become convicts eager to escape. They have to decide now if they are for the people and meaningful change!
