Constitution-making: Securing home front (The Herald)

By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia

21 January 2010

The canton approach taken by some people involved with the current efforts towards the drafting of a new constitution is not only unfortunate, but also a gross mockery of the invocation call for the input of the grassroots; something that has become the declared and preached epicentre of the whole constitution-making process, never mind the rhetoric.

These political cantons of MDC-T, MDC, Zanu-PF, civil society, labour and so on are not part of what one would call diversity but rather rival power centres driven more by the need to outflank each other politically than to produce a document for a national common cause.

One needs to read articles on constitutional matters in the Prime Minister’s tabloid, The Changing Times, and you do get this impression that the constitution-making process is seen by some as party business aimed at defeating political rivals.

Stakeholders and participants are territorialised into these meaningless political groups in a way that seems to once more breathe life into the decaying carcass of polarity.

The problems at home are in part social and ideological, in part political and also economic.

The economic depression of the last decade came with serious challenges to capitalist business domination. It was a great shock to both business and the people.

The prevailing assumption had been that the threat of socialism or grassroots power had been buried with the end of the Cold War.

The masses were expected to abide by the capitalist law of the trickledown effect, benefiting through underpaid employment or simply admiring the glitters of sprawling cities while wallowing in poverty.

The victory of the land reclamation revolution was a victory for democracy, but it also sent a chill through the business community.

Industrialists saw this development as a hazard that needed to be reversed and they fought back in many ways, from worker lockouts to push for mass protests, hoarding of basic commodities, scaling down of operations, retrenchment of workers, to relocating of head offices to foreign destinations — South Africa, Europe and such other places.

A corporate counter-offensive was quickly launched, sometimes attempting to use street violence aimed at launching a colour revolution, but eventually coming to rely more on thought control media-led propaganda from the West and from the local mouthpieces of the political party sponsored by Westerners — MDC-T.

The campaign was meant to mobilise the Zimbabwean public against a "dictatorship" preaching "sovereignty" and "destroying agriculture" — and seeking to disrupt the community of sober working men and farmers, housewives tending to their families, hardworking executives toiling so hard day and night to serve the people — in a "free and democratic" Zimbabwe in which all shared alike in joy and harmony.

All this marvellous set-up is supposed to have been ruthlessly upset by one Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party — so we are told.

The Western public relations machinery does not recognise the ruinous effect of the decade-long illegal sanctions unilaterally imposed on Zimbabwe by Western elites.

That forgotten MDC mouthpiece, the Daily News, was no more than a Western-backed propaganda agency, and it almost succeeded in converting a pacifist youth population into jingoist street hoodlums when Morgan Tsvangirai still thought removing President Mugabe "violently" was an achievable dream — way before the March 11 2007 cruising for a bruising misadventure.

The propaganda blitz greatly impressed the US-led Western alliance, and they quickly opened their doors to a huge flow of "asylum seekers" fleeing Mugabe’s ruthless regime.

It did not matter that about everyone who told a drama story to impress immigration officials was clearly making it all up, or that some of the "asylum seekers" were and are still strong members of Zanu-PF itself — all that mattered was the excellent politics of creating the impression that Zimbabwe had a fleeing population.

Harold Lasswell, one of the leading figures of modern political science, who began his career with inquiries into propaganda and its use in the West, recognised just like all other serious investigators that propaganda was of greater importance in more free and democratic societies, where the public cannot be kept in line by the whip.

Of course, the use of force on errant and rebellious nations like Zimbabwe is not an easy option because the West needs a strong pretext for such an action. Propaganda becomes the more attractive option and this is what we have seen in the last 10 years.

As Zimbabweans, we must be wary of these prevailing norms from the West when we are in this process of making a new constitution.

Lasswell talked of this "new technique of control" of the general public who are a "threat to order" because of "ignorance and superstition", and we do have a lot of people in the constitution-making process who are of a similar view.

A day ago, one member of one of the thematic committees communicated with this writer and was in a bragging mood that his paper had been received with "a standing ovation from all the three political parties".

The paper in question is quite prescriptive on how we should be moulding the youth in the country and one would hope this is not all about "a new technique of control" of the youth’s "threat to order" because of "ignorance and backwardness".

The point here is that the verdict of the people and their needs, wants and aspirations should be reflected in the constitution.

This is not about an expression of one’s academic acquisitions in life, or about expressing one’s eloquence before an appreciative crowd.

We cannot and we do not run a country by applauding each other or massaging each other’s egos.

This writer’s late colleague and boss, Minister Border Gezi, once famously said, "Nyika haitongwi nekutengerana hwahwa", literally meaning "a country cannot be run by buying each other beers". That message is loaded with meaning.

This cantonal buddy culture of pursuing selfish personal or group interests ahead of the national interest has no room in a process like the drafting of a new constitution. The people and the people alone should be the guide.

Anyone engaging on an outreach to "educate" the people must cease to be part of the constitution-making process because all that needs to be done is consultation.

This means Minister Nelson Chamisa has no business going around educating people about the kind of constitution himself and his colleagues in the MDC-T are after. Such are misplaced and out of order lectures.

One of the explanations given by Lasswell in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences was that political elites do not want to succumb to "democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests". To politicians they are not the best judges.

The best judges are the elites — the learned university graduates and professors, the well connected who can sneak their way into thematic committees and appointed commissions, and political activists appointed as a reward for years of street toiling on behalf of the luckier politicians holding positions of power.

These people often seek to be ensured the means to impose their will on others; for all of our common good, of course.

This is why it matters to these people what kind of cars they drive to the wretched masses in the rural areas, as well as what hotels they emerge from in the cities across the country.

Their eloquence and preaching skills are also vital.

There is every need to impress these "ignorant and superstitious" masses into unquestionable submission. They must appreciate that good ideas are manufactured in Harare and that theirs is to ask, "so what shall we do?".

We must abandon this mentality that fears the "ignorant and incapable mass of humanity" as what US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing once said, or the mentality that says, "the public must be put in its place" so that the "responsible men" may "live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd", as Walter Lippman noted and advised.

Lippmann advised that in a democracy, the role of these "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" is a "function" to be "interested spectators of action" but not "participants", lending their weight periodically to some members of the leadership class (elections and referendums), then returning to their private business.

The constitution-making process is not an Eric Matinenga and the Bailers show. The nation is not about to watch the actions of star thinkers drafting our future into casted stone while we watch in awe and admiration.

There is no one about to bail the nation out of anything. This is a collective process and Minister Eric Matinenga must be applauded for having already pointed this one out.

This writer was part of the 1999 constitution-making process and even then there were a lot of people who were so committed to impose their views on ordinary people and people like the late Lawrence Chakaredza almost came to blows with some living characters this writer will not name over this matter.

Larry, as we affectionately called Chakaredza, would not stand this mentality of imposing one’s ideas on others based on misassumptions that the other people are ignorant or uneducated.

Whatever constitution we must end up with must be a constitution to safeguard and secure the home front.

It must protect our national interest, speak with the voice of our people, reflect our needs, wants and aspirations, carry our past, present and future, and it must, above all, portray loudly our identity and way of life.

If our people do not identify with a gay society then a constitution named in the name of our people should not identify with the creation of a gay society.

It is just as simple as that Mr Nelson Chamisa. It is not about what Zanu-PF or MDC-T say about each other or about gay people.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!