30 March 2012 By Reason Wafawarova It is important to note that some Zimbabwean
leaders have a stake in ensuring the continuation of
the suffering of our poor masses, especially the
peasant and the unemployed youths. We must be alive to
the reality that contradiction is of major importance
in the careers of politicians who occupy our
legislature and our executive, sometimes even our
judiciary. Politics have been reduced to an art of
contradiction. It is the people without love who most
often talk about love. Peace is preached most by
people who are ready to go to war, who have gone to
war many times, and who have killed thousands upon
thousands through meaningless wars. America preaches
peace more than any other country on this planet,
regardless of the fact that the sabre-rattling
superpower has invaded an incredible 38 countries
since 1945 — many times causing needless deaths of
millions of innocent civilians. It is often the people who brainwash our children
in schools who talk a great deal about the importance
of education, especially an education that will entail
supremacy of those holding political power. We are
meant to hail an education system that will mass
produce skilled labour for those privileged by
political awfulness — those who control the means of
production solely because they are politically
positioned to do so. Imperialism gives to us an
education that will make certain we become committed
and loyal employees, doesn't it? Zimbabweans will have to brace for the
contradictions that come with legal structures and
constitutionalism as efforts to usher in a
Constitution continue. Traditionally, constitutions
and legal structures have had a conspiracy to sideline
those who are not part of the ruling class, or the
class controlling the wealth of nations. This is
precisely why jails are full of poor people the world
over. Revolutions have often been hijacked by the
political community, and the true cadre has had to
endure wars — fighting against the repressiveness
against which the revolution is launched, and then
against the thankless revolutionary bourgeoisie elites
who often seek to simply replace the deposed old
political order, becoming the new oppressors. The Third Chimurenga was part of our efforts to
revolutionise the life of the post-independence
Zimbabwean, to bring about an economic revolution for
the benefit of our poor masses. Just like the
guerrilla fighter was once abandoned by the revolution
after the completion of the Second Chimurenga, a lot
of Third Chimurenga cadres have been left in isolation
— once it was discovered by the political elites that
they could do without the cadres. We now know where consciousness musician Andy Brown
has gone, because his death has brought back his
forgotten relevance — a relevance that once was a key
pillar of political planning. We may have to wait for
the death of Last Chiyangwa, aka Tambaoga — for us to
be reminded of the immense role this young musician
once played during the Third Chimurenga, alongside
Andy Brown. This writer worked closely with both musicians
during the peak of land reforms, and has since seen
the revolution for which these cadre musicians stood
being snatched away from their feet. Rest in Peace
Andy. The inspiration you gave to National Youth
Service trainees through your music will always be
legendary. Is it not sad that the reactionaries who once
mocked and shunned musicians like Andy and Tambaoga
have of late enjoyed the tacit support and alliance of
some of the purported leaders of the same revolution
for which these musicians sacrificed all that mattered
in their lives? Reader, be assured of this — Andy
never did it for the politician but for the
revolutionary cause. But I digress. Constitutions, as beautiful as they may sound, are
ultimately elitist documents. This writer has no doubt
the Constitution to be produced by Copac and its
drafters may turn out to be the most beautiful
document — but we all stand to be reminded that the
law will always spare its goodness and privileges for
the elites, despite what the constitution says. Normally a constitution will always guarantee
procedural liberties, while not guaranteeing
substantial liberties. We are now all too obsessed
with guarantees for certain procedures to be followed,
with many people making harsh demands for guarantees
for a "free and fair electoral process." That is a fair demand, just like the demand that we
can all go to court, that we can all vote, that we can
all be heard before the jury, that we can all speak
freely, think freely, write freely, move freely and so
on and so forth. There is no known constitution that
explicitly guarantees freedom from hunger. Neither are
there ever constitutional guarantees for housing,
health care, or true education. In fact the outreach
program carried out by Copac never asked the people to
have a say on any such guarantees. One would be ruled
off topic for suggesting any of this. It was all about procedural liberties, like how we
should be voting for political leaders, who should be
allowed to vote, who should be allowed to contest for
a vote, when should we be voting, how should we be
marrying, how should we regulate our sexual lives, to
whom must we entrust political power, who should be a
citizen, and so on and so forth. Not even once were people asked to debate
guarantees for employment, or for safe working
conditions. Hopefully Zanu-PF managed to push through
guarantees for true equality and equal distribution of
national resources — something the party preaches so
impressively about, more in passionate words and less
in meaningful practice. No doubt the Constitution will give us guarantees
for certain procedural rights and rules, making us all
believe that no one is above the law, and that the law
will protect us all from the predators of this world.
But there is always a huge difference between
procedure and what actually happens. Constitutions do
not tell us that we will need money for good lawyers
to enjoy some of our rights, and that we may end up in
jail simply because we cannot afford a good lawyer. Constitutions will never inform us that we need to
be politically correct to enjoy certain of our
procedural rights; that we may even need to belong to
the right ethnic group, or to the right class,
otherwise justice is not guaranteed. In a lot of cases
the justice and legal establishments have become the
very sources of injustice and illegality. We end up faced with a saddening contradiction
where the very law and order written in the
Constitution becomes a double standard. Freedom of the
Press belongs not to the reader but to those with
enough money to own the Press — with all of us having
to put up with the editorial preferences and
arbitrariness of media moguls. It can be argued quite sensibly that the
constitution and the legal system of any country,
Zimbabwe included, are not a neutral instrument.
Rather the law seems to belong to those who write it,
not to the people in whose name the laws are often
written. In today's world the law belongs to those who
use it to control others, and to control the resources
around, and this includes international law. Business crime and corruption are obviously more
damaging than all working class and common crime put
together. But we are all oriented not to see business
crime as crime in itself, but instead as a mere
violation of codes, as not following laid down
procedure, regardless of the harm that may be caused
by such violations to ordinary people. Nestle and
DuPont killed African children and Indians
respectively, but not even one of the executives of
these corporations was ever locked away. In Zimbabwe, ministries bid for money from Treasury
in the name of providing service to the people. Each
year millions of dollars are allocated, purportedly
for the benefit of the people, with the Finance
Minister always armed with a megaphone to announce
what is often called the "national budget." It has now become an accepted tradition that these
millions of dollars buy cars in the name of providing
easy transport for our hardworking and well-meaning
public servants, who trickle into Government offices
one by one every 8 o'clock in the morning, only to
stampede out in huge crowds just before 5pm — leaving
half sentences written. You would be forgiven for
thinking Mkwati Building was on fire if you passed by
the building at 5pm. Millions of dollars are swallowed through
agendaless workshops and oversubscribed travel and
subsistence allowances, overseas trips and fraudulent
tender procedures. Will the Permanent Secretaries for
these ministries ever be jailed? Will the whole bunch
of thieving civil servants feasting on undeserved
allowances ever be prosecuted and jailed? No they will
not. Rather we will have a public service that
services only itself from our entire national budget. It is as well that we may mention that robbery,
burglary, theft, larceny and all common shoplifting
account only for about 15 percent of theft against
property. Embezzlement, fraud, forgery, corruption,
bribes and commercial theft are responsible for about
80 percent of all crimes against private and public
property. Yet our jails are streaming full with petty
thieves and common criminals. That is our very concept of a criminal —
uneducated, poor, non-middle class, non-upper class, a
male youth, and so on. It is unthinkable for most of
us to see a top business executive as a criminal, or
to think that criminal demographics spike high in the
leafy suburbs of Harare. While prosecutions are higher
for high density dwellers, crime density is higher in
leafy suburbs, where the unwritten law of the rich's
immunity applies. Our prison officers know too well how to receive
our errant youths for stealing underwear and food from
shops, but the system rarely brings to prison those
who steal from the nation in millions of dollars. The policeman must merely be an officer of the law,
just there to enforce the law. There mustn't be
discretion on the part of a police officer on when and
what circumstances the law will be enforced, and
against what people. We cannot have arrests based on
the individual's race, sexuality, social status, or
political characteristics. We realise that the law,
though often written in neutral terms, can easily be
used for purposes of intimidation, harassment, or as a
means to immobilise individuals. Why are constitutional terms of office disrespected
or altered to suit the interests and plans of
incumbents? Even democracy-preaching stalwarts like
Lovemore Madhuku and Morgan Tsvangirai have overstayed
their constitutional time limits in office, and
political reasons for these violations will always
abound. If Tsvangirai were to form Government one day,
there are no guarantees that he will not preside over
a system that will not so much concern itself
defending the individual as defending the prerogatives
of the state, and making sure that the state has a
monopoly on legal weapons — that the common citizen is
disarmed, not exactly to prevent people from killing
each other, but as a means to make certain the
citizens have no chance to kill the Government that
rules over them. If one can protect his political office from the
law before they are even elected into Government,
there is no guarantee that such a person will not
protect his entire government from the law for
purposes of securing power over the people. It is
always the people accused of taking the law into their
own hands. Yet most of the time it is the police and
the politicians that do take the law into their own
hands. While it is a noble gesture to celebrate the
efforts to have a new constitution for Zimbabwe,
people must never be deluded by the idea of
constitutionalism. It simply offers no guarantees that
life becomes happiness ever after. In fact
constitutions have become notorious for preserving
state power, and sometimes for arbitrariness of the
state. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death!! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in
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