The Constitutionalism Deception: The First, Second And Third Chimurenga - Zimbabwe

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.
Contradictions in law breed disrespect for the same law, and disdain for those who enforce the law. What matters most is not that the law is written in neutral terms, or that the law offers certain guarantees, purportedly for all of us. What really matters is that the law is enforced non-discriminately. We cannot fame ourselves for writing beautiful laws, only to have those laws enforced in a non-equal fashion.

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 SYDNEY, Australia.

 

©  EsinIslam.Com

Add Comments




Comments 💬 التعليقات