Felex Share Herald Reporter
COPAC’S draft Constitution is ready and has been submitted to the management committee for consideration and onward

transmission to the principals.
This follows an ultimatum issued by principals to the Global Political Agreement that the draft should be submitted by next week.

The draft given to the management committee on Tuesday carries a Copac logo.
The document is generally similar to the initial draft that was leaked to the media in February that ignored the views of the people contrary to provisions in the National Report.
The two contentious issues, devolution and dual citizenship, were rejected by the public during the outreach programme but they remain “parked” and unresolved matters in the new draft.

The draft is set to be submitted to the management committee — which is composed of the GPA negotiators, Copac co-chairs and Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga — on Monday next week.
Copac sources yesterday said the draft was not different from the one that sparked outrage after The Herald published it two months ago, adding that what had only changed was the “syntax and choice of words”.

The first draft was rejected and referred back to the drafters as constitutional experts described it as an “orchestrated” attack on the country’s moral, cultural  and revolutionary pillars.
Copac co-chairperson Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana yesterday confirmed the 25-member committee had adopted an incomplete draft Constitution.

“We handed over the document to the whole Copac yesterday (Tuesday) and today (yesterday) the committee accepted the draft. We are taking it to the management committee on Monday, but the problem is we have adopted the document with unsolved issues such as devolution and dual citizenship.
“These are in the hands of the management committee and will be incorporated once they strike common ground.”

Asked why devolution and dual citizenship continued to be outstanding issues when they were rejected by the people, Cde Mangwana said it was a problem created by “foreign-sponsored” MDC parties.
“People rejected a federation state during the outreaches and we as Zanu-PF are sticking to what people said. They want a unitary state.

“There are certain (political) parties who are sponsored from outside and these are the ones who are fighting for dual citizenship and devolution to be included into our constitution,” he said.
A Copac source who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of violating protocol said the draft was no different from the one rejected in February.

“The draft is incomplete because a number of important constitutional issues about which the public’s views gathered during the Copac outreach programme are clear remain ‘parked’ and therefore unresolved.
“These issues include dual citizenship in Chapter 3 and devolution in Chapter 5 of the draft. With only a few notable exceptions such as the qualification for election to the office of the President, the contents of the draft to be released to the management committee is not substantially different from the contents of the draft that

was unofficially published by The Herald on February 10, 2012,” the source said.

The source added: “That draft was roundly condemned by the public after Copac co-chair Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana confirmed to The Herald that at least 70 percent of its contents did not come from the views of the people gathered during the Copac outreach programme, but was the unilateral creation of Copac drafters.”

Said another source: “There was concern among some members that the latest draft had changed only its syntax and words to give cosmetic cover to same old offensive content, some 70 percent of which Cde Mangwana said had come from the heads of the drafters at the expense of the views of the people.”

“If the draft, which was unofficially published by your newspaper was, as argued by Mangwana, against the views of the people because it represented the imagination of the drafters relying not on the outreach views of the people but on international best practice gathered by South Africa’s Hassen Ebrahim who has served as Copac’s key UNDP consultant in Harare, then the sad truth is that nothing has changed at all because the views of the people remain absent from the new draft.

“In fact I think it would be more  than optimistic for anybody to expect to find 20 percent of the views of the people in the official Copac draft released yesterday to the management committee and I am being very, very conservative.”

Co-chairperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora (MDC-T) yesterday said Copac had authorised the co-chairpersons to submit the draft to the management committee.
“Yes, the draft is there minus the contested issues, which will be dealt with by the management committee in its Monday meeting. As Copac, we have done our job,” he said.

Commenting on devolution and dual citizenship, Mr Mwonzora said: “The reason why they have become contested issues is because the responses we got in the outreaches may not have been conclusive and we also look at the best world practices and what is good for the people of Zimbabwe.
“Unfortunately during outreach, we did not ask people to vote and it is therefore difficult to say in certainty what the people’s view was on the issue. Our method of gathering data was not quantitative,” he said.

Efforts to get comment from another co-chairperson, Mr Edward Mkhosi, were fruitless as his mobile phone was not reachable.