Published by the government of Zimbabwe
10 July 2009
Harare — Four thousand delegates representing local organisations from across the country are expected to attend the first all-stakeholders conference on the constitution-making process on Monday and Tuesday next week in Harare.
The largest number of delegates will come from political parties, which will send 1 600 people to the conference. Religious organisations will be represented by 400 delegates, non-governmental organisation by 320, while freedom fighters and women's bodies will have 240 delegates each. Other participants are to be drawn from organisations representing youths and students, farmers, the informal sector, the business community, people living with disabilities, traditional leaders, traditional healers, arts and culture, children, media and local authorities.
Academics, representatives of parastatals, residents and ratepayers, Government arms, sports, minority groups, professional bodies and the elderly will also send delegations to the convention to be held at the Harare International Conference Centre.
Speaking at a Press conference yesterday the co-chairpersons of Parliamentary Select Committee on constitution-making Cde Paul Mangwana (Zanu-PF) and Mr Douglas Mwonzora (MDC-T) said resources to house the delegates had been secured.
"All logistics to deal with transportation, accommodation and reaching out to the people have been completed and as a committee we are satisfied. "The committee has secured enough money for the all-stakeholders conference," said Cde Mangwana.
The conference was originally supposed to start today and end on Saturday but it was deferred to Monday and Tuesday after Zanu-PF lawmakers raised concerns about its timing.
Cde Mangwana said the decision to defer was reached after talking into cognisance Zanu-PF's concerns, which he said the committee felt were genuine. Mr Mwonzora said: "We are glad that the timelines that were set through the Global Political Agreement will be met. "The delays in identifying the names of groups and organisations to send representatives to the conference were so that we could deal with the possibility of bogus organisations (attending).
"It was not easy because we had to categorise the participants by sector, allocate a percentage to each sector in proportion to its representation in the population and then convert that percentage to a number. "The number is what we then allocated to different stakeholders.
"We had to be thorough. The delay has helped us in making sure there is an equitable participation of stakeholders to ensure Zimbabweans can participate in the constitution-making process."
Mr Mwonzora dismissed allegations that political parties were creating bogus lobby groups that would pose as stakeholders in a bid to influence the outcome of the constitution-making process. He said it was difficult to put the blame on the political parties as anyone could create their own organisation and pose as a stakeholder. "Criminals exist everywhere; in political parties and civic religious organisations. I feel the political parties have no reason to want to cheat as they are well represented," he said.
The committee said it had started sending out letters to stakeholders advising them on their delegate allocations. On the publishing of the Kariba Draft, the co-chairpersons said the committee had not caused the publishing of the document and at the moment were not worried about issues of content but were concentrating on the preparatory stage. The convening of the all-stakeholders conference is the final stage of the first phase of the constitution-making process.
After the all-stakeholders' conference, various thematic committees will go around the country to collate the public's views on what the new constitution should contain. Thereafter, a document will be written and presented to the electorate in a referendum.
According to the GPA, elections are supposed to be held under a new constitution within 18 months of the formation of the inclusive Government.
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