APART from the hazards of manipulation that come with external funding, the proposed constitution faces vitiation from political hawks, donor mongering charlatans, over-zealous novice activists, and many other swindlers that have wormed their way into the constitution-making process.

Libertines from the political fraternity are clearly more worried about creating a constitution that can give the immediate gain of quenching their political debauchery that is often driven by habitual lewdness for power and self-aggrandisement.

These are the hawks whose pre-occupation is to design a constitution tailor-made to advantage specific political allies and to disadvantage political rivals.

Some of these people openly say they want a constitution that will sideline certain political personalities while ensuring that others will win the next election.

The donor mongering charlatans are often experts in the doctrine of truisms and good intentions.

Their primary motivation is to impress donors, and the strategy is often to fulminate against the establishment, portraying it as an irremissible arrangement suffocating the rights of the masses.

The denunciations are often decorated in vociferous rhetoric on matters such as freedom(s) of speech, association, choice, and a lot of other political and civil rights.

Any sane person cannot have a problem with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or any of the basic freedoms expected of citizens across the world.

The problem is when some people ride on the popularity of these freedoms to defame their political rivals as opponents to these freedoms; and to buttress their case they manufacture scenarios that are designed to convince donors into funding the facade that often carries the title "struggle for democracy".

Donors funding the constitutional process are often misled to believe that Zanu-PF is against the basic freedoms of speech, association, choice, expression, Press and so on and so forth.

This is despite the fact these freedoms are not only in the current Constitution that was drafted by the same party in 1979, but are also in the party's position paper for the proposed new constitution.

The overzealous political and civic activists are usually the directionless noisy youths that are clearly smitten by the zeal of the novice.

Their position is usually defined by affiliation to political parties and all they do is wait to toe the line of whichever charlatan hired them, absolutely for the sake of it -- and often in a rowdy and violent manner.

These are often motivated by such things as fanaticism, blind loyalty, ignorance, promises of privileges, or they are simply purchased by money or such goodies like liquor or even T-shirts and other regalia. These youngsters are the sorry reality of African politics -- a reality of the undesirable mix of democratic politics and poverty.

The common factor between political hawks, donor mongering charlatans and overzealous political activists is greed. They are all unrepentant rakes devoted religiously to debauchery.

When elected to political office or when appointed to public office or any position of power, these people forget immediately the sweet and impressive rhetoric they preach so thunderously on their way up. They begin to change friends and acquaintances and they establish their own elite networks designed to accumulate as much lucre and influence as can be accessed.

Elected with hardly a pair of shoes to their name, they cruise in six different cars after a few months, as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai publicly lamented at political rally recently.

This writer knows very well that only the collective action of the populace will make a constitution work. Words coined nicely and eloquently can impress lawyers and academics but what turns the wheels is the action of the masses. We must get the people's commitment to the constitution making process and it is only that commitment that will make the constitution work. Without it, the law can be flouted at will and it will just not matter that there is a constitution in place.

In 1993, this writer and a few friends were at the then Gweru Teachers' College where it was agreed that teachers from conventional teachers' colleges across the country were being undermined by lack of academic dress.

This was after many complaints related to public functions held by schools, where degreed teachers from universities; by that time mainly from the University of Zimbabwe -- would attend public functions pompously strolling in their academic gowns and caps of knowledge -- making their suit-wearing and diploma-holding counterparts look like complete inferiors. We all could not stand the prospect of the feeling.

We agreed that this was intolerable degradation of such excellent professionals as we told ourselves we were. Then what to do, what to do? This writer told his angry mates that if he was elected to the Student Representative Council that year, he would ensure that the Ministry of Higher Education would allow diploma-holding teachers to graduate with an academic dress.

The election came in April of the same year and this writer won resoundingly on the motto "Voice of Reason" -- largely screaming about what we thought was equality with our overrated degree-holding counterparts, who never made a secret of their supremacy; assumed or real.

Soon after assuming office this writer approached the then Principal of the college, Mr Potipher Nhenga, and sold his idea to the man; not that he had missed the trailblazing campaign of Mr Voice of Reason, but just to make him realise that we were actually not joking, and that this issue was in our view a very serious matter.

Like every other degree holder that this writer had talked to already, Mr Nhenga laughed to tears and struggled to gain his composure before he assigned his deputy, Mr Chipamaunga to "tell this young man to go and enrol at a university and get a degree if he wants to dress like a university graduate".

From Mr Nhenga's office we wrote all the other 15 teachers' colleges across the country and we visited more than half of them, before we took our case to ZINASU, where students from universities clearly thought we had no case whatsoever.

This writer and others then approached the then Minister of Higher Education, Dr Stan Mudenge, who also diplomatically told us that the best way to wear an academic gown was to proceed and study at university, as far as he knew.

We went back and mobilised ourselves and the campaign gained momentum. It was after so much research into practices across the world, and after convincing sceptics even from amid our own student teachers, that we decided to proceed and have the gown anyway. We looked at the Education Act and we convinced ourselves that there was nothing prohibiting us from having the academic gown, just like there was nothing entitling the university graduates to have monopoly over academic dress.

We briefed Mr Nhenga about our plan, which was to look for a supplier for the academic gowns for the following year, and so we told him to factor in that component in his preparations for the next graduation ceremony. This is when the man noticed the determination we had and he called this writer alone for a deal.

We were supposed to lobby for Gweru Teachers' College to be upgraded to a university and that with the same level of enthusiasm as we had for the gown, and that way we would be guaranteed of support from the Principal and his team.

We did a paper and we lobbied all tertiary institutions, including Poly Technical Colleges and everyone that mattered and, as all would know by now, the college was eventually upgraded to Midlands State University, just after we had graduated.

And as many would also be aware Gweru Teachers' College was the first college to wear academic gowns, minus caps, in May 1994. Then we had others like Nyadire, Belvedere, Chinhoyi (later to become a university too), and Seke following suit that same year, before technical colleges and Poly Techs all joined in, with private colleges and all others coming on board.

This is what happens when something is people-driven. The change is inevitable and unstoppable.

After this accomplishment, this writer was determined to prove that it was not all about failure to attain a degree, but about a just cause, or so he believed. So the next stop after graduating and teaching for two years was the University of Zimbabwe in 1997.

In no time after enrolment, this political animal was busy scrutinising the way the Student Representative Council was operating, and with people like Trust Mamombe, Fortune Mguni (now Daniel Molekele), Divine Morris, Livert Mugejo, Tsitsi Masvaure, Jethro Mpofu and others we decided that the Union constitution needed to be rewritten.

The establishment then did not take us seriously. Learnmore Jongwe's SRC, to which Mguni was vice president, dismissed us for a bunch of jokers. The Dean of Students, Dr George Madzima, thought we had a case but he thought it was a long shot and rather too ambitious.

We decided we were going to forego our holidays and do a draft constitution that would go for a referendum. We wanted to restructure the SRC to 10 executive members, and to establish a broad-based Student Representative Assembly that would oversee the work of the SRC in terms of competence, accountability and other things.

We were going to do away with the SRC and we would introduce a trimmed Student Executive Council in its place. We were derided by the establishment and others as overzealous losers with nothing better to do, and many times we were told to go to the library and study whatever it is we had enrolled to do at the university instead of wasting time writing a constitution that was never going to be adopted.

We soldiered on regardless, and when the draft was ready we learnt that we needed 50 percent of the Union to take part in the referendum if it was going to pass. People like Job Sikhala, who was later to become the first SRA chairman, derided and ridiculed our efforts so much that there was just no way we could get 50 percent of the Union to participate in the referendum. There was so much apathy towards the whole thing that the guys against the new constitution did not even bother to campaign for a "NO" vote. They banked on the apathy for a victory.

We knew they were right but we had other ideas. We knew the Union hated the unaccountability that was in the SRC and we knew they wanted a change but they were just too apathetic to take action. So something had to be done.

The Dean of Students chose this writer and Livert Mugejo as part of the presiding officers for the referendum. We had a chunk of the ballot papers together with the ballot boxes and nobody cried foul about that. Lucky us!

It is hard to make a confession so let us call this declassified information. I stuffed the two boxes at the Faculty of Social Sciences while Mugejo took care of the Faculty of Education and the School of Medicine.

We went for counting and we had 60 percent of the students "participating", over 90 percent voting "YES" and more than twice the number of students from Medicine, Social Sciences and the Faculty of Education having voted.

Fierce protests from our opponents like Sikhala and others were dismissed by Dr Madzima, whom this writer had convinced to support our cause. The good dean was not a big fan of Job Sikhala anyway, so we got it through.

Once adopted, we had our first elections for a new administration and Sikhala won the SRA chairmanship after losing in the SEC elections where he wanted to be Secretary General.

So this is what we created for posterity. The University then decided to weaken the union by making members pay voluntarily as opposed to the traditional system of compulsory deductions and this writer does not know if the SRA has stopped the looting of funds or not, but at least we tried something for future students, by hook or crook. That was the least we could do, for no monetary gain whatsoever.

One sure thing was that none of the people that re-wrote the UZ Union constitution was driven by personal ambition, or the desire to benefit materially from the process. Those in the establishment never bothered to join us and that did us well because we focused on expressing what the Union was saying.

Had it not been for lack of space, this writer would have gone on to narrate how, after graduating and joining the public service, he and others went on to establish the NYS training at the then Ministry of Youth Development, Gender and Employment Creation. It was the same story, no enabling Act, no budget, no staff but only four officers, lots of ridicule and criticism, but a thousand well-disciplined graduates by December 2001 -- all ready to be absorbed into the public sector and many other sectors, and tens of thousands by 2004, when this writer left.

It takes commitment and a bit of sacrifice to come up with a home-grown product and this is the whole point of giving these practical examples. There were no donors for the gowns-campaign, no donors for a new UZ constitution, and no donors for the NYS programme, but results were achieved.

The processes did not enrich anyone, and this writer does not recall getting paid for the first two campaigns, while he was an under-paid employee for the NYS campaign. That did not matter. What mattered was the passion for all these causes.

This is what we want with the national constitution-making process.

We want people ready to lose everything for the gain in the attainment of the defined goal of living to posterity a nation-serving constitution.

We really do not need mercenaries and monetary minded people in processes like this.

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

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer.