Constitutional outreach teams have now been deployed to every corner of the country, three weeks after the program was launched in Harare.

SW Radio Africa is reliably informed that the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (COPAC) that is leading the reforms has this week received less complaints from its teams conducting public consultative meetings.

The news has given COPAC something to smile about after the exercise was initially marred by teething problems, which included lack of hotel accommodation for the teams as well as shortages of food and fuel.

But the biggest challenge still facing COPAC is the ongoing harassment and intimidation of participants by ZANU PF elements. Independent observer Sam Mhako told us most participants in rural areas are still reading from scripts, allegedly prepared by Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF party.

"In areas that I have visited so far, most participants are being barred from saying out their views and ideas for inclusion in the new constitution. Participants are being intimidated by CIO's, war veterans and militias that they alone shall speak on behalf of everyone during public consultation meetings," Mhako said.

Mhako said it is clear people are being denied the right to air their views. At one of the meetings that Mhako attended, he noticed that out of about 500 participants, only about five people gave views that supported ZANU PF's position paper on the new constitution.

"The rest just sat down there without contributing a thing. To me this is not a people driven process but a document that is being forced on them by their political parties," Mhako said.

ZANU PF's politburo on Wednesday denied that its supporters were responsible for the violence and intimidation that has rocked the program.

But reports coming in from different districts suggest otherwise. At Juru business centre in Goromonzi North, Mashonaland East hundreds of ZANU PF youths on Wednesday sealed off a COPAC venue and screened people who were coming to the meeting. The MDC-T party said in a statement that as a result, scores of people were turned away. They added that the ZANU PF youths were bussed to the venue by the MP for the area, Paddy Zhanda.

"In Mutasa South, Manicaland province, two well-known MDC activists, Tichaona Mlambo and Willard Mupengo of Ward 22 were denied entry into a COPAC outreach meeting by war veterans who were in charge of accreditation," the MDC statement said.

Reports from the southern half of the country said most meetings in the various areas went well, with a number of issues coming out of the consultations. Bulawayo Agenda, a civil society organisation that conducts advocacy on issues of democracy, said participants were calling for a "unitary" system of governance while a few suggested that the country use the system of "devolution of power."

"On elections participants said the country should use a hybrid system that would include the first past the post system and proportional representation. They also said that the country should have an executive president while some of the members of the community however called for the inclusion of a prime minister," according to Bulawayo agenda.