Madhuku forms political party

Politics
The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) yesterday transformed itself into a fully-fledged political party, with Lovemore Madhuku being endorsed as the interim leader.

The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) yesterday transformed itself into a fully-fledged political party, with Lovemore Madhuku being endorsed as the interim leader.

BY PATRICE MAKOVA

The over 300 NCA members who converged in Harare for the NCA special congress voted overwhelmingly to transform the constitutional body into a political party, 16 years after its formation.

They said it was now futile for the NCA to expect that Zanu PF and the MDCs would revisit the issue of a new Constitution given their “self-fulfilling referendum and subsequent introduction of an undemocratic constitution.”

“It cannot make sense to the NCA to lobby politicians who have taken leave of their responsibilities,” said the NCA members in one of their resolutions. “In light of this, the current political and social environment calls for the NCA to move from its current strategies of basic civic education and advocacy to the field of competing for political office to purse its goals of ushering a new democratic and people driven constitution.”

It was resolved that a congress would be held before March 31, 2014 at which the organisation’s new thrust as a political party will be launched and a new leadership elected.

In the meantime, Madhuku, whose term of office as the NCA chairperson expired in 2011, but has been clinging on to power since then, will be interim leader. The party will continue to use the name NCA until the congress.

Madhuku, who made an impassioned plea to the members to transform the NCA into a political party, accused the MDC-T and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai of abandoning the constitutional body’s founding principles.

He said the NCA would not forgive Tsvangirai and the MDC-T for leaving the country with an undemocratic constitution. The NCA boss vowed the new party would soon dislodge the MDC-T as the main opposition in the country before eventually taking over power from Zanu PF.

“We will not forgive them [MDC-T] for wasting our struggle to have a democratic and people-driven Constitution,” said Madhuku.

He said the new Constitution was only written by a few individuals in Copac, some of whom he accused of enriching themselves with donor funds.

Madhuku said people voted blindly for the new Constitution as they were up to now not aware of its contents.

He said the new Constitution gave too much power to President Robert Mugabe.

Madhuku chided MDC-T officials for failing to understand the Constitution that they helped write, as demonstrated by the numerous blunders of legal nature they have been making of late.

“They do not know what they wrote. This is why they are always approaching the wrong courts,” he said.

The NCA leader said during the life of Copac, MDC-T officials would be “asleep”, while Zanu PF’s Justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa was busy writing the new Constitution.

“Don’t waste your time going to Douglas Mwonzora [MDC-T spokesperson and former Copac co-chairperson] or Tendai Biti [MDC-T secretary-general and former GPA chief negotiator] if you want to understand the Constitution. You have to go to Chinamasa,” he said.

Madhuku said he was being unfairly “persecuted” and labelled a Zanu PF sympathiser by the MDC-T for correctly interpreting the new Constitution which he played no part in its writing.

He said Tsvangirai alienated himself from his grassroots supporters and former partners in civil society by spending most of his time thinking he was now friends to the likes of Presidents Ian Khama of Botswana, Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.

Madhuku said the principles of the new  NCA party are to see to it that the country is properly governed in a democratic manner and ensuring that every Zimbabwean lives a good life, with resources being shared in a fair and just manner.

But he said for the NCA party to thrive, the party had to attract new members, even those previously not interested in a people-driven Constitution.

“Once we have transformed ourselves into a political party, we open our gates to other people,” said the University of Zimbabwe constitutional law lecturer.

The new NCA party said it was Pan-Africanist and upholds social democracy as its ideology.

The NCA congress resolved that the current national taskforce led by Madhuku plus the 120 constituency chairpersons be co-opted into the interim leadership. The structure of the new party is expected to be unveiled in the next few weeks. Who attended the launch of the party?

Present at the NCA special congress were MDC-T officials who contested as independents, trade unionists, student leaders and other groups.

Notable among them were Emmanuel Chiroto, who was deputy Harare mayor in the previous council and Amon Chinhara, a former senior MDC-T official in Midlands.  MDC 99 leader, Job Sikhala, who is tipped for a top position in the new party, also attended the launch.