Zimbabwe's new constitution.

With news and rumours that the 1st draft of a new constitution of Zimbabwe is out, the nation awaits it's publication. Then the debate begins on whether it's content merits an adoption via a referendum to be conducted soon. Though state officials tried very hard to legitimize the whole drafting process by making it look as if it is going to be representative of people's views as collected via the constitutional outreach programme. I don't know how they are going to justify the huge bill running into millions of dollars mostly spent on outrageous allowances, hotels and fancy cars.

The question is how really is a new constitution going to benefit Zimbabwe? Was a whole overhaul needed or just removing parts which are outdated on the current one? The main problem Zimbabwe finds itself in, in terms of constitutionalism is a lack of concrete and indigenous philosophy or ideology on politics, jurispudence and government. Therefore it is difficult to have an intense debate on the differences of opinion in theory because people's current positions are not supported by strong ideas but are backed up by questionable and illogical rationalisation. This is the Zimbabwe we know today but it shouldn't be so. If people were able to ideologize their traditional customs and beliefs especially the various codifications, a rich body of knowledge would be available to form a basis for practical theories of modern constitutionalism.

But the current theories, though insignificant are borrowed from foreign lands and not suited to our local environment. On whether how a new constition will benefit Zimbabwe, we have to see the new draft first. Since most people's positions on constitutionalism are not quite logical and supported by rich literature, you would expert a varied response on what was the actual problem with the current constitution. A more common response would be that the current one is based on the Lancaster House one and hence it's outdated and needs changing. There isn't a mention of ideology here. But people rejected the Chidyausiko Commision led draft which had strong points. Now let's wait for the actual draft to be published and then the debate will rage on.