Irvine mutsungi

Highway to nowhere I must deal with the rigged and choreographed ongoing town hall meetings. I do so in order to add a perspective and by no means as a way of weakening the hands but nonetheless alive to the fact that working without thought is labour lost. The law The constitution provides in s328(4) that upon the Speaker (ZANU PF’s Mudenda) giving 90 days notice of a Constitutional Bill, Parliament must invite members of the public to express their non-binding views on the proposed Bill. After members of the public have given their non binding views, the Bill is then taken to Parliament for a vote (by a ZANU PF & an ED reconstructed Opposition). By subsection 6, a Bill that requires a referendum will then at that stage be submitted to a national referendum. This is where the public hearings—in the circumstances of this matter—become a charade. The charade The Bill through the non obstante ‘notwithstanding’ has already evinced that it will not be taken to a national referendum. The fact that there will be no referendum is therefore intrinsically part of the Bill and takes front and centre in my view. The question that arises then is, what is the use of the town hall meetings, this circumstance considered? The town hall meetings have been designed to be a substitute to a referendum; a performative exercise and not a genuine thought gathering process. This is because participants in that process have already been told that their views notwithstanding, there’s NOT going to be a referendum and those views are accordingly subservient to the vote of a corrupt Parliament. The effect of the town hall meetings is to give a facade of participation. It is to chlorinate the process of the amendment at the end of which ZANU PF will argue that people participated when they knew that there would be no referendum and their views have for that reason been taken on board. In addition, the town hall meetings afford ZANU PF a medium through which the people can remain focused on its unavailing processes as they fail to pursue their own strategies. We surely can’t spend all our time on a ZANU PF engineered and self service process. We must instead pursue strategies aimed at countering this offense. A fool’s errand There’s absolutely no strategic value in attending these meetings. A formal rejection of the process must be given without us strengthening the hand of the oppressor. At the present moment, we have allowed ourselves to be sidetracked from the real issue of the day. The issue is that ZANU PF must not mutilate the constitution and it has no right to do so simply because Mai Welly twerked her buttocks off at its Conference. That issue cannot be meaningfully confronted by attending these sh*t shows. Let’s reject CAB3 with all its incidentals otherwise we are on a highway to nowhere. We need to pursue our own processes; processes that are not controlled by ZANU PF. Eyes on the tomato 🍅 otherwise we will lose our fingers.