“War vets” and youths loyal to ZPF creating mayhem at new constitution conference

Update – 14.45: More details about the delays to the planned conference. Apparently the machines used for registration purposes were supplied by the president’s office.  The machines were manned by CIO, and should be able to process two registrants  but for some reason only did 400 instead of 4000 cards.  They switched to manual registration, and only completed the registration at 3am this morning.

The next delay’s came via the “war vets” and youths loyal to Zanu PF. After the initial disruption of approximately half an hour by Zanu PF loyalists, we were told that the police moved the rowdy elements off, only to allow them back in about half an hour later. The latest we have is that everybody has now left the conference centre. We’ve also been told that the political parties have asked their delegates to return this afternoon to start again.

Update – 13.40: There has been no statement yet if the conference will continue. Zanu PF rural women have taken over the floor, dancing and toy-toying. None of the dignitaries have arrived: i.e. Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai or Arthur Mutambara. We’ve been told the former opposition parties want to continue. One spectator commented on the irony that Zimbabwe’s terrible troubles started ten years ago over the same issue – the constitution and Zanu PF’s unwillingness to allow the people to have a say in it.

---

There has been pandemonium at the Harare Conference Centre where the first All-Stakeholders Conference on the New Constitution opened this morning.

Reports from people in the centre have come in and apparently when Lovemore Moyo, Speaker of the House, started his opening address Zand PF youth and “war vets” began shouting, demanding the adoption of the Kariba Draft as the only draft and proceeded to spray the delegates with bottles of water. The MDC supporters in attendance responded in kind and the riot police had to be brought in to quell the situation.

The last message we’ve received was that approximately 60 Zanu PF supporters were removed from the conference.

Registration for the conference started yesterday and by 9pm around 2000 delegate hopefuls had still not been registered. There were problems with the number of cameras needed to take the photos of the delegates. Eventually authorities were simply stamping the registration forms. However, the Zanu PF delegates were whisked through the registration process and have also been accommodated in the capital, courtesy of the State.

There was a heavy presence of CIO at the registration site, with operatives openly photographing those attempting to participate in the conference. Once again they are resorting to attempts at intimidating anyone interested in joining the national debate on the constitution.

There has been a marked indifference from the South African press and public in the controversial constitutional debate raging in Zimbabwe. At a time when South Africa is meant to be acting as a watchdog to the implementation of the GPA this lack of concern is another nail in the coffin for the people of this troubled state. We challenge the SA press to get involved and truly respond to the call of neighbours in distress. We’ve been told, for example, that some SA film crews in Harare who didn’t bother to attend the opening!

This entry was posted by Sokwanele on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 1:28 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.