Zimbabwe�s Lost Decade: Politics, Development and Society

4. Democracy, Constitutionalism & Participation

64 4 Democracy, Constitutionalism & Participation Curiously, the predominant political discourse in Zimbabwe soon after Independence was not about democracy but ‘socialism’, and the possibility of ‘transition’ to that state of affairs. The discourse was strongly ‘ideological’. The rationale for that leap in discourse was that the sequel of the ‘liberation struggle’ and ‘Independence’ would be a transition to socialism (Mandaza 1986; Davies 1988). There was no priority and focus on how to build democracy in the newly independent state. For almost a decade, political parties and scholars ruminated on Marxism–Leninism and debated whether it could provide the basis for a socialist society. Discussion of a national democratic revolution was remarkably absent. It was towards the end of the first decade that rumblings against the one-party state concept included demands for a multi-party democracy. This was the immediate context in which civil society organisations and opposition parties such as ZUM pitched their campaigns. However, towards the end of the 1990s the discourse on democracy became fully fledged. The constitutional reform process which was initiated in 1998 raised the debate to a new level as issues of democracy, constitutionalism and participation became central to the outreach campaigns of that year. In this chapter we explore the scope and limitations of this discourse and explain why the attempt at constitutional reform flopped in 2000. The slight opening of the constitutional debate and outreach processes were soon eclipsed by a reversion to authoritarianism and violence which transformed the country into a pariah as far as the West was concerned. It would only be during the third decade that the country would seriously address issues of democracy, constitutionalism and participation. However , the process of constitutional reform was still fluid and fragile at the time of writing. Defining Democracy Democracy should be contextualised. The concept and practice of democracy is customarily traced back to ancient Greece. The phenom- 65 65 Democracy, Constitutionalism & Participation enon of representative government – based on the participation of common citizens in political debate and consultation – characterised democracy in the city-state of Athens. However, this was selective democracy . Slaves and some citizens were barred from the process. This early flowering of selective democracy was short-lived. It was submerged in the long history of feudalism, territorial wars in Europe, and the imperialist annexation of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas by the emergent European industrial and maritime powers, principally Britain, France, Spain and Germany. However, liberal versions of historiography assert that the American Constitution of 1789, the French Revolution of 1789 and the English Reform Act of 1832 were significant landmarks in the development of democracy in the West. Even so, in the cradle of the first bourgeois revolution in England, the right to vote was not extended to all until the twentieth century. In the United States, the ‘democratic model’ co-existed for many years with the institution of black slavery. It was not until the twentieth century that the US extended the right to vote to its black population. Even then it required a massive civil rights struggle to protect and consolidate that right. The colonial system that was imposed over much of Africa, the Caribbean and Asia exposed the limitations of the democratic model touted by the Western powers. Colonialism entailed the expropriation of natural resources, the extraction of taxes and wage-labour together with the exclusion of the colonised peoples from political and decision-making processes. Memories of the historical experiences of African countries partly explain the retort by some of its leaders that Western countries cannot teach Africa about democracy. It should be stressed that even in the West, the existing democratic rights – to vote, to join trade unions or other associations, and the freedoms of association and speech – were the culmination of formidable struggles by workers and other classes over centuries. Similarly, the struggles for Independence in the colonies represented democratic aspirations which colonialism had denied to the majority of the citizens of these countries. But how has contemporary democracy been defined? In a minimalist sense, democracy relates to a political system that allows citizens to freely choose their representatives and therefore government through fair elections ; accords them adequate participation in national affairs; and ensures transparency and accountability in national governance. Some analysts have distinguished between a ‘procedural’ and ‘substantive’ meaning of 66 Zimbabwe’s Lost Decades 66 democracy (Bratton, Gyimah-Boadi and Mattes 2005). A procedural perspective stresses...