The Zanu PF government is setting in motion a process to change the constitution of Zimbabwe. Government officials, according to the Sunday Mail, have been tasked to work on a Constitutional Amendment Bill that will “deepen civil liberties, individual rights, scrap the death penalty, extend the women’s quota system and entrench political and electoral reforms.”
According to the report recommendations made by various election observer missions during the 2018 harmonised elections, the Motlanthe post-election violence report and input to be generated from the ongoing inter-party dialogue will feed into the process.
Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi told The Sunday Mail:
I chair a committee on Political and Electoral Legislative reforms and we are working to come up with a Constitutional Amendment Bill that takes care of all the constitutional amendments that we might want to do.
This involves issues to do with devolution, where we have this idea of MPs not sitting in Provincial Councils.
We are also looking at issues to deal with the idea of extending the women’s quota in Parliament.
We will also initiate debate around the death penalty, and we will also initiate debate on political rights of traditional chiefs. We have conflicting provisions, where Section 67 gives everyone political rights but we also have another provision which says chiefs should be apolitical; we will look at ways of harmonising this.
We will definitely have to amend the Constitution, but we want to bring all the provisions under one Bill.
More: Sunday Mail