Zimbabwe Constitution making body - Copac Broke: No food, no hotel

THOSE charged with a duty of writing the narrative and qualitative Copac national reports will have to find their own accommodation and food this time around, we exclusively reveal.

Usually, Copac is on record of spending heavily on seven course meals for its workers and giving them accommodation at five star hotel.

The starvation and vagrancy of Copac workers has caused co-chairs to behave strangely. One of the Copac -chairs - Douglas Mwonzora (MDC-T) took to his hills when confronted with these questions and another Edward Mukhosi (MDC) pleaded ignorance while Zanu-PF'S Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana was never seen, inside sources have said.

According to a Copac source, representatives from Zanu-PF and the two Movement For Democratic Change formations were "shocked" to learn that they have to find their own accommodation and scavenge for eats and drinks during their unknown number of days within which they have to finish the national report on the outreach program.

"We were told by members of the secretariat that we must find our own accommodation and food. This is unheard of at Copac because they usually provide that and now we are stuck like street kids in Harare, no accommodation and no food.

"The nation expects us to come up with a national report on what the people said during the outreach, but that report cannot be produced by hungry street kids," said a source.

Another angry representative of one of the parties in the ongoing process wrote on her twitter account:

"Copac is so very broke they have asked those writing the national report which is the last stage before drafters take over to pay for their own accommodation, transport and food," she complained.

Copac team members are said to be wondering why such an important stage is being treated with such contempt and why individuals have to fund a national program. Copac is a Parliamentary Select Committee body created in terms of Article 6 of the Global Political Agreement.

"It is unknown what will happen next because there is no Copac person on sight. Buhera is no-where also, maybe she is drinking with Mangwana" said a source.

Fundira Buhera is the Copac data collation manager.

It started work on June 24 last year with an outreach program.

Thereafter thematic committees sat to do qualitative and quantitative reports at district and provincial level.

It is expected that after the doing the national reports the drafting of the new supreme law of Zimbabwe will start, followed by the second all stakeholders conference and then the referendum.

Efforts to get an official comment were fruitless as no Copac person was available.