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Crucial Constituencies left out in COPAC Outreaches |
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Thursday, 22 July 2010 07:29 |
Having went on a tour of Mutare, Masvingo, Midlands and Bulawayo provinces from 29 June to 12 July 2010, Rooftop Promotions is encouraging COPAC to revisit its outreach strategies as it takes a break to allow for the opening of parliament if it is to achieve its goal to have a people driven new charter for the country. We were in Manicaland, Masvingo and Midlands provinces when COPAC outreaches were covering those provinces and observed that many people are being left out because of ignorance or inconvenience. Most students in the colleges we performed for noted with concern that they know that there is COPAC doing outreaches in their province but have not seen them come to them at college to get their views as future leaders of tomorrow.
“If COPAC was to come here they would get up to 1 000 students and that means they can get an informed youth opinion which embraces our aspirations and those of our elders, young brothers and sisters at home. College is where we spend most of our time at so it’s easy for COPAC to catch us here instead of trying to make us go to the meeting points”, said a student after our performance at Mkoba Teachers college at the end of last week. Such concerns were also raised by students at Hillside Teachers College after our performance there yesterday afternoon who said as future civil servants, they need to be consulted about this new constitution so that they can say their views about education in this country.
By that same token, we believe COPAC should be able to go and get views from workers in their work stations as labour constitutes an important population of socially responsible and economically active people who spend most of their time at the workplace. Labour is also a crucial. These sentiments were echoed by a worker who “bumped” into our performance when we were staging the play at Torwood Shopping Centre in the iron mining and steel processing town of Redcliffe in Midlands.
“Most workers are occupied with work during the day and that is the time these meetings are happening so we are being left out. I just bumped into this play and realized that many things are happening when we are at work so why can't COPAC come to address us as labour in our workstations. One hour over lunch will be enough for them to get the views of workers about the new constitution”, said the worker.
As Rooftop Promotions, with a mission to influence policy through community mobilization, we are happy with the way the play has been received by communities in rural centres, townships, universities, colleges, mines and other places we have performed. The DVDs and CDs have also been well received with people scrambling for copies whenever we start distributing and we have been leaving a minimum of 200 copies per place after the live performance. We are also sending copies to libraries in communities, schools and colleges as well as in workplaces. So far the play has done 52 performances in Mashonaland East and Central, Harare, Mutare, Masvingo, Midlands and Bulawayo Provinces and we are rounding up with Matebeleland North from Wednesday 14 July until the end of the week.
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