Youth leadership development and empowerment organisation, WELEAD is upbeat about the success of its constitutional literacy campaign dubbed #ConstitutionalCulture which has reached over one thousand youths in the three towns of Chitungwiza, Chiredzi and Masvingo.
In an interview with 263Chat, WELEAD media and communications officer, Prince Gora said they have managed to circumvent the COVID-19 challenges by engaging youths virtually.
“The campaign is almost halfway through our target. We started out seeking to engage youth virtually and physically. Because of COVID 19 restrictions we have only managed to do outreaches to Chitungwiza, Masvingo and Chiredzi.
“We have managed to directly reach out to over 1000 youths through these campaigns. We have done much more online. We have held several Twitter spaces, Zoom meetings and Instagram live discussions to talk about constitutional issues,” said Gora.
He added that the youths were excited to learn about their constitution however, he lamented the lack of implementation and alignment of laws.
“The response to our campaign has been overwhelming. We are using the hashtag Constitutional Culture; the hashtag has trended several times on twitter since the launch of our campaign which shows that young people are embracing our message. Young people are eager to know about the constitution and to stand up for their rights. Young people are always asking for hard copies of the constitution whenever we engage them.
“There’s limited awareness. The government is not implementing section 7 of the constitution very well. A few young people are even afraid to learn about the constitution and constitutionalism as they see it as political. Generally speaking, the constitution itself doesn’t have many loopholes. What’s mostly lacking is that the constitution is not being implemented and other laws of the country are not being aligned to it. Also, the recent amendments to the constitution seem to be doing more harm than good,” he said.
Gora lamented the limitations of the constitution to youths running for public offices.
“We are also not very happy with the fact that the Constitution limits the participation of youth in public office, for example, young people have to wait until 21 to get into parliament and until 40 to get to the senate, be a judge and run for the presidency.”
