legitimacy. They have also played an important role in both locating their demands and imagining the possible forms of a future state.3 On the other hand this generation of leaders also viewed the liberation struggle as an alternative to constitutionalism, with the war of liberation leading to the destruction of the colonial state and the establishment of ‘people’s power’ however nebulously defined.4 The constitutional compromises agreed at Lancaster House in 1979 were the result of a convergence of national, regional and international pressures that inaugurated the politics of the post‐colonial state. Once in power, ZANU PF, as in the case of other post‐colonial political parties, instrumentalised the use of the constitution to concentrate power in the Presidency and to reconstruct the power relations between the state and opposition politics. With the signing of the GPA in 2008, constitutional reform became one of the major issues of contention between the parties. After three years of delays, obstructions, logistical and financial squabbles, and a problematic outreach programme, a draft constitution was produced through the Parliamentary Select Committee process (COPAC), in July 2012. Importantly in terms of the process, all parties to the agreement were signatories to the draft, leading to the logical conclusion that at all times the principals of the parties and their respective leaderships were fully informed of the discussions of the COPAC team. However, in a move that replicated previous interventions to block constitutional reform and eschew its commitment to the GPA, ZANU PF placed another obstacle in the progress of the reform process. In August 2012, President Mugabe presented the leaders of the MDC formations with a ZANU PF redraft of the COPAC draft, on the grounds that the latter was drafted in opposition to the ‘views of the people’ gathered during the outreach process. This redraft, described by ZANU PF as ‘non‐negotiable’, attempted to undo the COPAC process, undermine the GPA and once again force the Zimbabwean citizenry into a national election without a new constitution. Moreover, the ZANU PF draft effectively dismissed the major reforms included in the COPAC draft and proposed a return to the kind of executive powers and party‐state rule that ZANU PF had crafted since 1980. Both MDC formations objected strongly to this ZANU PF position. After weeks of political haggling, the parties, under pressure from the SADC facilitation team, agreed to take the COPAC draft to an All Stakeholders Conference held in October 2012. The few disagreements on the draft that resulted from the Conference were finally resolved by the                                                              3 Jocelyn Alexander, ‘Nationalism, self‐government in Rhodesian detention: Gonakudzingwa, 1964‐1974,’ Journal of Southern African Studies, vol 37, no. 2, 2011, pp.551‐569. 4 Ibbo Mandaza, ‘Movements for National Liberation and constitutionalism in Southern Africa,’ in Issa Shivji (Ed) State and Constitutionalism, An African Debate, SAPES Books, Harare, 1991, pp. 71‐90.   8