adminColumbus Mabika
Herald Reporter
Proposed amendments to the Private Voluntary Organisations Act seek to strengthen regulation of non-governmental organisations in the country to curb instances of political interference, a Cabinet Minister has said.
Zimbabwe hosts more than 1 000 private voluntary organisations and trusts whose activities include advocacy, humanitarian and developmental issues, with most keeping close to their stated function and doing good work.
Presenting a paper titled, “Legitimacy and Accountability of NGOs in Zimbabwe, Implications for National Security” to the National Defence Course at Zimbabwe National Defence University recently, Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Professor Paul Mavima said there were some organisations that were taking a leading role in the regime change agenda in the country.
This comes as a group of NGOs have also in the past been caught up in embarrassing situations where they tried to use fake abductions to advance the false narrative that there are human rights abuses in the country.
“The rogue organisations have been mobilising people to embark on violent demonstrations with the aim of rendering the country ungovernable,” said Prof Mavima.
“Other organisations are delving into politics by embarking on covert campaigns for other political parties through alleged peace building workshops, mobilisation of first time voters, soccer or netball tournaments and clean up campaigns, as well as targeting of traditional leaders for recruitment.”
Prof Mavima said some of the organisations are secretly interviewing purported victims of political violence and fake abductions to create a database to arm the opposition with cooked-up evidence that the Government is violating human rights and there is no rule of law.
He said the Governments’ major policy shifts has been the call for the prioritisation of the economy over politics and the reaffirmation commitment to revive the economy through Vision 2030 that seeks to transform the country into an upper middle-income country by 2030 and the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1).
“Some organisations which claim to spearhead the anti-corruption campaign agenda have, however, been sharing platforms with opposition members,” said Prof Mavima.
“They spread propaganda de-campaigning Government institutions such as the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and ZRP for allegedly failing to deal decisively with cases of corruption citing the so-called catch and release.
“Some errant NGOs and trusts, however, have been deviating from their mandates by taking opportunity of the opening of the democratic space by the new dispensation to advance the regime change agenda.”
Prof Mavima said such rogue organisations had become active in the political, economic, social, technical environmental and legal spheres where some had become conduits of Western funding and susceptible to money laundering and terrorism financing.
“Others are mobilising people to participate in opposition politics and criticise Government policies and programmes meant to achieve Vision 2030,” he said. In spite of the new dispensation having been born amid an appearance of unity of purpose and apparent national consensus, and notwithstanding the ongoing well-meant efforts to inculcate this collective sense of oneness, some errant NGOs and trusts had continued with the yesteryear narrative of disputed elections and the political legitimacy questions following the 2018 harmonised election won by President Mnangagwa.
Online Reporter