PVO AMENDMENT BILL AND THE EROSION OF THE CIVIC SPACE
We note with the gravest concern the approval by the Zimbabwean Cabinet of the proposed amendments to the Private Voluntary Organisations Act (Chapter 17:05). The amendments to the Act have been approved ostensibly to conform to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which seeks to combat money laundering and financing of terrorism by any individual or institution in Zimbabwe operating under the Private Voluntary Organisations banner. Yet, in our considered view, it also marks a further tightening of the state’s control over CSOs. For some time now, the Government appears to have been moving further and further into unbridled authoritarianism in flagrant violation of both the Constitution of Zimbabwe and democratic practices. Most worrying is the shift to unilateralism and authoritarianism, bordering on state corporatism, taking place in a systematic and incremental manner and now culminating in the approval by cabinet of the regressive amendments to the PVO Act.
In our Bulletin 3 of 2021 we bemoaned efforts by the government to clampdown on the operations of civil society in the country as reflected in Mr Tafadzwa Muguti, the provincial coordinator for Harare Metropolitan province, who had then issued a statement that imposes impossible operating conditions and reporting requirements on civil society organizations. Interestingly, Mr Muguti upon assuming office made an order for NGOs/CSOs to comply with an archived policy. It is also quite revealing that this trend seems to be going beyond Harare in a manner that reflects pre- planning. It is our considered view that the proposed amendments to the PVO Act represent a culmination of disparate but systematic and well-coordinated attempts to consolidate state control over CSOs and create a pliant civic society. Sadly, similar trends are noticeable in the political arena.
In terms of the amendments, the Registrar of PVOs is empowered to penalize non-compliant organizations, collect registration fees from all PVOs, ban PVOs from political involvement, and prohibit PVOs from undertaking political lobbying on behalf of any individual, organisation or political party. As if this is not bad enough, the registrar is granted unfettered powers to suspend, as s/he pleases, PVO Executive Committees for either maladministration or failure to discharge their declared mandate. With the state and its agencies’ entrenched strategy of weaponising the law to further whittle down the democratic space, it does not require a rocket scientist to guess how the approved amendments will be used.
As we stated before, this trend represents a serious attack on our bill of rights and the basic tenets of a democratic society and must be resisted with vigour by all constitutional means. With the country just a year or so away from a general election, the incremental closure of the democratic space is most worrying, and must therefore be stopped forthwith. We reiterate our earlier call for the government to fully recognize citizens’ freedom to associate, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and the freedom for citizens to organize without any unnecessary hindrance from the state. We are witnessing a worrying trend of the erosion of these freedoms, as guaranteed under Articles 9 and 10 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to which Zimbabwe is a party. Instead of looking at it as an enemy, civil society should be valued as a partner in the democratic development of the country, hence the need to facilitate an enabling environment for vibrant civic participation. Instead of curtailing civic participation in national issues, we implore the government to widen its consultative processes and fully consider civil society as a valuable stakeholder in policy making and implementation.
CALL TO ACTION
CITIZENS: Please note that the approval of the amendments by the cabinet is just the beginning of a long journey towards their full enactment into law. Meanwhile, as citizens we need to urgently:
- Contact our Members of Parliament TODAY to raise questions in Parliament requesting the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare under whose jurisdiction the PVO Act falls, to issue a Ministerial Statement explaining the government’s position with regards CSOs’ operational framework in general and the current trend to systematically erode the civic space.
- Lobby our Members of Parliament to utilise the Parliamentary Question and Answer Session which takes place every Wednesday to pose questions to both the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare on why the government is continuously stifling civic society operations in the country.
- Send questions to and tag on social media journalists and media houses which cover the weekly Cabinet Briefings to ask the Minister of Information weekly why the Government feels it necessary to restrict the participation of citizens in this way.