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NGOs Have a Critical Role to Play in Development
By Tongai Muchena
Financial Gazette
August 26, 2004In drought years, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been pivotal in the distribution of food to the hungry, in giving social assistance and in the provision of safety nets to communities under distress. The evidence is there for everyone to see. NGOs have been critical in the provision of training, civic education, rehabilitation, leadership development, environmental protection, promotion of sustainable development, HIV/AIDS support programmes, caring for orphans, provision of legal aid, human rights education and protection and small-scale agricultural support, among many other development programmes.
In most cases, NGOs compliment government efforts and stand ready to give critical solidarity to governments in many countries. In Zimbabwe, the NGO sector is a major contributor to economic development, employment and the fiscus. One needs to do an analysis of the contribution of NGOs to national revenues. It is an employment sector which the government will be better advised to promote rather than undermine if it cares about the welfare of the country and its people as it routinely claims.
In many places, the NGO sector has been at the centre of calling for social justice in development, challenging the global economic (dis) order, campaigning for debt relief for poor countries, and demanding accountability from inter-governmental institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Bank on the one side and national and local governments on the other. We saw how the Seattle anti-WTO demonstrations raised the issue of trade and economic justice, while the Washington demonstrations against the Word Bank and IMF-supported structural adjustment programmes gave prominence to social movements and NGOs calling for global economic justice, equitable and fair trade as well as human-centred development approaches. The Group of Eight developed countries, the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO have all had to rethink where they meet and how they meet because civil society and social movements have taken an active interest in these meetings and have voiced their concern to the point of almost wanting to disrupt meetings. We have seen pitched battles between the police of host countries in Genoe, Prague, and Washington as protests have been mounted around global injustices brought by the uneven and unequal globalisation phenomenon. Developing countries have found new allies in the form of NGOs protesting against the programmes being promoted and driven by the World Bank and IMF, the WTO and other global institutions.
The United Nations, in many of its General Assembly resolutions and conventions, acknowledges the role of civil society in the promotion of human development, environmental and human rights protection, democracy and good governance. The Millennium Development Goals are very clear in this regard. Successive human development reports by the United Nations Development Programme acknowledge this critical role of civil society. Zimbabwe's own human development reports from 1998 onwards acknowledge the critical role of civil society, which is constituted by NGOs and social movements, in development.
The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)-European Union Cotonou Convention, the successor to the Lome IV Convention, acknowledges the critical role of non-state actors in development. In fact, the whole concept of decentralised cooperation is an affirmation of the role of civil society in development. Many ACP countries have benefited from development assistance a channel opened via the avenue of non-state actors, through the framework of decentralised cooperation. The African Union, in its New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) framework and in its constitutive Act, acknowledges the role of civil society in development. Democracy and good governance are seen as the pillar of the NEPAD and the peer review framework is seen as an innovative way of self-policing in pursuit of good governance and democracy.
Why the NGO Bill?
One of the mischiefs that the NGO Bill seeks to regulate is the issue of registration. The government would like to register every NGO under one law. Private voluntary organisations (PVOs) registered in terms on the current PVO Act, trusts registered with the High Court in terms of the trust laws of Zimbabwe, international organisations doing their business based on memoranda of understanding with various ministries of government are all supposed to come under one law, based on a narrow definition of NGOs. […] The mischief that the government purportedly seeks to deal with is the regulation of activities of NGOs so that it has greater control of them, policing them to ensure compliance with their own constitutions and the general wellbeing of the sovereign state of Zimbabwe, among other things.
In The Herald of April 5 2004, the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Paul Mangwana, is quoted as saying, "Some NGOs and churches are causing too much confusion to the country because they are converting their humanitarian programmes into politics . . . The government cannot allow that to happen, so we are saying they should go under scrutiny where we revise the modalities of their operations in the country." This is a transparent display of the real intentions of the government. Politics - whatever the government means by that - is for our leaders the preserve of some selected few, to be closely guarded.
The identification of foreign funding as a key problem is faulty and mischievous. It is premised on the false assumption that NGOs are the ones taking the money that is being denied to central government. The government seeks to ban NGOs that receive foreign funding if their primary purpose is the promotion of human rights and governance. This is shameless and dangerous. The government is treating governance issues and promotion of human rights as criminal activities that cannot be funded by anyone.
The liberation struggle sought to install a regime that would promote good governance and human rights. NGOs working to promoting these are doing so in pursuit of the values, ethos and norms of the spirit of human liberation. To try and restrict people from pursuing an internationally acclaimed good such as human rights promotion and good governance is not only to violate United Nations conventions and General Assembly resolutions but is to attack the very basis of the democracy that so many lost their lives for. It is to attack the very constitution of Zimbabwe, which guarantees rights and freedoms to all people. The talk that NGOs need to be accountable, to respect their constitution, submit work plans to a council appointed by a minister and the thought that this will improve efficiency and transparency in the sector is as insincere as it is false.
Giving too much power to a government minister, with all that we now know of how power makes some drunk, is neither an attractive option nor one that inspires confidence in the NGO sector. We have seen how Tafataona Mahoso and the Media and the Information Commission have transformed themselves into some kind of Gods among journalists and media house owners. The NGO Council is a cousin of the media commission and will certainly take a lot of notes on how to deal with "errant" subjects. Essentially, the Bill serves political rather than administrative interests.
More Information on NGOs
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More Information on Funding for NGOs
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