HARARE – President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday opened the third session of the ninth parliament with a vow to crackdown on Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that stray from their mandate.
His Zanu PF party’s MPs would push through parliament the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill to “revamp the administration of NGOs and Private Voluntary Organisations and correct the current anomalies.”
Rights groups warned the new laws would undermine Mnangagwa’s international efforts to project his government as reformist.
“The conduct of some Non-Governmental Organisations and Private Voluntary Organisations who operate outside their mandates and out of sync with the government’s humanitarian priority programmes remain a cause for concern,” Mnangagwa told MPs during an address that was boycotted by lawmakers from the MDC Alliance.
Dewa Mavhinga, the Southern Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said Mnangagwa’s pronouncements would lead to a further erosion of human rights.
“Draconian NGO laws and repression are signs of pariah, authoritarian regimes, not democratic dispensations. This move will further undermine Zimbabwe’s standing globally,” Mavhinga said.
In October, Mnangagwa vowed to look into the operations of every NGO, telling a Zanu PF Politburo meeting that party members should also do the same and report organisations that were “operating outside their mandate.”
“There are lots of registered NGOs in the country and through the home affairs and social welfare ministries we are going to look at the mandate of each NGO. The ministers of home affairs and social welfare will depend on you war veterans, youths and women party chairpersons to give them a list of NGOs operating in your areas. If we discover that an NGO is operating outside its mandate, it will be deregistered,” he said.
Mnangagwa accuses Western countries of using NGOs to undermine his government.
It remains unclear which NGOs he is targeting. In February last year, he voiced his anger that rights lawyers and doctors had come to the aid of scores of people who were brutalised by security forces following nationwide strikes over fuel price increases.
“They told them that if anyone gets arrested, they should go to a certain place, there are lawyers waiting to defend them. If anyone gets hurt, they should go to a certain place, there are doctors waiting to treat them,” Mnangagwa said at a Zanu PF rally.
“We’re now going after those doctors who were involved in those activities. Those lawyers that were inciting violence, we’re now going after them. So those who choose violence, we are prepared.”
