By Perpetua Murungweni
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Masvingo have expressed concerns over the Private Voluntary Organisation (PVO) Amendment bill that seems to be seeking to tighten regulations on their operations, arguing that its provisions will erode the foundations of civil society.
This came out at a CSOs Movement meeting that was hosted by National Association of Non-governmental Organisation (NANGO) in partnership with Centre for Humanitarian Analytics (CHA), Citizens in Action Southern Africa (CIASA) and Citizen Engagement for Accountability Activity (CEAA), held on September 25, 2024 at Chevron Hotel.
The meeting was aimed at fostering a unified approach to challenges faced by CSOs such as the PVO Amendment bill.
In his presentation during the meeting, NANGO Director, Ernest Nyimai highlighted the clauses in the PVO bill that will affect operational flexibility of CSOs and compromise their independence.
“Regulatory constraints of the PVO bill will compromise our independence and CSOs will face significant difficulties in securing and managing funding due to tighter financial regulations and reduced donor support affecting their sustainability and impact,” said Nyimai.
Rufaro Deshe from Legal Resources Foundation (LRF) also said there were many issues of concern in the bill that will hinder the day-to-day operations of the CSOs and these include issues of definitions like beneficial owner and controller.
“We have definitions in the bill that we feel like will affect the operations of CSOs, definitions like controller and beneficial owner. A beneficial owner or controller is a person who exempts a significant voice in the affairs of an organization.
“In CSOs operations there are no such persons and we wonder who the bill is referring to. We have problems with these terms because we don’t know and don’t understand how they are being interpreted,” said Deshe.
Deshe said the registration requirements and processes as per the bill were problematic to CSOs.
“Registration is supposed to be done in the period of three months and the process demands a lot of documents from CSOs to the registrar and these requirements are unclear. The bill mentions some of the documents and went on to say ‘other documents’, and no one knows what those other documents are and we don’t know what else will be required.
“On registering the organization, CSOs are required to submit their documents to the board in three months and the board is given reasonable time to look into the registration and no one can define how long reasonable time is. During the reasonable time the organizations are not allowed to receive funds and to operate,” said Deshe.
She also said the unclear duties of the PVO board and the registrar that were introduced by the board are problematic to CSOs operations.
“The bill has reintroduced the PVO board which is the one that deals with applications for organizations that want to be registered as PVOs and its roles have not been clearly defined. What will this board be doing and at what point does its duties intersect with the duties of the registrar that was introduced by this bill?” she said.
She added that the other challenges with the bill were the terms like ‘illegal activities’, ‘legitimate’ and ‘moral’ as they are mentioned in the bill.
“There are no same definitions to these terms, as what might be illegal to one person might be legal to another. It is not clear what these terms mean in the bill,” she said.
The battle for control of civil society operations by the government has been on-going for some time with the government accusing NGOs of being agents of regime change.
