Representation of interest through civil society organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa – The Zimbabwean experience

Systems of Representation and Democratic Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa

Speech given at Konrad Adenhauer Foundation Conference at Brussels 21/9/06

Representation of interest through civil society organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Zimbabwean experience

Zimbabwe has some of the best developed, established and run civil society organisations in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of these organisations have been established since independence in 1980. Under white minority rule Rhodesia, as it then was, had very few civil organisations, and hardly any human rights organisations. Indeed the only human rights NGO of any significance were the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP).

Accordingly whilst civil organisations have played a very positive role in developing Zimbabwe, the fact that most of them have been established post independence, largely through Western aid, has enabled the Zanu PF regime to accuse many civil organisations are being imperialistic tools whenever they criticise the regime of human rights abuses.

There are now a plethora of civil organisations ranging from human rights organisations such as the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF), the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), Zimbabwe lawyers for human rights and Zimrights, to developmental and humanitarian organisations such as the Organisation for Rural Association for Progress (ORAP) and the Matabeleland Aids Council. Government would never have been able to reach its developmental targets without the support of these civil organisations. For the first 20 years after independence government largely welcomed the establishment of civil organisations and recognised the complementary developmental role these organisations played. However since 2000 government has increasingly seen civil organisations as threats to its own hegemony.

To illustrate the role that civil organisations have played and how their relationship with government has changed in the last decade one should consider the establishment, development and work done by one civil organisation since independence. For this purpose I will use the LRF an organisation I have been involved with since its establishment in 1984.

Prior to the LRF’s establishment indigent people in Zimbabwe had very little access to legal services and the legal system in general. Aside from the CCJP there was no civil organisation which educated the general public about human and legal rights. The LRF was established to fill this gap. Between 1984 and 2000 the LRF established a network of legal advice centres throughout the country, especially in poor high-density suburbs in cities and in rural areas. It has trained hundreds of paralegals to run these advice centres. It also developed wide ranging education programmes to educate all sectors of society, including the police and the intelligence service, regarding human and legal rights. A publications unit was established which has produced legal texts ranging from detailed academic treatises to pamphlets designed to simplify the general law for the benefit of Zimbabweans. The publications unit has also, under contract from government, published the Zimbabwean law reports.

As you can imagine the government largely welcomed the role of the LRF as it is provided a service to Zimbabweans that the government had neither the means nor capacity to do. However that cordial relationship started to sour in the mid 1990s when the LRF started working with the CCJP to promote the interests of the victims of the disturbances which took place in the Matabeleland region during the 1980s, otherwise known as the Gukurahundi. Between 1982 and 1987 the Zanu PF regime deployed a North Korean trained army brigade, and known as the 5th Brigade, ostensibly to quell an uprising but in reality to further the Mugabe regime’s objective of establishing a one-party state. Some 20,000 people were massacred during this period. In the early 1990s legal advice centres were established in rural areas where these human rights violations had taken place. Many victims started coming forward with a variety of problems which arose directly from the abuses which had taken place in the 1980s.

In its attempt to respond to the issues arising from these human rights abuses the LRF together with the CCJP produced a human rights report in 1997 called “Breaking the silence-Building true peace”. The report documented the extent of the human rights abuses, the psychological consequences of the abuses and made recommendations to the government as to how the human rights abuses should be remedied. The report was deeply embarrassing to the Zanu PF regime which had successfully swept under the carpet the human rights abuses perpetrated during this period. The relationship between the government and the CCJP and the LRF immediately deteriorated and President Robert Mugabe went to the extent of accusing senior members of both organisations of being traitors and saboteurs. The relationship between government and the LRF has never been the same since, to such an extent that since 2000 some of the LRF’s projects which had very little human rights content, such as the advice Centre programme, have been threatened.

The experience of the LRF is shared by many civil organisations in Zimbabwe. That became especially so in the late 1990s when many civil organisations became the vanguard of the struggle to bring about a more democratic order in Zimbabwe. Formal opposition political parties in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in the world, battled to source sufficient funds to work effectively and as a result much quasi political work was undertaken by civil organisations. For example the NCA spearheaded the demand for a new democratic Constitution and played a major role in opposing the government’s attempt to subvert the Constitutional reform process in early 2000. The government responded with hostility, so much so that by the late 1990s many civil organisations were under serious threat.

Many human rights activists and civil society leaders feared that the organisations they had painstakingly established over 20 years faced collapse. As a result many leaders of civil organisations decided that the only way to save those organisations was to challenge the very root of governmental power and as a result many of these leaders took on an increasingly political role and many went to the extent of joining the new political formation known as the MDC in September 1999. Whilst they made the MDC an effective opposition there were two negative side-effects: firstly, civil organisations were weakened by the loss of many of their leaders and, secondly, the government became even more convinced that there was a close and seamless relationship between these civil organisations and the MDC. That in turn led the government to intensify its attacks on civil organisations which culminated in the passage through Parliament of the NGO Bill in 2004. Although this Bill has never been signed into law it was designed to crush those civil organisations the government felt were too close to the political opposition.

The events of the last six years in Zimbabwe, including the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy, the estrangement of the Zanu PF regime from the West and the unrelenting attack on civil organisations have left many of them severely weakened. The Zanu PF regime continually makes threats against civil organisations. That situation has been compounded by the fact that many NGOs are starved of funds, partly as a result of governmental policies and partly because international donor organisations in many cases have withdrawn either wholly or in part from Zimbabwe. Many civil organisations have also been infiltrated by state operatives. Staff members of civil organisations have been at the receiving end of violence perpetrated by state agents or Zanu PF operatives. Others have been threatened, detained, assaulted and tortured.

Most civil organisations in Zimbabwe are still largely dependent on external, and in the majority of cases Western, donors. Whilst this has generally been a positive experience, the reliance on Western donors has also had its downside. As indicated above the Zanu PF regime has used the fact of Western support as evidence that these civil organisations have an imperialistic agenda. This in turn has allowed the Zanu PF regime to create the perception that many leaders of civil organisations are simply puppets of the West. Of course in the vast majority of organisations Western support has not determined these organisations’ agenda. On occasions donors have been overly prescriptive and sometimes even divisive, but that type of negative conduct has been rare.

One problem faced by civil organisations in Zimbabwe has been the undermining of some of their democratic policy objectives through being indirectly associated with Western governments that have implemented policies at variance with those democratic policy objectives. For example many Zimbabwean civil organisations have campaigned against detention without trial, denial of access to lawyers and torture. The breaches of these rights by Western forces in the Iraqi war and in the global war against terror have given the Zanu PF regime a powerful propaganda weapon to justify their own policies and actions. For this reason it has been important that Zimbabwean civil organisations demonstrate consistency and condemn breaches of fundamental human rights wherever they take place and by whomsoever responsible for these breaches. However in condemning such actions inevitably there is the danger that relationships between civil organisations and Western donor governments may be undermined. That however is a risk that Zimbabwean civil organisations must take if they are to be consistent and true to their founding principles and goals.

Miraculously most civil organisations have survived the onslaught of the last six years but many are now hanging by a fragile thread. It is incumbent upon Western governments and donor agencies to ensure that these civil organisations survive, many of which have been in existence for over two decades and many of which provide a beacon of hope to Zimbabweans and Africans in general. Sadly funding has been reduced in recent years and it is not certain whether some organisations will survive. Accordingly democratic governments have an obligation to do all in their power to ensure that these civil organisations in Zimbabwe do survive. This is important not just to ensure that they continue the struggle to bring about a new democratic order in Zimbabwe but also because many of these organisations will be vital components in building a new democratic Zimbabwean order in future. One of the tragedies of the last six years is that many government departments have all but collapsed and the very fabric of Zimbabwean society is under threat. Corruption is now rampant. Law-enforcement agencies now see the use of torture as the norm. Civil organisations will play a vital role in creating a new democratic order in Zimbabwe that not only delivers services but also establishes new standards of zero tolerance towards corruption and abuses of fundamental human rights.

There is one remaining frontier for Western donor organisations to consider in the context of assisting civil organisations which genuinely and effectively represent the interests of citizens in the countries they work in. Traditionally a distinction has been made between political organisations and civil organisations. But of course political organisations often have objectives which overlap with those of civil organisations. Through a combination of Western reluctance to fund foreign political parties and hostility displayed by many incumbent African political parties towards any form of foreign funding of opposition parties, many opposition parties throughout Africa have found themselves starved of resources. The fact remains however that in many countries the only effective civil organisations with representation country wide, in both urban and rural areas, are political parties rather than narrowly defined non partisan civil organisations. There is also an irony in that it was only through foreign funding that many of these incumbent political parties were able to defeat oppressive colonial regimes and come to power themselves. Many of these incumbent political parties used foreign funding not only to gain power but also to consolidate their power. And yet the same parties are themselves now at the forefront of opposing and criticising any attempts to fund democratic political opposition. Many of the same governments use the benefits of incumbency not only to maintain and consolidate their power but also to crush those striving to bring about a new democratic, transparent and accountable order.
In doing so many of these incumbent governments do all in their power to undermine legitimate non-partisan civil organisations. It is another irony that the future of these non-partisan civil organisations can only be guaranteed if new democratic orders are brought to the countries they operate in, and almost inevitably that will only happen if political opposition parties are enabled to flourish so that they can effectively contest for power.

Accordingly if Western governments are determined to ensure the growth and consolidation of civil organisations they cannot avoid the challenge of reviewing their current policies regarding the support of opposition political parties and movements in sub-Saharan Africa. In urging this only those political formations that are genuinely democratic and obviously committed to using non-violent means to attain power should be supported. Western governments need to establish objective criteria which will govern which political organisations will be assisted. These criteria should include the principle of not supporting ethnically based parties and supporting parties that have well-defined democratic ideologies, policies and principles. It is also important that a new contract or understanding be reached between the European Union and the African Union so that any support for political formations be done in a transparent and fair manner throughout Africa. Unless this happens there will always be the danger that Western support for political parties will be seen as some form of neocolonialism. However if this new proposed policy comes about as a result of dialogue and if it supports both incumbent ruling parties and opposition parties (subject of course to them objectively and ostensibly being committed to basic democratic standards) then it may well be implemented throughout Africa by consensus.

The connection between democracy and sustained long-term economic development is obvious. Accordingly long term economic development can only be assured if democracy can only be rooted throughout Africa. That in turn will only happen if all civil organisations which represent the interests of Africans, including political parties, are assisted in their establishment and development.

The Hon. David Coltart MP
Shadow Minister of Justice,
Zimbabwe

21st September 2006

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