Again to the number, they became the underhand of those countries’ foreign policies, only thinly disguised and fronted as NGOs! The relationship was symbiotic, often in an open and brazen way. This amounted to gross interference in the internal affairs of our country, a tendency totally eschewed by the Geneva Convention and international law.
Even as we went through the motions of making this law, protests came from “mother” countries of these very political NGOs. No protests came from our poor for whom support from those NGOs has always been a pie in a foreign sky.
Ironically, those “mother” countries have no NGOs in their own societies, even though the poor and needy exist in numbers larger than we have here.
The same countries have tougher laws against foreign-funded organisations than our PVO Bill can ever approximate. What is good for the goose seems bad for the gander!
The PVO Bill is a Zimbabwean law, which is meant for Zimbabwe and its people. Unlike those other imperious nations we all know, Zimbabwe makes no laws for other nations or peoples.
We make laws which are good and which are needful to our country. We do not need the approval of foreigners from whatever quarter to write such laws.
Foreigners must keep out, as we realise and fulfil our sovereignty through the laws we make for ourselves.
On that score, no amount of foreign noises will stop the passing of the PVO law which, in any case, has gone through our Parliament comprising all the elected parties and representatives of our country.
We do not enjoy democratic space or any of our freedoms through foreign NGOs; we enjoy them everyday in the very society we have founded and built through our own blood and struggles.
This must sink in the minds of all those who solicitously involve themselves unduly in our legislative processes.
Let me repeat: once the Bill is cleaned and sent to my Office, I will sign it into law. Speedily, too!
By President Emmerson Mnangagwa for the Sunday Mail
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