The Private Voluntary Organisations (Amendment) Bill has been resubmitted to Parliament for debate after President Emmerson Mnangagwa had expressed reservations with the previous version.
Parliament resumed sitting on 3 September after a hiatus during the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit held at the New Parliament Building in Mt. Hampden, Harare, in August 2024.
With the ruling party Zanu-PF controlling the 10th Parliament and enjoying an ill-gotten two-thirds majority in the National Assembly and Senate, the latest development signifies a new determination to pass the dubious law.
But the bigger debate has been happening outside Parliament.
Mnangagwa’s refusal to sign the Bill referring it back to Parliament in 2023 had raised hope the controversial law, which was mooted in 2021 would be shelved, or incorporate the concerns of the non-governmental organisations targeted by the regulation.
The Bill has faced national and international condemnation by human rights and democracy advocates, including UN experts as infringing on the freedom of association, the independence of NGOs, and bent on closing civic space.
The new version of the PVO Amendment Bill does nothing to address these concerns.
The Bill was initially mooted as a step to address concerns by the Financial Action Taskforce Force (FATF) about the risk of charities’ use in terrorism financing and money laundering.
But the government has sought to instrumentalise the FATF recommendations to silence and constrain civil society from campaigning for the respect for human rights and democratisation in Zimbabwe.
The government through the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs made a show of consulting NGOs but shunned their proposals from the amended version of the Bill.
The parliamentary opposition’s protesting against the Bill will be much weaker after a wave of controversial recalls decimated and reconfigured the official opposition under a captive leadership after the 2023 elections.
Through the recalls, Zanu-PF has gained a two-thirds majority which it had lost in the elections, implicating the PVO Amendment Bill in legal changes illegitimately promulgated after the 2023 elections, should it pass.