via Civil society has lost the plot- The Zimbabwean 28 January 2015 by Tawanda Majoni
By and large, Zimbabwean civil society has lost the plot. This is not meant to paint all civil society organisations (CSOs) with the same black brush, but the majority of them seem to have abdicated their role of serving the interests and promoting the will of the people.
As it is understood locally, civil society comprises non-state and non-business actors whose explicit role is to complement government and commercial processes in the promotion of the welfare of citizens. CSOs are supposed to provide alternative answers to issues relating, but not limited, to people’s fundamental rights and economic as well as social wellbeing.
The phenomenon of civil society dates back to pre-independence days when a motley group of church organisations and international pressure groups helped the masses that were oppressed by racist colonial rule fight mostly for their political rights. At independence, there was a slight increase in the number of locally based CSOs, but the numbers increased sharply in the 1990s, reaching a peak in the 2000s. This is the period when President Robert Mugabe came under intense scrutiny for human rights abuses and repressive and incompetent governance.
Civil society did extremely well in the 1990s and in the first half of the 2000s. After that, they went off the rails as manifested through a glaring number of omissions and commissions. The main problem is that CSOs gradually came to consider the donor community as a willing and gullible cash cow. Many organisations that were formed, especially after 2005, were motivated by a tendency to earn income rather than serve the people. Setting up CSOs and community-based organisations became a money-spinning business.
While the organisations came up with brilliant concepts and ideas to serve communities, their primary motive was to get jobs and abuse donor money through dubious projects, workshops and travel. They succeeded in doing this because they concocted equally brilliant but false reports or what they were doing. The funders, it seems, were a willing and gullible lot who accepted everything the CSOs said without much questioning, as long as the money was “properly” accounted for.
With the vicious chase for money came another devil—power fights. These have become a common feature in civil society as people, mostly the young ones, hustle for positions. With these positions comes money, of course, hence the intensity of the battles. Some heads of CSOs whose time to leave has come are doing all they can to remain in their positions because going will mean and end to lucrative travel and other allowances, no more fat salary cheques and no more chances to influence the flow of things. Several individuals have attempted to change organisational constitutions to ensure their continued stay.
Another big blight in civil society is the founder mentality. Those who formed organisations consider themselves immortal figureheads and think that they should be there as long as they survive. They seem to be convinced that the organisations cannot, and must not, survive after them. They have devised numerous methods to remain where they are.
These include the nepotistic and partisan appointment of loyal staffers, creating CSO mafia clubs that use strong-arm tactics to fight perceived enemies and potential threats and smearing others whenever they get the chance. Corruption, through shady purchasing, diversion of donor money and abuse of donated property, has also become an accepted culture.
It becomes extremely worrying when civil society assumes the same form and attitude as those they are supposed to be an alternative to. These days, you can hardly see the difference between what the political parties are doing and what civil society is doing. That means a sad loss of credibility within civil society.
No-one will take these organisations seriously when they complain that an incumbent government is adulterating the constitution because they are doing the same thing. No-one will listen to them when they complain against corruption because they are competing fiercely in that regard. Most of all, they have ceased to be the vanguard of our rights and welfare.
This calls for a serious revisit of the civil society model. There is need to introduce a culture of good governance. Civil society organisations need to consider a serious per review mechanism. If they do not, they are just making themselves vulnerable to state control, which is undesirable and inimical to their goals and objectives.
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