The Sunday Mail
ALL governments have a responsibility to ensure that society has policy instruments in place that identify limits or boundaries for behaviour or actions.
The Pulse of the Nation
Nick Mangwana
But should all activities of human endeavour be regulated?
Governments have to find a way of balancing the two extremities of “command and control” on one end, and the unregulated free-for-all on the other extreme end of the spectrum.
None of the two extremities may be ideal.
So, a balance has to be found.
This poses a challenge for a government that needs to ensure that the regulations and instruments it uses to achieve the public objectives are both effective and efficient.
This means they must be effective so as to resolve the problem they were introduced to address and efficient so as to minimise both the direct compliance costs borne by those subjected to the regulation, as well as the indirect costs on society of that regulation.
So, when the Government of Zimbabwe introduced the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Bill, it was not a decision taken lightly.
There was already an Act in place, but there was an agreement within the corridors of power that there were still gaps which were being taken advantage of, not only to bring harm to society but also to damage the national strategic interest.
At that point, Zimbabwe had been placed on what is called the “Grey List” of the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF).
Being grey-listed meant that Zimbabwe had been deemed a country with Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financial Terrorism deficiencies.
The loopholes in its Private Voluntary Organisations Act rendered the country vulnerable to money laundering and financial terrorism.
In October 2018, Zimbabwe was placed under “Monitoring” by FATF and had to implement particular reforms to combat those Anti-Money Laundering deficiencies and comply with international best practices in the process.
The country just did not possess the luxury of a choice.
A lot of the weaknesses related to the regulation of financial flows within the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) sector, for which the Zimbabwean Government needed to show that it had addressed these.
The PVO Act
The Act had to be amended to address these identified inherent strategic deficiencies if Zimbabwe was to come off the grey list.
This is how the PVO Amendment Bill came into being.
Circumstances forced Zimbabwe to amend the PVO Act.
Serendipitously, this also presented Government with an opportunity to streamline administrative procedures for private voluntary organisations to ensure they are more efficient and fit for purpose.
What those who oppose the closing of loopholes in the PVO Act will never tell you is that NGOs are considered “subjects at risk” in the Global Money Laundering Framework, either as fronts for terrorist organisations that raise or transfer money, or as legitimate enterprises that indirectly support the aims of terrorist organisations.
Zimbabwe is quite a safe country, so mentioning the country and terrorism in the same line sounds alarmist and struggles to find resonance with many.
But let us face the fact that money laundering is a serious global concern and in this now financially borderless international system, it is very easy for a jurisdiction to find itself at the centre of organised crime.
Does anyone doubt that NGOs are used as conduits for money laundering?
Do we need laws to regulate such activities?
Surely, the answer is affirmative.
The PVO Act, as it currently stands, is silent on money laundering and terrorist activities, yet these are some of today’s biggest global threats outside climate change issues.
The proposed amendments are not too numerous.
Some of them are meant to cure the well-known abuse of funds by some of the people behind these organisations.
The world over, charitable organisations are exempted from paying taxes because of the goodwill nature of their causes.
It means all of us, as society, indirectly fund these organisations; therefore, we are all invested in that they remain loyal to their reason for existence and are publicly accountable.
One of the clauses regarded as highly contentious in the Bill is the disclosure requirement, which calls for essential information on who is behind the PVO and where its money is coming from and how it is being used.
Closing this gap will put the Government a step ahead in combating money laundering and potential funding of terrorism.
Is there anything repressive or intrusive for the State to seek to know who is behind an NGO?
Is it amoral to ask where the money is coming from and whether that cash is being used for its intended purposes or misused?
These are the issues that have led to all this lobbying against the Bill.
This is where some ask whether the intentions of some of these NGOs and civic society groups are sincere and above board.
Why would they go to hell and back to resist what appear to be very noble clauses?
Why would particularly Western embassies throw the kitchen sink in fighting this?
It is a well-known fact that intelligence services of certain countries deploy NGOs as conduits for financial funding in many of their subversive projects and operations in different countries.
Could this be the reason they are resisting this amendment with unparalleled vehemence?
We are also aware that one Western continental body, whose observers are already in the country, wants to fund the deployment of election agents for an opposition political party and, in the process, break our laws.
Doesn’t this infringement on our sovereignty demonstrate why we should expedite the enactment of these amendments?
As is our custom, in this column, we are going to benchmark this law with others across the world.
We will demonstrate that Zimbabwe is not the only democracy that abhors foreign interference in its internal politics.
What will be made clear is that no country tolerates malign actions taken by foreign governments, which are designed to manipulate public discourse, discredit its electoral systems, interfere with its development of policy or undermine its interests.
Zimbabwe is no exception.
One of the things the country celebrates on April 18 every year is the right of the country to chart its own course.
The United Kingdom
The UK has what it calls “The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS)”.
This is a two-tier scheme which, they claim, is meant to strengthen the country’s political system against covert foreign influence and to provide assurance around the activities of certain foreign powers or entities that are a national security risk.
At the centre of FIRS is an effort to make the UK better informed about the nature, scale and extent of foreign influence in its politics.
Is this not about disclosure and transparency?
Surely, if this is good for the UK, it must also be good for Zimbabwe.
Why is the UK then at the forefront of lobbying us to stop the PVO Amendment Bill from becoming law?
FIRS requires that those who want to carry political influence activities in the UK be registered.
Zimbabwe, on its part, requires all PVOs to disclose their object clause and comply with it.
The truth of the matter is that most PVOs in Zimbabwe are foreign-funded.
Our Political Parties (Finance) Act prohibits foreign funding to political parties.
If a political party is being funded by a foreign government through a PVO, they are committing a crime and the country doing this is interfering in our domestic politics.
When a foreign power pays to influence political activities in a country like ours, it does it as part of its own foreign policy.
It means it is doing this to serve its own interests and not those of the target country.
So, anyone who is being used as a conduit for this filthy lucre is a proxy for the funding country.
The amendment to the law means chances of these proxies being “outed” are high.
This is why Zimbabwe is experiencing such a determined pushback, which includes blackmail.
We are being told that our acceptance to certain multilateral organisations depends on us abandoning these amendments.
The United States
The US has the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
This piece of law imposes disclosure requirements and other legal obligations on any individual or entity that becomes an “agent of a foreign principal”.
It defines a foreign principal as, any foreign government, any political party or any association, corporation, organisation or individual outside the US
The Americans believe FARA is an important tool to force the identification of foreign influence in the US and addresses threats to its national security. They claim that the central purpose of FARA is to promote transparency with respect to foreign influence within the US by ensuring that the US government and the public know the source of certain information from foreign agents intended to influence American public opinion, policy and laws, thereby facilitating informed evaluation of that information.
FARA requires that persons who engage in specified activities within the US on behalf of a foreign principal register with and disclose those activities to the Department of Justice.
That department is required to make such information publicly available.
The US defines foreign interference in its internal affairs as “malign actions taken by foreign governments or foreign actors designed to sow discord, manipulate public discourse, discredit the electoral system, bias the development of policy, or disrupt markets for the purpose of undermining the interests of the United States and its allies”.
This is well and good.
As Zimbabwe, we will countersign on this definition and wish to express our extreme revulsion to foreign interference.
Zimbabwe rests its case.
Nick Mangwana is the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services.
