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ZANU-PF and the ghosts of foreign funding
David Moore
Extracted from Review of African Political Economy No. 103:135-204, 2005

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The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front's NGO Act, promising to severely curtail the activities of civil society groups with a whiff of human rights or governance activities and ban foreign support for them, raises historical questions about ZANU-PF's own path to power. A long history of 'international nationalism' is obliterated by the latest manifestation of 'we are our own liberators.' The archives reveal a complex layer of links between Zimbabwe's nationalists and imperialists of both innocent and interested hues.

At the end of 2004 the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front passed the 'Non-Governmental Organisation's Bill' through Zimbabwe's parliament. It bans the foreign funding, and thus severely curtails the activities of, civil society groups involved in anything remotely approaching human rights or governance activities (funds from the direct arms of states, such as USAID and DFID - not to mention the IMF and the World Bank, which ZANU-PF hopes will come back, coins in hand - will not be stopped) [1]. The bill imposes a state-appointed board of trustees over NGOs ranging from soccer clubs to HIV-AIDS advisory bodies. Zimbabweans abroad - estimated in some documents to reach 25% of the population - will be included among those foreigners and imperialists [2].

The bill was passed in spite of the fact that the parliamentary legal review committee reported that it violated the constitution on twelve counts. The report condemned it as a cynical and comprehensive attack on the rights of the people to organise themselves in the promotion, protection, defence and advancement of their freedoms and liberties. It is a calculated attempt to all but extinguish just about all the rights and liberties contained in the constitution.[3]

Such legislation raises historical and hypothetical questions. Those familiar with the history of the Zimbabwean liberation war remember the extensive international support given to the nationalist movement in its various party political manifestations. They know that both 'imperialists' and 'critical cosmopolitans'[4] assisted and influenced most of these actors to some degree or another. Yet precise relationships and conditioning patterns have not been documented or delineated[5].

At the conjectural level, one is driven to wonder: why is Zimbabwe's contemporary ruling party so concerned - paranoid might be the appropriate label, considering how 'patriotism' has transmogrified so quickly from nationalism into fear and loathing[6] - with 'imperialist machinations' now? The easy answer is because ZANU-PF believes the opposition - in which it collapses the Movement for Democratic Change and a 'hit-list' of politically involved civil society groups including the Zimbabwe Civil Education Trust, Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Combined Harare Residents Association, Crisis in Zimbabwe, Humanistic Institute of Development Co-operation with Developing Countries, National Constitutional Assembly, Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (a group of ex-combatants who believe the so-called 'war vets' who invaded land are neither genuine nor true to the legacy of the liberation war), Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Amani Trust, Zimbabwe NGO Human Rights Forum, Bulawayo Agenda and Women of Zimbabwe Arise,[7] which it will target first - will be strangled without external support. Suffocation is necessary before the March 2005 parliamentary elections. Resorting to an Africa-centrism born on the shores of receding sovereignty ZANUPF ideologues claim all these organisations are totting up their accounts of murder and torture and educating people on the arcane mysteries of multiparty democracy in the interests of the Blair-Bush imperialist conspiracy. It all works to the benefit of the party of tea-drinkers[8] and lackeys, which must be destroyed if Zimbabwe is to retake its destiny into its own hands. ZANU-PF liberated Zimbabwe on its own, it says: so should its challengers.

A more complex answer entails burrowing deeper into history, however, and melding the conjectural and the historical. ZANU-PF itself may be haunted by the ghosts of foreign funding. The party that championed the call 'we are our own liberators' when it ostensibly pulled itself away from the globe-trotting Joshua Nkomo with his multi-racialism and begging-bowl tactics may be having nightmares about its own historical relationships with liberals and imperialists. This briefing demonstrates evidence that could be the cause of sleepless nights for those in power under auspices other than their own. Such data helps explain the vitriol accompanying a history of hypocrisy.

Notes

1. Jan Raath, 'Mugabe Bans Human Rights Groups-, The Times, 18 November 2004. (This Bill was passed by Parliament, but was never signed into law by the President, and died a natural death.)
2. Solidarity Peace Trust, 'No War in Zimbabwe: An Account of the Exodus of a Nation-s People-, November 2004.
3. Report of the Parliamentary Legal Committee on the Non-Governmental Organisations Bill, 2004, [H.B. 13, 2004], Parliament, Harare, Zimbabwe, p. 1.
4. A. Bartholomew & J. Breakspear, 'Human Rights as Swords of Empire-, C. Leys & L. Panitch, (eds), Socialist Register 2004: The New Imperialism,, London: Merlin Press, p. 132. 5. Patricia Appavoo, "The small state as donor: Canadian and Swedish development assistance policies, 1960-1976," PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1989 charts Canadian and Scandinavian state aid to southern African liberation movements rather than between members of global civil society and the transitory categories of activists (i.e. from non-state to state).
6. Terrence Ranger, 'Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: the Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe-, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (June 2004), pp. 215-234.
7. Godfrey Marawanyika, 'NGOs get 6-month reprieve-, Zimbabwe Independent, 26 November 2004.
8. The notion of 'tea-drinkers- in Zimbabwean history is ironic, given that the many of the African members of the Capricorn Society - a multi-racial group organized by European liberals to ensure the black élite would not take the communist path - who subsequently joined the nationalist movement and ZANU were condemned as 'tea-drinkers- by their more militant precursors.

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