Zimbabwe Government Must Continue Keeping an Eye On Western Sponsored NGOs

26 MAY 2022

The Herald (Harare)

By Lazarous Matsapo

The Government of Zimbabwe, under the new dispensation has really reformed many sectors of the economy and society but a hodgepodge of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are still working against this progressive plinth.

Not that the NGOs are real proponents of democracy and good governance, accountability or human rights as they purport; these are regime change agents, working on Western Europe's agenda to unseat the ruling Zanu PF.

So many things will happen as we go towards the 2023 harmonised elections and the recent exposure by Government that the Western Governments are trying to register some of the NGOs in South Africa, speaks to the grand plan to dislodge the Zanu PF.

There is trend in the NGO sector where the trouble makers are shifted to each election spot, as experts of destabilisation.

Western Europe is very good at systematic builds up, using NGOS and some hard-liners to subvert governments they don't like.

In 2012, The Herald carried a story about an embarrassing incident in which Shona textbooks were distributed in Matabeleland where isiNdebele is the dominant language and the incident caused a lot of discomfort between the Government of Zimbabwe and UNICEF.

The person involved in the procurement and distribution was working with then MDC Minister of Education and Culture David Coltart, that time a minister of the Government of National Unity.

Recently, I bumped into Aubaid Abdool Raman, the man infamous for distributing the Shona language textbooks to schools in Matabeleland towards the 2013 elections.

The plot was to raise emotion against the ZANU PF Government.

It was an election ploy.

Today he is back in Zimbabwe and doing the same job at UNICEF by his own confirmation. Imagine? Something is surely cooking up.

For the avoidance of doubt, Raman is a retired Pakistan now citizen of Mauritius but residing and working at Unicef Zimbabwe.

From being a mere worker, he now owns luxury apartments at the beaches of Mauritius that he is now renting out to holiday makers.

He made his fortune in the procurement field which has taken him across the globe. One such deal that has made him richer is a botched deal in 2010 in Zimbabwe. As the chief procurement officer, he was involved in a tender scam with the then Minister of Education David Coltart.

He came during the GNU period on a mission to work with the opposition party. Right now Government is at loggerheads with NGOs that are working to divide the people, destabilise the country and discredit the Second Republic.

Given that we are going for elections next year no-one knows his new mandate.

Imagine that incident when Government received funding of programmes and Raman had the guts to purchase and distribute Shona books for Ndebele speaking people.

This was an embarrassment meant to provoke the Ndebeles, he wanted to indirectly influence them to turn against the Government. He almost achieved that.

The Government should keep an eye on him and many others.

While Unicef later reacted and assured the Government of Zimbabwe that it was a mere guff, the damage had already been done.

As the preparations for the 2023 elections start rolling out many NGOs are being used to derail Zanu PF's return to power.

Zanu PF Government should therefore keep a very strong eye on these NGOS and even deregister some of them.

The US and its allies are abusing international organisations, among them UN structures and international multi-lateral funding institutions to unseat the Government of Zimbabwe.

Given that we are going for elections next year no-one knows his new mandate. There are many like him. The Government must audit and take stock on all people employed by these NGOs.

The Zanu PF Government should therefore keep a very strong eye on these NGOS and even deregister some of them.

There is nothing wrong with the Government deregistering the rogue ones. Zimbabwe will not be the first country to do it. After all Zimbabwe has suffered a lot under these NGOs.

The US and its allies are abusing international organisations, among them UN structures and international multi-lateral funding institutions to unseat the Government of Zimbabwe.

The Government should therefore speed up laws that control and give guidance to operations of NGOS.

In fact, Zimbabwe should lead the Sadc region in coming up with common law to control the activities of NGOs that have caused more political harm than good.

The NGOS are destroying whole nations, fanning divisions and funding opposition political parties all to get read of governments that are not pro-western.

The NGO sector, this huge monster that claims to be the beginning and the end of human rights, justice, good governance, democracy and accountability, but instead has caused untold anxiety and suffering of many people in this country either through commission or omission.

Most of the NGOs in Zimbabwe have failed to keep on the lane they registered for, and the desperate and gullible detractors of the country, led by the US, have been swallowing the NGOs lies hook, line and sinker and giving little everyone else who claims to be an NGOs, money as long as they believe, it will help remove the Zanu PF government from power.

The anti-Government NGO world has become a conveyor belt for money for many political thugs and fraudsters in Zimbabwe, whom one day, the US and its allies will be sad to discover.

The US and its allies have spent millions of dollars in what they call democratic forces in Zimbabwe in particular and other countries deemed errant, but unbeknown to US and its allies, it has become a money spinning venture. The results are less important than the money the NGO fraudsters pocket.

So, the practice of controlling NGOs that are financed from abroad is widely used in different countries all over the world.

It is so significant that some of the countries even take radical measures such as banning them at legislative level.

Zimbabwe has been different and too tolerant of some nonsensical NGOs. Well, Zimbabwe is an interesting country! There is a multifarious array of NGOs that religiously claim to represent us in our broad totality.

This villager is biting the bullet here and will not apologise.

In all the cases, these NGOs in Zimbabwe are funded from abroad by countries and individuals with their sinister motives and, unfortunately being in Africa, the majority of NGOs are funded by former colonial masters or individuals and institutions that have a direct link with the colonial master or colonial thinking and promotion of white supremacy.

Their story is not a Zimbabwean story, but a European narrative or an American, a story that sees things through Western European eyes, never a village perspective.

The European narrative is dangled as a carrot to our gullible people until they go for it hook, line and sinker, then regurgitate the story, again and again, even against themselves.

Right now our people have forfeited their right to benefit from teeming wildlife, because NGOs have campaigned against it.

The Convention of Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is the major culprit.

Their homes, their crop fields, their gardens and even people have lost limp and life from wildlife attacks.

These NGOs are also in mining, in investment and deep into politics.

They are all over.

For instance, when Cecil the Lion was killed in Hwange, we saw outsiders mourning more than the bereaved. It was a European story, the villagers whose cattle were killed systematically by Cecil for more than a decade were forgotten.

The money raised by Cecil's death was given to the NGO community and not the villagers who endured long exposure to Cecil's deadly canines, who lost their livestock and suffered discomfort.

So who benefited?

Lazarous Matsapo is a Zimbabwean researcher based in Pretoria South Africa.