Zimbabwe: This Will Clean Up Civic Space – Says Justice Minister As Pvo Amendment Bill Sails Through in Senate

THE Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) bill sailed through in the Senate this Thursday.

The controversial bill was read for the third time after it was reported without amendments.

The bill had been returned to the National Assembly by the Senate a fortnight ago for amendments.

This is the second time the Senate has passed the controversial bill as it awaits President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s approval into law.

In September 2023, President Mnangagwa declined to sign the PVO Amendment Bill into law, sending it back to Parliament for reconsideration.

The Senate passed the bill on February 1, 2023, before Mnangagwa’s disapproval sending it back to Parliament.

Acting Senate President, Mashonaland Central Province Senator Eleven Kambizi, after the PVO bill went through today (Thursday) said “It will clean up a lot of issues that were happening within our charity organisations and it is a historic day.”

Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said, “l want to thank the Hon. Senators for this day that the Lord has made, whereupon our Parliament has passed the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill [H.B. 2A, 2024].”

Before the passing of the PVO Bill, Ziyambi had told the Senate that the Bill before them was a very necessary measure to improve the administration, accountability, and transparency of charities in the country.

“The legal word for charity in our country is Private Voluntary Organisation (PVO), under our law every charity that uses money collected from the public or donated from a foreign government or foreign agencies is required to be registered as a PVO, in terms of the PVO Act which the Bill before you seeks to amend.

“As the government, we are also aware that some so-called charities act in a partisan manner by directing money to favoured political parties or candidates at the expense of other political parties or candidates.

“Partisan assistance using foreign money or money collected from the public under the guise of charity must never be allowed to influence the outcome of national or local elections. In many developed countries, this kind of behaviour is understood to be harmful to the very idea of charity,” said Ziyambi.

Ziyambi said that in the United States, for example, one cannot register any organisation as a non-profit organisation for tax purposes if that organisation campaigns or canvasses for any political candidate or party.

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“It is in this context that this Bill seeks to clean up the space within which PVOs may operate.”

The minister highlighted that sometime now, the government had noticed, that the so-called charities (some) had completely bypassed the Private Voluntary Organisations Act by forming “trusts” sanctioned by the Registrar of Deeds, Companies and Intellectual Property.

However, the Bill met some resistance from different sectors including CSOs.

“When the PVO Amendment Bill was gazetted on November 5, 2021, it attracted widespread national, regional and international condemnation for purporting to address the risk of money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, albeit without adhering to the standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of, among others, using a proportionate risk-based approach to identify, assess and address any money laundering and terrorist financing risks in the non-profit sector, in consultation with CSOs,” part of an Amnesty International statement read then.

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