Zimbabwe needs to press on with the PVO Amendment Bill
WHEN visitors dictate relish, the head of the house should cough to assert his authority. In Africa, courtesy is a human right, everyone deserves to be granted respect in the highest possible form, especially when they are in their own home.
KiSwahili has a proverb, “Mgeni siku mbili; siku ya tatu mpe jembe”. It translates to “treat your guest, as a guest for two days and on the third day give them a hoe.
Put simply, when a visitor stays for long they have to abide by the laws of the house or, in this case, a country.
“Good news for #Zimbabwe: congratulations on exiting @FATFNews financial grey list. More work ahead, but also great prospects for improved banking, trade and investment opportunities. Hope to see PVO Amendment Bill dropped or amended accordingly.”
This March 7, 2022 tweet by Ms Melanie Robinson, the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, was designed to sound very innocent and ordinary, yet it is very deep, nuanced and pregnant with political messaging.
Diplomats don’t just communicate. Let’s dissect the statement for a better understanding of the hidden message.
Ms Robinson makes mention of two distinct processes and entities, the FATF and the PVO Bill.
These two are not related in any way, but here they are being mentioned in the same sentence by a high-ranking diplomat of a very powerful, vested former colonial master.
To a non-critical mind, the mention of the removal of Zimbabwe from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list should be a reason to celebrate.
Again to the uninitiated, removal from the FATF grey list is supposed to be a cause of celebrations, indebtedness and reciprocity by the government of Zimbabwe to the extent of compromising on the proposed PVO Bill.
But let’s try to unravel the relationship between the Removal of Zimbabwe from the FATF grey list and the PVO Bill.
Historical background Zimbabwe was put on Western economic sanctions in 2002, 20 years ago for reasons that primarily include the country’s participation in Operation Sovereign Legitimacy (OSLEG) in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) rebel insurgency in 1998, and the 2000 land reform programme.
Western-sponsored rebels in the DRC were defeated as a result of Zimbabwe’s participation then.
Yet one of the lingering concerns of the Western powers is that Zimbabwe has largely withstood consequential economic sanctions and has seemingly become emboldened and continues to weather the storm.
The country has been largely immune to these economic measures.
The Western powers as led by the USA have along the way been fine tuning their economic sanctions enforcement strategies, along the way designing a number of tools to scupper Zimbabwe’s sanctions busting mechanisms.
For the sake of this thesis the writer will focus on the FATF grey listing of the country as one of the enforcement tools.
History of the FATF
The FATF is a 1987 creation of the Group of 7 most industrialised nations (G7) which initially had nothing to do with Zimbabwe.
It was created to combat money laundering activities among those countries. But of course before anybody knew it, its mandate was extended to that of policing the world’s financial markets including Zimbabwe’s.
It was a tool to monitor financial transactions into and out of a country to detect and combat illicit financial flows.
It then became a convenient tool to snoop into Zimbabwe’s economic financing mechanisms which enabled the country to prevail over Western economic sanctions for this long.
The FATF was then granted similar powers to those of the IMF which supervises and scrutinises world financial systems through a targeted Central Bank.
So what is the story with the FATF that makes it a condition for abandonment or Amendment of the PVO Bill? Lets take a peek into the PVO Bill. I have already done an analysis of why Zimbabwe really needs the PVO Bill.
Background in summary The Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Bill, is to date the biggest threat to US Imperial regime change agenda in Zimbabwe outside the land reform. It is one of the reasons why the US Embassy in Zimbabwe went into overdrive to justify extension of sanctions in March 2022.
When they say “Zimbabwe poses an extraordinary threat to US Foreign policy” they refer to such instruments and processes as the PVO Bill and the land reform programme.
Let me explain.
It is poignant to point out that out of more than 3000 PVOs/NGOs operational in Zimbabwe, close to 90 percent of them are USAID funded.
US International Aid Agency (USAID) is a US Foreign policy extension tool, operated by the CIA, under the tutelage of one Samantha Power, who’s mandate is to extend US influence worldwide through the use of soft power.
The USAID is thus involved in multiple regime change programmes in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the world.
For avoidance of doubt, USAID is administered under the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It is
thus administered at the US Embassy’s Westgate Compound.
Perhaps this will answer many questions on why the PVO Bill is such a thorn in the flesh to Western embassies in Zimbabwe.
The United States has used a multitude of NGOs as financing conduits for clandestine operations in Zimbabwe that include training of anti-government activists, funding of opposition parties and financing of civil unrest.
Through their illegal activities of funding opposition parties, the US has consistently used NGOs to circumvent the Political Parties Finance Act which prohibits foreign funding of political parties in Zimbabwe.
Thus the relationship between the US Embassy, CCC and its appendages within teachers unions (ARTUZ), Law Society, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition just to mention but a few, is empirical.
Here is the nexus and the genesis of conflict with the US and its Western allies on the PVO Bill.
One of the requirements and conditions for registration and licensing of PVOs under the proposed Bill is that all NGOs must subject themselves to financial scrutiny, that is to say that the flow of finances into the country’s Civic Society space will be monitored, while audits will be mandatory to see if money was used for purposes that a PVO was registered and licensed.
Of course the Zimbabwean Government is justified in its worries over an influx of financial inflows into the country.
Provisions of the PVO Bill are in direct conformity with dictates of the FATF, which is an anti-money laundering mechanism which is meant to prevent illicit financial inflows and financing of terrorism.
Now on the significance of lifting of FATF grey listing and its timing.
The FATF can be best described as the proverbial big snack that accidentally bites its own tail.
While the FATF had become a convenient tool to curtail Zimbabwe’s financial survival under sanctions, it has become their biggest enemy as its provisions are now being exploited against the Western regime change activities.
The NGO sector is the lifeblood of the US covert and overt operations in Zimbabwe, so it must never be disturbed, at least according to the West.
Zimbabwe has been conveniently removed from the grey list as appeasement or as a carrot to the Government of Zimbabwe because they discovered that their Anti-Money laundering laws were now being used to justify the PVO Bill which will become the biggest stumbling block to regime change overtures.
So here we are, Zimbabwe’s convenient removal from the FAFT grey list is a tip-toe attempt to blindfold Zimbabwe into abandoning the Bill. Clever they thought they are. Removing the country from the grey list does not take away the threat of terrorism; neither does it legitimise illicit financial flows into the country, nor does It take away the role of the Political Parties Financing Act.
Consequently, the Western embassies are at a stage where they are insidiously trying to trade horses with Zimbabwe using the carrot and stick approach.
This they are doing using a two pronged approach, one which is to persuade the country to drop the Bill in a way as reciprocity to removal from the financial grey list, while on the other hand they use threats of more sanctions if the Bill is not dropped or watered down.
But why should the Bill be adopted anyway? The Bill should be adopted precisely because it is the country’s best foot forward in combating illicit financial inflows and potential financing of terrorism. It is, therefore, the best bargaining tool against Western aggression, sanctions and regime change pressures.
The PVO Bill is what Zimbabwe needs, especially going into 2023 during which funds will most likely be flowing to incite violence, prop anti-government activists or even financing of terrorist activities within the borders.
In 2023, they are going for broke as they have earmarked the year as the year in which Zanu PF must be removed by all means possible, including violence.
Those activities will be financed through PVOs in just the same way the West is smuggling foreign mercenaries in Ukraine disguised as volunteers.
Ambassador Robinson, in that tweet, is communicating a serious political message which not many people have been able to discern.
She is definitely not speaking for herself but for the entire Western block that maintains sanctions on Zimbabwe, yet remaining the biggest donor nations.
◆ Full story on www.herald.co.zw