NGO-zation of the struggle in Zimbabwe, a case of a deferred destiny
NGO-ization (or 'ngoisation') refers to the professionalization, bureaucratization, and institutionalization of social movements as they adopt the form of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It led to NGOs' depoliticizing discourses and practices of the struggle. The term has been introduced in the context of West European women's movements, but since the late 1990s it has been employed to assess the role of organized civil society on a global scale. It was also used by Indian writer Arundhati Roy, who speaks about the “NGO-ization of resistance,” and more generally, about the NGO-ization of politics.
As Arundhati Roy will put “NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. “A hazard that the struggle for democracy and good governance in Zimbabwe has been facing NGO-ization of the struggle. Donor funding of social movements, often through the funding of civil society organizations (CSOs) and NGOs, has co-opted and diluted the struggle and led to the defection of activists. This article seeks to illuminate how donors in a bid to promote democracy and governance in Zimbabwe has derailed the same struggle.
The effects of the NGO-zation of the struggle in Zimbabwe
Those who lack the financial means to organize for social change eventually turns to elite funders, yet in doing so risk having their goals coopted. Integrating donors requires that community organizers defer to donors' agenda and objectives. Many foreign-funded, resource- rich movements in developing countries have been unable to produce the massive mobilization found in other successful social movements with access to fewer resources. This is much so because most of these big non-governmental organization’s work is mostly in the boardroom than in the field. As they try to satisfy donor requirements.
Institutionalization and bureaucratization of the struggle
In most cases donors have co-opted and diluted the struggle. This has occurred primarily through donor pressures to institutionalize movements in the form of professionalized NGOs and CSOs. In order for social movements to meet the required criteria to get funding. While it is not bad for social movements to have a structure in order to have a clear operational command and accounting authority. Over institutionalization often leads to creation of rigid systems that hinders the fluidity of social movement.
At the heart of success of many social movements in Zimbabwe has been their nature which has allowed them to be fluid, ability to make and implement decisions quickly compared to institutionalized non-governmental organizations or civil society organizations whose decisions making and execution timeframe is often long.
They spend much of the time trying to satisfy internal bureaucracy. This in turn affects the impact that these formalized organizations tend to make. Formal organizations tend to have fewer field activities than social movements. In Zimbabwe because of the scramble for resources most social movements have been forced to institutionalized and those who have not ended up closing. This has derailed the struggle for democracy and governance in Zimbabwe as most organizations have now migrated into institutions which spend much of their time in the office than in the field.
The scramble for funding
There is overreliance of donors by “institutionalized civil society organizations,” which has resulted in more time and energy being dedicated to writing proposals to secure funding instead of developing a coherent strategy for the movement or engaging with constituent communities. Institutionalized organizations spend much of their time writing concepts notes soliciting for funding. The pre-occupation of most civil society organizations is securing funding than implementing programs in the field.
As the focus is turned away from the field and invested into chasing funds field programming is lost. This reduces impact of these organizations. In Zimbabwe most civil society organizations spend time applying for grants, fulfilling application processes which are a bit complex. The time spent during the back and forth in the processes of grant application is normal longer than the time for the implementation of the grant. This has hugely affected the struggle for democracy and governance in Zimbabwe.
Increase in administration costs
As organizations institutionalize there is a growing need of money to cater for salaries of employees, rentals and many utilities. This leads to increased demand for more funding that will cater for this new demand leading to more funds being diverted from the field and channeled towards administration. Most civil society organizations in Zimbabwe now spend more on administration than field programming as many of them have a huge network of workers on high perks, expensive rentals and utilities.
Unlike social movements which have a huge network of grassroots volunteers who are not on salaries, formal organizations do not have stronger grassroots presents and the cost of doing programs are often high. Formal organizations require two times the amount of money needed by social movements to conduct a program with limited impact as compared to social movement. This has affected the struggle for democracy and good governance in Zimbabwe.
Complex report writing
Donors often has complex reporting templates that consumes time for most organizations. The reporting structure of donors consumes much of the time from an already limited implementing schedule. Donors have shown over and over again that they are more concerned with written reports than the impact in the field. Most organizations in Zimbabwe are now investing in report writers than investing in field programs.
Social movement are more into field impact as they do not necessarily have the burden of writing reports. Social movements are accountable to the people in what is called “downward accountability” whereas formal organizations are accountable to the donors. This system makes it easier for organizations to misrepresent facts and overstate their impacts. This have negatively derailed the struggle for democracy and governance in Zimbabwe.
Over simplification of social problems
Donors have a propensity to oversimplify, seeking to make sense of a complex world in ways that are compatible with their existing assumptions or ideological biases, or that can be used to justify donor activism. So they tend to cherry pick research findings, building programmes on flimsy evidence (for example, the proliferation of demand-side “voice and accountability” initiatives); seizing on important findings and manipulating them to fit their own purposes (for example turning the crucial insight about local “ownership” of development objectives into the Paris Declaration concept of partnership that presupposes a commonality of interests between donors and recipient governments); and indulging in wishful thinking (for example, that enhancing democracy will support development, or that decentralisation will increase accountability of governments to citizens).
The urge to oversimplify, along with ideological biases, is also reflected in donor vocabulary, including general-purpose labels that blur important distinctions (for example “neo-patrimonialism” as a synonym for corruption or bad governance), and value-laden language that embodies unexamined assumptions (rights, inclusion, transparency, participation, power sharing). The one size fits all approach to proffering of solutions by the donor communities often tends to lead to situations where more time and resources are spent on wrong interventions to much of the problems facing communities. This lead most organizations to be out of touch with what concerns communities or the livid realities of the people.
Creation of elites, corrupt cartels and competition
As more and more companies closes in Zimbabwe, the NGO sector has emerged as the only employment sector outside public service. This has created more gate keepers and corrupt cartels within the civil society community that controls who gets or doesn’t get funding from the donor community. More and more civil society organizations are being formed. There has been a decrease and shortage of funding that has also been a resulted of many global pandemics and conflicts which has caused traditional donors to channel funds to these more global challenges which appears more pressing.
The decrease in funding have also created competition among civic society organizations instead of more collaborations. This has made the struggle to be more fragmented, divided and lacking purpose or discourse that resonates with the people. Legitimate movements are denied funding in favour of more connected organization which do not invest the funds into field programming.
Loss of autonomy
Donors usually come with their own agenda and tend to impose them on social movements which leads to loss of autonomy on the condition of not losing financial assistance. This therefore creates hierarchical systems which also close room for grassroots activists to have a say. This happens mostly in student organizations wherein funding partners dictate the discourse that that the movement can debate on and even impose depoliticization. This catastrophe creates a logic conclusion gap. The operation of social movements as their praxis is mismatch from their rhetoric and philosophy. The people who suffer the most from such are the grassroots as the movement gets coorpted and highly stratified on class and access to resources. This negatively affects the struggle for democracy and good governance in Zimbabwe. As the struggle now about pleasing the donor community not to achieve real and transformative change.
Cognitive dissonance
Social movements principally operate from a leftist perspective and usually follow Leninist- Marxist pursuasions as guiding theory or governing thought. However, in most cases NGO involvement comes through western funding from neoliberal centres.
This therefore allows capitalism to hijack the social struggles of the people and create a huge gap between the ideology and praxis of the movements. In this regard mostly leaders of movements are coorpted into the elite strata and cartels of gate keepers. In trying not to lose funding leaders shift their rhetoric and approach as a way to please the funding partner and ultimately losing autonomy and ideological grounding along the way. The discourse has been lost in the civil society movement. There is clear confusion which derails the struggle for good governance and democracy in Zimbabwe.
Conclusively, donor involvement comes with several funding opportunities for social movements which help advance the struggle for good governance and democratic transformation in Zimbabwe, however we should always be mindful of the potential risk of the impacts which lead to loss of autonomy, dilution and potential cooption by outside interests.
What differentiates social movements from formalized civil society organizations and NGOs is that they are rooted in and driven by “the people.” This collective leadership can take many forms, but it is seen in its accountability to people not boards nor funders. Movements are defined by a shared analysis and agenda in order to take principled, collective, direct action and create targeted strategic pressure. Just as much as they are defined by joint efforts on policy advocacy, community organizing and mobilizing popular support, and narrative shift, movements are phenomena whereas formalized organizations agendas are set by donors making their interventions out of touch with the people.
Whereas donors have played a key role in supporting organizations that push for democracy and good governance in Zimbabwe, they have largely derailed the struggle which they seek to enhance. Donors have created systems which are rigid and less impactful so as to meet their funding requirements. their values are not reflected nor aligned to needs and desires of people. They continue to police organizations to avoid political involvement, in pursuit of “safe operations”. This policing has increased in the face of the private voluntary (PVO) bill.
Aid donors explicitly and implicitly demand that community-based organizations meet their conditions and requirements. In practice, this means professionalized and capital-based organizations are often the only ones that can. By designing, managing, funding, and evaluating faraway, large-scale projects that other people implement, the aid sector remains cut off from the energy that fuels social movements.
Professionalizing movements can too easily weaken their effectiveness and reach. The global development sector at minimum should not damage nor co-opt peoples’ struggles for democracy and good governance around the world. Activists are already marginalized, extracted from, and demotivated by the aid sector’s paper pushing and internal navel gazing. we are at a dangerous precipice that could further damage people’s efforts to determine their futures.
Youngerson Matete is a pro-democracy and Human Rights activist, a student of Political Science. He is the founder of Project Vote 263, a youth-led initiative to foster inclusive participatory democracy in Zimbabwe. He writes in his own capacity. His views doesn't not represents any organisation.
Cell : +263 773 622 044
Email: youngmatete0@gmail.com/ director@projectvote263.org.zw
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