The Zimbabwean government has published tight new regulations for the registration of NGOs after a Cabinet minister said they had been deregistered, reports said on Saturday.
Some NGOs have been at loggerheads with the government over their perceived support for the opposition.
A report in the state-controlled Herald said the government on Friday published the code of procedure for the registration and operation of NGOs.
This follows concern by the government that some organisations were flouting the regulations before operating in the country, the paper added.
Last week, Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu provoked a storm of protest when he said the government was cancelling the registration certificates of all NGOs in the country. There had been hopes the government would not follow the minister’s threat through.
There are more than 1 000 NGOs registered in Zimbabwe. Most are grouped under the National Association of NGOs (Nango).
State television said last week the deregistration exercise was intended to sift out what it claimed were agents of imperialism from genuine organisations working to uplift the well-being of the poor.
Under the regulations announced on Friday, all international aid groups working in Zimbabwe will need an agreement signed between them and the Zimbabwean government. They will also require a letter of clearance from Interpol, the international police organisation, the Herald said.
Applications are to be made to the registrar of private voluntary organisations (PVOs) in Zimbabwe’s Labour and Social Welfare Ministry, it added.
The registrar, in consultation with the PVO board, may cancel the registration certificate and deregister any organisation that fails to comply with its conditions of registration, the paper quoted the new regulations as saying.
Unsuccessful applicants are allowed to appeal to the labour and social welfare minister.
Farmers evicted
Meanwhile, more than 220 of Zimbabwe’s remaining white farmers — nearly half of those still on their land — have been given until September to get off their properties, reports said on Saturday.
The government has also compensated 800 out of more than 4 000 white farmers who have already lost their land under the controversial land-reform programme, a junior government minister was quoted as saying in the Herald.
A total of 226 white farmers were given eviction notices, which expire before the end of September, the Herald reported Flora Buka, the minister of state for special affairs responsible for land resettlement, as saying.
”There is room for negotiation when we pay compensation, and farmers are taking up what we are offering,” she said.
White farmers’ groups say some of their members have accepted compensation out of financial desperation. They say the sums paid — which are to compensate only for fixed assets on the farms such as dams, houses and sheds — are a fraction of their true value.
Compensation is also paid in Zimbabwe dollars, which are rapidly losing value in the country’s hyper-inflationary environment.
Zimbabwe’s central bank governor this week announced that the country’s rate of annual inflation, already the highest in the world, had hit 2 200% in March.
Critics blame the seven-year-old land reform programme for slashing agricultural production and precipitating Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown. But the government blames drought and what it terms economic sanctions by some Western powers. — Sapa-dpa