Opinion / Columnist
Crisis in Zim Coalition says NGOs cannot be non-partisan - no wonder they have been useless!
13 Jul 2015 at 05:19hrs | Views
LOCAL NGOs cannot be expected to be non-partisan in a society that is "patently partisan", a Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition official, Mfundo Mlilo, has said.
"This is a regime that has a clear agenda against its people, a brutal regime that has turned against the very people it claims to represent and we are supposed to fold our hands and watch. It is not going to happen.
"That is why we are calling for the finding of common ground, a convergence of ideas and a call to act against this regime. We should never apologise for this stance," he said.
Being apolitical means, in this case, being able to criticize when something is wrong regardless of who is doing it.
Throughout the GNU many of Zimbabwe's civic society and NGOs cheered and applauded everything MDC said and did include the leaders betraying the nation by failing to implement the democratic reforms. Even now with the benefit of hindsight none of these civic groups have had the courage to criticize MDC for its blatant failure.
Yes Zanu PF is a "brutal regime" with its no-regime-change agenda. But by failing to point out the glaring weaknesses of the MDC leaders all these last 15 years organisations like Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition have not helped end the crisis but made it worse instead.
If there is a lesson that should be learnt from the political blundering of the last GNU it is that it is wrong to define Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis in the simplistic terms of the corrupt and murderous Zanu PF dictatorship alone; the corrupt and incompetent opposition is now an integral part of the problem. After listening to the confused posturing from NGO officials like Mr Mlilo, it is clear Zimbabwe's confused civic society is a part of the problem too!
"This is a regime that has a clear agenda against its people, a brutal regime that has turned against the very people it claims to represent and we are supposed to fold our hands and watch. It is not going to happen.
"That is why we are calling for the finding of common ground, a convergence of ideas and a call to act against this regime. We should never apologise for this stance," he said.
Being apolitical means, in this case, being able to criticize when something is wrong regardless of who is doing it.
Throughout the GNU many of Zimbabwe's civic society and NGOs cheered and applauded everything MDC said and did include the leaders betraying the nation by failing to implement the democratic reforms. Even now with the benefit of hindsight none of these civic groups have had the courage to criticize MDC for its blatant failure.
Yes Zanu PF is a "brutal regime" with its no-regime-change agenda. But by failing to point out the glaring weaknesses of the MDC leaders all these last 15 years organisations like Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition have not helped end the crisis but made it worse instead.
If there is a lesson that should be learnt from the political blundering of the last GNU it is that it is wrong to define Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis in the simplistic terms of the corrupt and murderous Zanu PF dictatorship alone; the corrupt and incompetent opposition is now an integral part of the problem. After listening to the confused posturing from NGO officials like Mr Mlilo, it is clear Zimbabwe's confused civic society is a part of the problem too!
Source - Patrick Guramatunhu
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