The Zimbabwe Non-Governmental Organisations Bill will force all the estimated 3,000 private voluntary organisations to register with a state commission or be closed, have their staff arrested and their assets seized. Those not already on the Social Welfare Ministry’s voluntary register will be regarded as illegal as soon as the law comes into force.

The Bill also threatens charities that serve as an alternative Civil Service for impoverished Zimbabweans in a society where the state infrastructure is largely in ruins. These organisations bring water supplies, famine relief, seed and farming implements, literacy and support to much of the one third of the population stricken by HIV/Aids. The jobs of up to 20,000 people working for the charities are at risk.

Agencies devoted to what is broadly described as “governance” will be banned from receiving foreign funding. Foreign human rights organisations, including the local office of Amnesty International, will be outlawed. David Coltart, legal director of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said: “It attacks the churches, human rights organisations, trade unions, everything.”

In Zimbabwe, private organisations have managed to keep alive a semblance of democracy and independence. Observers say the face of the country will be changed rapidly when Mr Mugabe signs the Bill into law.

Announcing the Bill in July, he declared that “we cannot allow them (voluntary organisations) to be conduits of foreign interference in our national efforts”. Since then, the state propaganda mill has incessantly denounced the groups as “puppets of imperialist forces seeking to destabilise the country to effect regime change”.

The parliamentary legal committee reported yesterday that the Bill violated the Constitution on 12 counts. Welshman Ncube, the committee’s chairman, described it as “a determined and pervasive attempt to curtail and extinguish the fundamental freedoms of the people of Zimbabwe”. He added: “It does not seek to regulate but to control, to silence, to render ineffective and ultimately shut down non-governmental organisations.”

The same groups had “painstakingly recorded . . . political beatings, intimidation, torture, rape, killings, unlawful arrests and detention, destruction of homes, the suppression of media freedoms”. They had also provided victims with legal advice, counselling and medical care, he said.

There is little doubt that parliamentary elections set for March are the main reason for the extraordinary legislation and the haste in passing it.

“We work in rural areas all over the country, and whether we like it or not we see what is going on,” a Western aid manager said. “They don’t want us to see what they do.”

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