Examine the roles played by civil society organizations in promoting state accountability in Zimbabwe.

Substintiate your answer with examples.

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have played a major role in promoting state accountability in
Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. The role of civil society according to Edwards (2015: 15) is to fill
in the spaces in a healthy democracy and not to substitute for government. Civil society is perhaps one of
the most seductive terms in the practice of democracy promotion and promoting accountability
(Masunungure 2014). They have done so through various means such as lobbying, protesting, and
providing recommentations to the government. They have been vocal in their fight against corruption,
oppression, reppression, human rights abuse, and violence orchestrated by the state. The CSOs in
Zimbabwe have been the major advocates for democracy, human rights, good governance and
transparency which are important facets in promoting accountability of the state. However, other CSOs in
Zimbabwe have failed to play their role of checks and balances because they are a state creation that it
uses to nuetralize other strong CSOs or were coopted. Others are being accused undemocratic in both
structures and operations whereas others act as bootlickers to gain state support. CSOs also face problems
such as lack of resources and police brutality which implicates their role in promoting state accountability
negatively. Therefore, this essay is of the view that CSO play a vital role in promoting state accountability
in Zimbabwe although they also face some problems along the way.

The concept of civil society originated with the writings of Hegel, Gramsci and Marx. The definition of
CSOs is contested, porous and subjective. According to Makumbe (1998: 305), "there are probably as
many definitions of the concept of civil society as there are authorities on the subject". Civil society is a
highly contentious concept with a variety of connotations (Moyo 1992). Thus, ‘civil society’ is a term that
suffers from ‘definitional inexactitude'. Civil society can be defined as 'an aggregate of institutions whose
members are engaged primarily in a complex of non-state activities-economic and cultural production,
voluntary associations, and household life and who in this way preserve and transform their identity by
exercising all sorts of pressures or controls upon state institution. Ohlson and Soderberg (2003) argue that
civil is an intermediate associational realm between the state and family populated by organizations which
are separated from the state, enjoy autonomy in relation to the state and are formed voluntarily by
members of the society to protect and extend their interests or values. From the above definitions CSOs
are independent and autonomous actors that brings a link between the state and the people. That is where
their role of state accountability check comes into play. Therefore, this essay is going to further elaborate
the roles of CSOs in promoting state accountability below.

Firstly, CSOs play a critical role in promoting state accountability in Zimbabwe through exposing
corruption done by government officials. According tpo Hodzi (1998), corruption is widely defined as the
abuse of public power for private or sectorial gain. The former head of the Zimbabwean Executive Robert
Mugabe arrogated to himself immense executive judicial and legislative powers and is accountable to no
institution. Mugabe proved right Lord Acton's adage that claims that "power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely". The Willowvale Scandal is one of the earliest corruption case that the civil society
protested against demanding accountability and transparency on the culprits who used their positions,
authority and power to cheaply buy scarce motor vehicles from a vehicle assembly plant, known as
Willowvale Mazda Motors Industry and sold the same cars to third parties at a profit. This resulted in
Robert Mugabe setting up a commission to investigate the allegation and many Ministers were named and
shamed which resulted in Nyagumbo committing suicide (ACT-SA 2012). Transparent International-
Zimbabwe is another anti-corruption CSO which has been working with Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption
Commission in exposing corrupt politicians and putting them to justice. Other corruption cases that the
CSOs in Zimbabwe have exposed and demands accountability include the diamond scandal, the USD 15
Billion scandal, Kondozi Estate Looting, ZISCO Steel scandal, NOCZIM Scandal, and VIP housing
scandal among many others. They have also urged the government to develop and endorse a zero
tolerance policy on corruption in Zimbabwe, transparent investigations of all corruption cases and
punishments of culprits. This has therefore seen the government in Zimbabwe through the 2013
constitution setting up an anti corruption commission which seeks to investigate any person involved in
corruption hence, the CSOs have played a major role in promoting accountability in Zimbabwe.

The role played by CSOs in the constitution making of Zimbabwe shows their zeal for state
accountability. A constitution is vital for the running of state affairs and separation of powers. In
Zimbabwe, before the inception of the 2013 constitution all the legislative, executive and judiciary
powers were centralized in the office of the President which means that the rule of law was undermined
hence, state accountability was implicated. The organizations saw the best alternative to this as
constitutional change aiming to limit the presidential powers (Melber 2005) that were unchallengeable
through legislations such as Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act were constitutional but,
repressive (Sibanda 2002). This saw the ZCTU taking leadership of the campaign for a new constitution
by the civil society coalition called the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) (Masunungure 2014,
Moyo and Yeros 2006, Linington 2001). This forced the government to draft a constitution without
involving the Civil Society Organizations which resulted in the advocacy against the proposed
constitution (Kamidza and Kazingi 2010) which caused the referendum of the government to fail in
February 2000. This was the first electoral defeat of ZANU PF since 1980 (Melber 2005) and first victory
of the NCA (Sibanda 2002). This was one of the greatest fights against unaccountability by the state
officials although it was countered by the two draconian legislations; POSA and AIPPA. Their fight
yielded results a decade later when the GNU agreed on the amendment of the constitution which
happened in 2013. Hence, CSOs have played a role in denying unaccountable kind of leadership through
advocacy for constitutionalism in Zimbabwe.

CSOs have played a role of promoting state accountability by being involved in electoral processes. Many
CSOs have been involved in the electoral processes in Zimbabwe as observers, or voter educators among
other roles. They have also been advocates for a free, transparent, fair and credible. Most CSOs such as
Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network came into light in the late 1990s after seeing the electoral malaises
in Zimbabwe (Masunungure 2014). An election is believed to be a process that is done to elect a leader
that is deemed to be accountable to the needs of the people and punish the leader that is selfish (Janda
1995) that is why CSOs saw it important to get involved in the electoral processes. The have tried to
improve the freeness, fairness and crediility of elections by voter registration and education, tracking
press freedom and election observation (Nyoni 2017). Thus, by doing so the state or any other player in
the election can be held accountable for causing malaises in elections. For example the allegations that
2000 and 2008 elections were rigged and full of violence instigated by ZANU PF were put across by the
CSOs and this led to the nullification of the later election by the AU and subsequently improved the
election process in Zimbabwe since. Therefore, the role of CSOs in neccessitating democratic elections
promotes accountability in Zimbabwe.

Advocacy for civil reforms such as human rights is another role played by CSOs for promotion of state
accountability. According to Moyo (2008), the particular role of strong civil society is to ensure that the
government is held accountable for its actions, through fundamental civil reforms other than simply
holding elections. Masunungure (2014) identifies civil rights organizations in Zimbabwe as third
generation CSOs which were formed during and after the ESAP decade as a reaction to the repressions
that were caused by the unchecked and unbalanced regime. These included Zimrigths, MPOI, ZHLR,
ZESN, CiZ and ZINASU among others. The growing inability of the government to provide social
services, the increasing corruption in the government coupled with rising repression, the failure and social
costs of economic reform initiated a wave of NGO start-ups the majority of them pursuing a political
agendas, forced the established interest groups into politics and confrontation with the government. These
CSOs seeked tom investigate the human rights abuses by the state and also to represent political prisoners
in courts. The civil society also contributed to the creation of the commission of enquiry after the
shootings of several civilians in Zimbabwe after the election. This shows that the state tries to depict a
good picture to CSOs because it knows that it is being watched. Thus, the contributions of the CSOs in
civil reforms have helped much in the promotion of state accountability to its violations of human rights.
However, CSOs in Zimbabwe have done little much in trying to hold the Zimbabwean state accountable
because they are not independent. Some of the CSOs in Zimbabwe are a creation of the ruling party
hence, they tend to be biased towards questioning the accountability of state actions. These were labelled
as underdeveloped civil society organizations (Moyo 1992) or uncivil society (Chirimambsowa and
Chimedza 2013). Masunungure (2014) argues that ZANU PF has created its own civil society community
standing in opposition to those agitating for democracy and human rights. They are formed as rivals and
counterweights to existing CSOs deemed to be anti-regime/pro-opposition. Thus play a role of spoiler,
undermining the credibility and effectiveness of mainstream civics. For example, ZFTU was created to
counter ZCTU which the government accused of abandoning workers and having a political agenda after
it organised crippling strikes and stayaways in 1997 and 1998.(ibid.). Besides that the government created
ZICOSU to counter ZINASU in tertiary education, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Justice against ZHLR and
ZFNGO to counter NANGO among others, T