Harare, (New Ziana) – Legal think tank Veritas has expressed fears that President Emmerson Mnangagwa might not assent to the Private Voluntary Organizations (PVO) Amendment Bill due to a technicality. The Bill, which has faced stiff resistance from the civic society, is being prepared for the President’s signature and subsequent publication in the Government Gazette as an Act after being passed by the Senate on October 17 this year without amendment. In a bulletin to stakeholders, Veritas said the President cannot assent to the Bill because Parliament passed two different versions.
“In Zimbabwe Parliament consists of two Houses, the National Assembly and the Senate, and Bills must be passed by both Houses before they can be signed by the President and come into force as Acts of Parliament,” it said. Veritas states that there are two different versions of the PVO Amendment Bill with one published in the Gazette on March 1 as HB 2, 2024 and presented in the National Assembly on March 7.
During its passage through the National Assembly, the Bill was amended extensively in the Committee stage in July and September. The Parliamentary Legal Committee passed the amendments and the Bill which received its final reading in the National Assembly on September 24, after which a consolidated version of the Bill was then prepared. This version of the Bill was numbered HB 2A, 2024 and is the version that the Senate considered and passed on October 17.
Veritas said the consolidated version of the Bill, HB 2A, 2024, did not incorporate all the amendments made by the National Assembly, resulting in serious discrepancies between the Bill as passed by the National Assembly and the version passed by the Senate. The legal think tank said the titles of the two Bills are different. The National Assembly version inserts a preamble into the PVO Act which is missing from the Senate version. The National Assembly version retains the PVO board with a changed membership and gives it the function of approving the registration of PVOs.
The Senate version, on the other hand, abolishes the board and confers all the board’s functions on the Registrar of PVOs. The Senate version has a long part dealing with annual PVO forums but the Assembly version omits this part with the amendments made by the two versions to section 6 of the Act (which deals with the registration of PVOs) being different.
The Assembly version makes provision for pre-existing PVOs (which it calls “pre-existing charitable entities”) while the Senate version does not. The Senate version contains a provision allowing certain PVOs to continue operating before applying for registration but is omitted from the Assembly version. The Assembly version contains an amendment clarifying and restricting a prohibition against PVOs acting in a politically partisan manner which the Senate version omits.
“The President certainly cannot sign HB 2A, 2024 – the Senate version of the Bill – because it does not represent what the National Assembly passed. Likewise he could not sign a version of HB 2, 2024 (the original Bill) if it were altered to incorporate all the Assembly’s amendments, because those amendments were not passed by the Senate.”
The legal think tank said all the President can do is return the Bill to Parliament in terms of the Constitution to be reconsidered. The National Assembly could then resolve to pass the Bill again with all or some of the amendments made in July and September. Alternatively, the Minister could withdraw the Bill and direct the compilation of a completely new one because even with the Assembly’s amendments, the Bill is badly drafted and ill conceived. It is also unconstitutional because it represents an unwarranted invasion of the right to freedom of association guaranteed by section 58 of the Constitution and the public hearings on the Bill were cancelled or aborted as a result of disorder or threatened disorder, said Veritas.
The Assembly added provisions to the Bill in its Committee Stage which have nothing to do with PVOs that include the alteration of the standard scale of fines in the Criminal Law Code and change the composition of the NSSA board, provisions which were not considered by the relevant portfolio committee while the public views were not sought.
Veritas said scrapping the Bill would give the government an opportunity to reconsider the whole question of regulating PVOs, and allow it time to present Parliament with a new Bill, properly drafted and complying with the Constitution.