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Regional. ZIMCODD statement on the assumption of duty of Paul Wolfowitz as the President of the World Bank Group
(2005)
Author: ZIMCODD
URL: http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/cact/050601zimcodd.asp?sector=ECON&range_start=1
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Extract from: Reflections On NGOs In Tanzania: What We Are, What We Are Not And What We Ought To Be?
Issa Shivji
(2003)
We do not get many opportunities when we can sit back and reflect on ourselves as activists from civil society. Reflecting on who we are, what are we doing and where we are going does not require any justification. In this day and age of imperial hegemony transmitted to the peoples of the world through both state and non-state agencies, it is all the more important that we create opportunities and consciously ask ourselves one fundamental question: Are we serving the best interests of our working people? Are we contributing to the great cause of humanity, the cause of emancipation from oppression, exploitation and deprivation? Or are we engaged, consciously or unconsciously, in playing to the tune set by others? It is in the spirit of self-criticism, reflection and soul-searching that I want to offer a few thoughts which I hope we can discuss honestly.
If there is one thing common among all pundits of the status quo, and all dominating classes and hegemonic powers, it is that their existing world is the only realistic world and no alternative world is possible. Yet, it is struggling for an alternative world, a better world, which has changed the past and will continue to change the present for a better future. We, the activists, together with the working people, must continue to fight for a better world. An alternative world is possible.
NGOs, as they developed in the West, were essentially pressure groups to keep those in power, the state and the government, on their toes. In our case, as the donors became disenchanted with states, they took fancy to NGOs, thus undermining the state and its institutions while at the same time placating their own constituencies back at home who demanded civil society
involvement. Participation and consultation is supposedly part of the so-called "good governance"; insisted upon by donors. It provides the imperial countries to legitimize the neo-liberal policies of hegemonic Western powers and the IFIs (International Financial Institutions) in our countries.
NGOs are cast in the role of "partners", partners of the state and partners of the erstwhile donor-community, partners in development and partners in good governance. We get involved in the so-called policy-dialogues in which the triad - NGOs, the government and donor representatives - participates.
We attend workshops as stakeholders. Donors, who fund policy-making, and their consultants who make policies, seek us out for consultation. All this
goes under the name of people's participation and involvement, or what is called, "good governance". What is the implication of this type of
participation on democratic governance in our countries?
First, policy-making and doing it in the interest of its people is precisely one of the core functions and responsibility of a government. It is not the
function of the donors. Donor driven policy-making only shows how much our states and people have lost their right to self-determination under the post-cold war imperialist domination, euphemistically called globalization. By participating in this process, NGOs lend legitimacy to this domination. In fact the NGOs ought to be playing an exactly opposite role. NGOs cannot possibly be fighting in the interest of the people if they are not in a position to expose and oppose imperial domination. The right to
self-determination is our basic right as a people, as a nation and as a country. It is the right for which our independence fighters laid down their
lives and now we seem to be legitimizing the process of losing it.
Secondly, by pretending to be partners in policy-making, NGOs let the government off the hook as the government abdicates its primary responsibility. The role of NGOs ought to be that of a watchdog, critiquing
the short-comings in government policies and their implementation.
Thirdly, NGOs simply cannot substitute themselves for the people. They are neither the elected representatives of the people nor mandated to represent them. People's participation in the institutions of the state is their democratic right and ought to be done on a continuous basis through
structuring of appropriate legal, institutional and social framework.
As pressure and advocacy groups, our prime duty is to pressurize the powers-that-be to create conditions for enabling the participation of the people themselves in the institutions of policy-making. This means our role
should be to struggle for the expansion of space for the people and people's organizations in the representative institutions of the state such as
parliament, local government councils, village and neighborhood bodies, etc.
The process of reforming and reconstituting the state in a democratic direction is the only way to ensure genuine people's participation to deter
abuse of state power. This is a continuous process of struggle, not some one-off, ad hoc process of stakeholder workshops and policy-dialogues.
If the struggle for democratic reform is conceived thus, then the very strategy of NGOs would differ. Protracted public debates instead of stakeholders' conferences; development of alternative ways of doing things,
instead of providing so-called inputs into consultants' drafts of policies, etc. Demonstrations, protest marches and teach-ins in streets and community
centres to expose serious abuses of power and bad polices instead of the so-called policy dialogues in five-star hotels. Democratic governance is an
arena of contestation of power, not some moral dialogue or crusade for goodness against evil, as the meaningless term "good governance" implies.
You cannot dialogue with power!
In short, I am urging that we need to re-examine our conceptualization and practices of these new and fancy roles we are being given, that is, that of
partners and stakeholders. We cannot possibly be partners of, and hold a stake in, the system which oppresses and dehumanizes the large majority of
people.
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