Glanis Changachirere
On 11 April, the government of Zimbabwe enacted the 2025 Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Act, granting authorities sweeping powers to suspend or deregister civil society organisations on vaguely defined security and public interest grounds. The new law forms part of the government’s ongoing campaign to restrict civic space and silence dissent. Civil society leaders particularly warn about provisions targeting human rights advocates, transparency watchdogs and accountability campaigners.
What changes does this law introduce?
This law is a political weapon rather than a genuine legal framework to uphold constitutional rights or comply with international standards. It serves primarily to restrict civic space and suppress human rights work, creating numerous challenges for organisations like ours. It was passed through a flawed and opaque process, with inconsistencies in draft bills and violent disruptions of public hearings that silenced public input.
The law’s biggest impact will be on civil society operations because, while ostensibly harmonising the registration and regulation of all CSOs under a single law, it limits organisations’ autonomy. Many of its provisions contradict the constitution and breach Zimbabwe’s regional and international obligations.
For instance, the law empowers the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare to appoint, remove and replace CSOs’ board members and deny or revoke CSOs’ registration without clear appeal mechanisms or published procedures. This violates the right to freedom of association and contravenes the constitutional article that states that every person has the right to ‘administrative conduct that is lawful, prompt, efficient, reasonable, proportionate, impartial and both substantively and procedurally fair’.
The law also imposes unrealistic compliance demands without clear guidelines and criminalises work deemed political, exposing individual staff members to prosecution. Its deliberately vague language means it allows for selective interpretation, creating opportunities for state abuse.
In addition, the law defines CSOs in blanket terms, not accounting for the different types of CSOs in Zimbabwe, and imposes structural and systematic regulations that are not sensitive to the funding and resourcing realities of CSOs. It disproportionately targets civil and political rights work, including on democracy, governance and human rights, as well as efforts to support women’s political participation.