WHEN a development project comes to completion, the key people managing it and all the stakeholders gather together and evaluate what worked well and what did not.

They usually call a workshop like this, ‘Lessons Learnt’.

The stakeholders include rural communities or beneficiaries of that project.

In Buhera, there was one such food security project in Baba Jairosi’s Village three years ago.

Among those who attended the project completion workshop were village headmen, women, youth, and Government agencies from various ministries.

Each person was given a chance to say what worked for them and what did not.

At the end of the workshop, the team, along with Baba Jairosi agreed that overall, they had succeeded in providing sustainable food to the poor.

After the workshop, Baba Jairosi said he went home thinking that the idea of sustainable food in a rural area where the land is very unproductive was not going to be achieved because his land was poor.

It was the same unproductive land allocated to his people during the colonial era.

If he was not in his late 70s, Baba Jairosi and his wife would have moved to the new resettlement areas.

But, as the village headman, he could not leave.

“Ndakambozvibvunza kuti ko madonor acho zvavaenda, tichapihwa nani fertiliser and seeds?” (Who is going to provide the fertilisers and seeds in the future when the donors stop coming?)

Baba Jairosi said the visiting donors were happy because they believed the workshop was carried out smoothly and the lessons learnt discussed and written down.

They had returned back to the city in their 4 WD while the community and Baba Jairosi stayed and continued to practise the new farming methods.

In the world of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the donor and his project workers went back to their desks to write proposals for more funding from the donor, based on lessons learnt from the last project.

Three years later, we ask what happened to the lessons learnt.

The food security programme is gone.

After so many years since the donors began work in Baba Jairosi’s community, there is very little to show other than buildings, some functioning boreholes and none functioning ones.

In January this year, another NGO came to Baba Jairosi’s Village.

They did not know anything about the last NGO because these organisations do not talk to each other.

The lessons learnt from the old donor were not transferable to the new NGO.

So they started development all over again.

More resources were poured in, more workshops, lunches, hotel accommodation, fuel, stationery, per diems and so on.

But, the new NGO was not just talking about food security.

Before the elections, the NGOs sat back in their offices telling each other that the ‘winds of change’ have come to the African continent and to Zimbabwe in particular.

They believed that civil society organisations were ready to “reconstruct the African into a democratic creature with the relevant tools and sensibilities appropriate to the modern democratic structures”.

The NGOs capitalised on their support in the rural areas.

So they came to work on human rights, democracy and good governamence.

These workshops were held in Buhera and other rural areas.

A close friend who works for an NGO (I cannot name him because if I do that, he will definitely lose his 4 WD, good salary and per diems) said before the elections, civil society organisations could not get any funding unless they applied under the window with these words: “Peace Building, Conflict Resolution, Gender and Empowerment, Promotion of Democracy and Human rights.”

Because you cannot just hold workshops with hungry people, it was important to add ‘Food Security’ and water to some of the grant application windows.

The language in naming or addressing the people had also changed to civil society and not poor community beneficiaries.

If you apply for a grant to help the people called civil society, your chances of getting funding to hold workshops and help people to understand democracy and human rights were very high, especially if the community had a high representation of women.

In an article written by David Kaulemu titled, ‘Civil Society as a new paradigm for democratic politics in Zimbabwe’, he quotes Adam B. Seligman, who argues that civil society is an idea that ‘embodies for many an ethical ideal of the social order’.

Kaulemu then goes on to say that this idea “is a realm that recognises, respects and facilitates the growth and fulfillment of individuals, groups, and associations.

“It does not seek to annihilate those individuals, groups, communities and solidarities that do not conform to some arbitrary standard given a priori.

“It is this idea of civil society that could act as a paradigm for democratic politics in Zimbabwe and Africa in general.”

In Zimbabwe, men and women like Baba Jairosi belong to this group called civil society.

Because Baba Jairosi is lumped into this civil society homogenous group, he appears to have no history.

It should be recognised that Baba Jairosi grew up under a very harsh colonial system.

He was incorporated into chibharo, forced labour, to pay dog tax, land tax, bicycle tax, cattle tax and hut tax.

His story of suffering under a racist colonial system is not unusual in Zimbabwe.

If given a chance, Baba Jairosi will tell you stories of cruelty and racism that can make you angry and make you cry.

Baba Jairosi witnessed, first hand, atrocities of the Rhodesian soldiers in his village during the liberation war.

After independence, he could not reconcile himself to peace and reconciliation with the white man.

In fact, there was no white man to talk to about anything.

What Kaulemu and others do not see is that the so-called ‘civil society’ are real people, individuals with a history, aspiration, points of view and intellect.

They know what they want.

They do not need someone from outside, funded by self-interested donors to come here and tell them about human rights and democracy. They are not stupid.

They will attend NGO workshops on anything and eat lunch, take seeds and fertilisers then speak loudly about sustainable development.

This does not mean they will change their views on who they support politically.

Baba Jairosi and his team will stand by President Mugabe because they know where they came from.

They also know what would have happened to empowerment and indigenisation if Roy Bennett and Morgan Tsvangirai had been allowed to take over power in Zimbabwe.

Post election, what the NGOs have not cared to explore in their “Lessons Learnt” workshops is that Baba Jairosi continues to mobilise the same people involved in food security, democracy, human rights and conflict resolutions workshops to attend ZANU PF meetings.

They must ask themselves where they are getting lost.

We have the answers because we know what the people think.

Part Two of this column next week will examine the use of NGO language and its alienation with the real experiences and the history of the people.