By Nondumiso Sibanda

A VERY good day to you dear reader.
I trust this week has been treating you well especially after the 2014 Budget announcement.
This week I am wrapping up the second part of the fight for territory. Last week we looked at how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) pretend to just arrive in an area out of a ‘good heart’ with the intention of really looking out for the needy.
Carrying on the torch from last week, I would like to address the in-house fights that are occurring in NGOs in their quests for territory. Every NGO fights for survival.
In essence funding is usually more or less a survival of the fittest scenario.
For most NGOs this means that they have to always prove to the donor that they spearheaded a certain initiative.
This means that if four NGOs have been operating in the same area, virtually doing the same trainings etcetera, there is a battle for who has made the most ‘impact’ and also a battle on who actually initiated the whole project.
You see, donors are usually all about who initiated what and where, and hence the fight for territory can actually turn quite bloody.
I watched on television the other day the launching of the Rural Women’s Assembly in Bindura and what I know is that there are many NGOs right now who are currently claiming to be the ones who spearheaded this assembly because it now has a lot of attention from the media which translates to donors.
These fights unfortunately do not benefit the communities at all, but leave them in a horrendous state because they become confused and end up having factions among themselves.
NGOs really do not care about the impact that their fights have on the communities.
As they say, when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. Communities become the backdrop of these squabbles and at times end up having to seek mediation among themselves because of the troubles that would have been brewed by NGOs.
Why then do communities continue to allow witches into their backyard?
Well in most cases these NGOs are like wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing.
They come into an area which they would have marked and they carry out all the necessary protocols that are needed to ensure that they have complete access.
They will even buy cows and slaughter them especially in the needy areas.
This makes the villager ripe for the taking.
They then welcome them with open arms thinking that a saviour has come to rescue them from their predicaments.
As soon as the NGO has clearance, their true colours will start coming out and that is when dissentions and divisions arise in the community.
Territory is also used especially when it can provide different pictures for a workshop.
For instance, an NGO can work in an area that is very near to their organisation with a view of using that place to make it seem like they are working in several locations.
This they do to save their costs which they will incur during the running of the project.
The ultimate goal being to save as much as they can and then turn to lie to the donor that they are working in remote areas which require them to sleep out of town.
There is clearly a lack of monitoring from both the government and even the donor agencies themselves.
I remember once seeing the same report being handed over to four different donors and the donors having the assumption that the NGO was working in four different areas.
Now the moment another NGO finds out they immediately decide to alert the donor since they want to be the only ones operating in a particular territory.
When this happens, a donor may decide to pull out all their funding because they would have been literally defrauded.
I will continue to hammer on the fact that at the end of the day, after all is said and done, it is the poor community that suffers.
This hence calls for us not to be weary and to be vigilant in our quest for peace and protection of our communities.
This is why I continue calling for a monitoring mechanism for NGOs because every day they get away with murder.
They would have arrived in a very peaceful environment but all they will leave is chaos, completion among villagers and a lot of tension.
How long shall we allow this evil to corrode our very existence in our home country.
Their lack of proper care and attentiveness to the very communities that they claim to be representing is nothing short of disgusting.
We need to emancipate ourselves from this slavery and just chase out all NGOs that are causing conflicts in villages.
Alluta continua comrades, forward with the struggle.