DURING a sojourn at Makerere University in Dar-es-Salaam and Arusha in Tanzania early in the 1990s, a book entitled The Lords of Poverty by Graham Hancock was doing its rounds among the more astute scholars and members of the diplomatic circles, who were my hosts.
In essence, the book described the lavish lifestyle led by the American, British, Belgian, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Scandinavian and Swiss functionaries; all privileged employees of the various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Technical and Humanitarian Aid (TCE) workers in Africa.
In the midst of famine, poverty and diseases; mainly malaria, cholera, HIV as well as AIDS, all led a lavish lifestyle.
This privileged minority boasted five-figure salaries in US dollars, untold expense allowances; lived in huge double-story houses by the Indian Ocean, with servants at their beck-and-call.
At sunset, after a not-so-hard-day-at work, they head off to exclusive yacht clubs and other expensive establishments.
Here, in the haze of alcohol and La Dolce Vita, decisions, deals and funding settlements that would affect countless lives of indigenous Africans, are made or broken by the foreign aid workers; over premium crafted East-African lagers accompanying exotic seafood, washed down with expensive wines.
At the end of their contract, usually three years, they would return to their domiciles in Europe, America or Scandinavia, which are in the main not utopian, with enough material comforts to enable them to buy or build a house and maintain the lifestyle they achieved while in Africa.
Having secured their nest-eggs back home, ‘just in case’, the more ambitious or audacious (who are the majority), will settle in the ‘peaceful and friendly’ African country where they ruled the roost and ‘whitewashed’ their communities and local peers, during their contracts, to continue enjoying the privileged status of a former NGO attaché, taking pleasure of the clement weather in plush upmarket African suburbs or scenic countryside retreats and the beautiful smiles of African hospitality.
That is Africa for the alien NGOs, but not for most of the terrigenous, who are usually left more impoverished than before.
Like a stunning bride-to-be, with natural beautiful surroundings, fairly well developed infrastructure, pleasant weather and sociable people with hunhu/ubuntu Zimbabwe has had its fair share of NGO suitors.
However, have these benevolent suitors taken time to learn our language, customs, needs and minutiae of culture?
In 1997, Jessica Mathews, writing in the Foreign Affairs journal, said: “For all their strengths, NGOs are special interests.
“The best of them often suffer from tunnel vision, judging every public act by how it affects their particular interest.”
Yesterday they came in the guise of missionaries and settlers with Bibles and sjamboks/chamboko in hand.
Today they come as NGOs with Yankee dollars, to re-colonise us once more.
The history of international NGOs dates back to around the late 18th Century; by 1914, there were an estimated 1 083 NGOs in operation. 
They played important roles in the anti-slavery movement and the women’s suffrage movements.
The term NGO was first coined in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations (UN) after the Second World War (1939-1945).
The number of international NGOs that are established, are said to correspond with the general ‘state of the world’; increasing in periods of growth and declining in periods of crisis.
Currently, according to the UN, any type of private organisation that is independent from governmental control is termed a NGO, provided it is a non-profit, non-partisan organisation and not linked to an opposition political party.
While NGOs are autonomous, many NGOs rely heavily, for their funding, on their governments, which is often controversial.
NGOs provide public goods and services that host governments from developing countries are unable to provide to society, usually due to lack of resources.
Taking advantages of these deficiencies, many NGOs use advocacy and public education to affect global affairs and modify behaviour through the use of ideas. Communication is the weapon of choice used by advocacy and public-education to change people’s actions and behaviours.
They strategically construct messages not only to shape behaviour, but also to socially mobilise communities in promoting their social ideas, gender orientation and political, cultural and environmental changes.
I am well informed in the arts, culture and heritage sector, where visual, performing and literary arts funding from NGOs is conditional in that artistes follow prescribed funding templates: “Focusing on poverty reduction, HIV and AIDS prevention and the mitigation of its impacts, especially among women and young people,” to qualify for financial support.
Are artistes expected to be politicians?
Where is the artist’s freedom of choice they expound?
How should a landscape painter depict poverty reduction or HIV and AIDS in a landscape for instance?
Should the visual image of Africa always be one of suffering and poverty, when there is so much beauty to contemplate?
How does a musician ‘mitigate HIV and AIDS impacts on women and children when they have no instruments to play or scholarship to compose the music’?
All the pre-prescribed agendas, forced upon Africans, reinforce the image of Africans deprived of their dignity and reinforce a generational inferiority complex of: Africa the starving, Africa the dammed, Africa the forsaken and Africa always the beggars!
Is this the image, song, dance or literature that the NGOs want our children to inherit?
What about the preservation and history of cultural heritage of their host countries?
Is it not more important for Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular, to know themselves first?
Today, when multi-culturalism has witnessed a transformation from critical enlightenment to politics of control and management, can we still talk about creativity, discourse among equals and the voice of the ‘other’?
Many African countries are all-too-willing to pursue NGOs in what they believe to be a cordial and reciprocal manner.
However, what do African countries benefit from these cosmetic forms of development aid?
In Zimbabwe, various European Union (EU) countries, including the US and Britain, whose mandates are to foster better relations through arts and culture, have pooled their cultural funding together under the auspices of one cultural organisation who dole out funds as benevolent ‘alms givers’.
This arrangement is proving unsustainable for most creative artistes and is creating a dependency cycle for the artistes.
Unfortunately and regrettably, for the serious artiste, the administration of the arts and its funding in Zimbabwe are in the hands of galoots and chancers who have landed a cushy career in a field unfamiliar to them, interested only in self enrichment and not the welfare of the artiste and the growth of culture in Zimbabwe.
How can they sustain their livelihood and adhere to the donor stipulation when most of the time they cannot understand the stipulations?
This situation with funding is evident throughout the sectors of the economy.
In Zimbabwe, NGOs have ensured applications for cultural financing are those that address their mandated objectives regarding the girl-child, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual rights, gender equality, human rights and other Euro-centric foibles.
Are they aware that our culture hunhu/ubuntu is replete with traditional principles that ensure their above-mentioned imposed agendas are traditionally and holistically catered for?
In an age of value-negotiation in the condition of multi-vocal modernity and a non-linear historical view, can we still speak about the future of the African voice when it is controlled by Western capital and agendas?
Is it not colonisation in a different guise?
A rose by any other name is still a rose.
Colonisation in any other form is still colonisation.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, lecturer, musician, art critic, practicing artist and corporate image consultant. He is also a specialist art consultant, post-colonial scholar, Zimbabwean socio-economic analyst and researcher.
For views and comments, email: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com