The bastardisation of civil society

Why the struggle against NGOs in poor countries is a struggle not to undermine democracy but to defend it

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | In this column last week, I wrote about the ignorance, recklessness and even subversive work of Uganda’s leading opposition figure, Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). Today I comment on the role of that other section of our society known as Nongovernment Organisations (NGOs). Some local NGOs have also joined forces with Western interests to block EACOP on grounds of environmental, social, and political concerns around “human rights.”

Where do these NGOs derive the mandate to claim to represent the interests of the people of Uganda? To illustrate their hypocrisy and subversion, it is important examine their organic character.

Almost without exception, NGOs, both local and international in Uganda (and Africa generally), are sponsored financially and ideologically by the Western powers led by the United States. These Western powers promote NGOs claiming they are “civil society”. Yet this is a gross misrepresentation of what civil society is, should be and has always been understood to be.

Historically Civil society was an assembly of voluntarily associations away from the family and independent of both the state and the market but mediating the relationship between the two. People came together in a voluntary fashion and around a shared interest. They would form an association to aggregate and articulate their interests and place them on the national political agenda. In short, they were membership- based organisations.

This association would be organised around democratic principles. Members would pay subscription and membership fees. At every end of year, the elected leaders would present a report to their members on what they did to realise the objectives of the organisation and account for the organisation’s funds. If members felt the elected officials were not effective in promoting the interests of the organisation, or had misused the organisation’s money, they could elect them out of office and elect new ones.

Today’s NGO may be formed by local people who approach Western embassies and other institutions for funding. Western institutions already have a set of activities to fund based on their interests, beliefs and fancies. Hence, for an NGO to raise funds, it must tailor its local activities to reflect the interests and fancies of its Western donors, not its local beneficiaries. The local beneficiaries are not members of the NGO. They do not elect the leaders of the NGO and neither do they finance the NGO. They do not choose the policies, programs and actions of the NGO. They cannot hold the NGO and its leadership to account – whether on its policies, officials or how it raises and spends money. Therefore, what they get from the NGO are not rights but charity.

Yet this unrepresentative and unaccountable NGO claims to represent the people. Western donors give it more audience and money than they give to the elected representatives of the people. This is how in regard to EACOP, the voice of NGOs is amplified to be louder than that of Uganda’s consultative assemblies, including our parliament.

The consultations on the environmental and social impacts of EACOP were organised around democratic principles. All affected persons and their representatives at local and national level were consulted in open public fora and their concerns were listened to and addressed. The EACOP law in Uganda was passed by a broad-based multi partisan support of all political parties in our parliament. It was one of those rare occasions when nearly the entire opposition voted with the government on any law.

So how can foreign funded NGOs claim to represent affected persons on EACOP? Clearly, the financing of NGOs by Western powers seeks to undermine local democratic institutions and processes. Yet Western powers claim that they are promoting democracy. This is hypocrisy 101. It is therefore clear that the West intervenes in poor countries using NGOs as 5^th columnists seeking to promote neocolonial control, but using democracy as a catch phrase.

It is no wonder that Western efforts to promote NGOs are meeting serious pushback from the developing world. The Guardian newspaper reported in its August 26^th 2015 issue that between 2012 and 2015, more than 60 countries passed or drafted laws to curtail the activities of NGOs. In the same year, the Carnegie Endowment reported that another 96 countries took steps to inhibit NGOs from operating at full capacity during the same period. Calling it a “virus-like spread of new laws”, it noted that these efforts were designed to limit what these NGOs can do and, in some cases, shut them down altogether. While the West claims these are efforts to roll back democracy, it seems to me they are efforts to roll back neocolonialism and reassert sovereignty, the precondition for democracy.

The concept of democracy is built around the nation-state and its sovereignty. A country can have sovereignty without democracy. But there is no way a country can have democracy without sovereignty. Therefore, the first condition of democracy is the sovereignty of a nation-state and its people. Yet Western intrusions into our polities are blatant efforts to undermine the very sovereignty that underwrites our democracy. If our governments have to take orders from Paris, London, Brussels and Washington, what then is the role of our elected representatives and that of our local institutions that represent our interests?

Secondly, democracy has very little or no application when it comes to international relations. All international institutions through which the West seeks to exercise power over other countries such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, etc. are not organised around democratic principles. Nor are all the institutions that command a lot of power in the international system such as multinational corporations, international NGOs, etc. built on democratic principles.

Within the international system, the U.S. has only about 5% of the global population; and the combined population of all Western nations represents only 15% of the global population. Yet this small fraction of humanity is responsible for running the international system, setting its rules and regulations, its principles and ethics. When western powers talk of some countries violating “international norms” they are talking of norms created by them without much participation of other nations of the world. Then we have to wonder how an undemocratic system like that can be the champion of democracy, dictating to all how they should behave. The point here is simple but fundamental: Western claims to promote democracy in poor countries are hypocritical at best and antidemocratic at the very least.

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