5. Civic organisations that deal with elections have always sought to complement government efforts in managing elections. Civic society used to be monitors since 1995 under the Electoral Supervisory Commission. Without the support from organizations like churches and other groups like ZESN no doubt, the authorities would have found it very difficult to make adequate preparations in terms of observers as well as deploying them to various polling centers. Civic education also being done by NGOs supplementing the work done by the Electoral Supervisory Commission. On record ZESN contributed its bibs and T-shirts used as identification purposes to the Electoral Supervisory Commission in 2000 and 2002 and paid for some observers allowances. 6. Since 2000, the country’s economic plight has been on the downslide, and on several occasions, NGOs have supplemented government’s efforts in service delivery. 7. It would be grossly unfair to stakeholders, including our members to abandon ship at a time when our Electoral Reform Project, which is of national concern is yet to be completed. Governments also announced need for electoral reforms and signed the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. ZESN’s work has been in line with current developments. The timing of the NGO Bill defeats the good intentions and developments set out by the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. We therefore ask the government and Parliament to take these issues into consideration before coming up with the final legislation. PROPOSAL 1 We cannot accept the concept of the banning of foreign funding to NGOs working in the governance field according to constitutional, regional and international Conventions. Whilst it appears that the real intention is to ban foreign funding for political parties activities using NGOs as conduits, the government should state its intentions specifically without banning funding for all organisations working in the governance field. 10