PVO Amendment Act Is Invalid Says Veritas

Legal and Parliamentary watchdog Veritas Zimbabwe has questioned the validity of the recently passed PVO Bill Amendment Act, arguing that it has a lot of discrepencies.

According to Verits, it appears that Act 1 of 2025 does not accurately reflect what the Senate approved.

Below is the Veritas Bill analysis in full:

The Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Act:  Is it valid?

Introduction

The Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill was published in the Gazette as an Act of Parliament (Act 1 of 2025) on the 11th April.  It can be accessed on the Veritas website [link].  To help readers understand it in its context, we have prepared a consolidated version of the PVO Act incorporating the amendments made by the new Act, and this too can be accessed on our website [link].

At the beginning of our consolidation we added a disclaimer saying it was prepared on the assumption that the new Act accurately reflected what had been passed by Parliament.  It is just as well we did so because it seems that the Senate did not pass the same Bill as the National Assembly, and Act 1 of 2025 does not accurately reflect what the Senate approved.

This has happened before, as we shall explain.

History of the Bill

The journey taken by the PVO Amendment Bill to reach the statute book has been long and beset with false starts.  The Bill was originally published at the end of 2021, but although it was eventually passed by the National Assembly and the Senate it lapsed because it was not signed into law by the President before Parliament was dissolved for the 2023 general election.

A fresh version of the Bill was published in March last year, and it was passed by the National Assembly in September after being extensively amended in Committee.  A consolidated version of the Bill was then prepared for the Senate, supposedly incorporating the amendments made by the National Assembly.  Unfortunately, not all the amendments were incorporated so the Senate did not consider them, and as a result the Assembly and the Senate passed different versions of the Bill.  After we pointed this out in Bill Watch 39/2024 [link], the President did not sign the Bill.  Instead, it was recommitted [i.e. returned] to the Senate for the missing amendments to be passed by that House.  The Senate duly reconsidered the Bill on the 12th February this year and, according to its Votes and Proceedings, approved all the recommitted clauses without making any changes to them.

Then, after two months, the Act was published on the 11th April.  It was supposed to reflect the contents of the Bill as passed by both Houses of Parliament, but once again there seem to be discrepancies – this time between the Bill passed by the Senate and the published Act.

Discrepancies Between the Senate Bill and the Act

The Bill that was prepared for Senators, incorporating amendments made by the National Assembly, has not been published in the Gazette and is not available on Parliament’s website, but Veritas has obtained a copy of it.  It can be accessed on the Veritas website [link].  In our discussion of the discrepancies we shall refer to this version of the Bill as “the Senate Bill”.

We have found the following discrepancies between the Senate Bill and the Act as published on the 11th April (which we shall call “the gazetted amendment Act”:

Long title

The long title, which appears at the very beginning of the gazetted amendment Act and outlines what the Act does, declares that it amends amongst other statutes the Criminal Law Code and the National Social Security Authority Act.  The long title of the Senate Bill did not mention those Acts. They were obviously added later.

Preamble

Section 2 of the amendment Act contains a preamble which is presumably meant to be inserted in the main PVO Act.  But clause 2 of the Senate Bill did not contain a preamble and indeed there was no mention of a preamble anywhere in the Bill.  According to the Senate’s Hansard for the 12th February, no one referred to a preamble when the Senate considered the Bill, and the Senate certainly did not pass one.  It should not be in the gazetted amendment Act.

Definition of “Board”

Clause 2 of the Senate Bill repealed the definition of “Board”, but the repeal provision has been omitted from the gazetted amendment Act.  This is odd, to say the least, because according to Hansard a Senator asked the Minister about the repeal of the definition and the Minister confirmed that the definition should be deleted.  But as we have said, the amendment Act leaves the definition in – it is still there and has not been deleted.

New structure of PVO Board

Section 4 of the gazetted amendment Act lays down a new structure for the PVO Board.  This is omitted from the Senate Bill which, in fact, provided for the Board to be completely abolished.

PVO forums

Clause 3 of the Senate Bill provided for regular “PVO forums” to be held;  they have been omitted from the gazetted amendment Act.

Registration of PVOs

Section 5 of the gazetted amendment Act, which deals with the registration of PVOs, contains a definition of “pre-existing charitable entity” and makes provision for the registration of entities which were lawfully operating in Zimbabwe before the Act came into operation on the 11th April.  The entities have 90 days in which to apply for registration.  There was no such definition in the equivalent clause of the Senate Bill however, and pre-existing entities were given only 30 days to become registered.

Conclusion

In the light of these discrepancies the amendment Act cannot be regarded as an accurate reflection of the Bill that was passed by the Senate.  This effectively invalidates it because it does not represent the will of Parliament.  As we explained in Bill Watch 39/2024 [link] section 131 of the Constitution requires both Houses of Parliament – the National Assembly and the Senate – to pass the same Bill before it can be sent to the President for signature.  The section also expects the President to sign the same Bill as the one passed by the two Houses of Parliament before it can be published in the Gazette as an Act.  Clearly that did not happen in the case of the PVO Amendment Act, so the Act is invalid.