There is a rising trend of countries in the region enacting laws that compel all non-governmental organizations to register in order to operate and prohibit any operation by unregistered organizations. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendation Eight requires that states, in order to remain in good standing, must increase monitoring and regulation of non-profit organizations through a risk-based system to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. 

Most governments interpret this as “carte blanche” to compel all NPOs to register in order to operate, with legal measures enabling the government to monitor, and, in many cases, control these entities. Registration, in many contexts, comes with increased regulatory oversight, procedural operating requirements, and risks which often greatly increase operating costs for many associations. 

In many contexts, this not a mere administrative act but the legal requirements bear the risk of an association being denied registration at the discretion of the regulating authorities, many times for spurious or arbitrary reasons. This includes denial of registration for organizations deemed “immoral.” Organizations representing marginalized and criminalized populations like sexual and gender minorities or sex workers are likely to face significant difficulties in getting registered. 

For example, in Botswana, an LGBTI group was denied registration on morality grounds, and had to seek the intervention of the courts to be registered. The denial was based on the fact that same-sex acts were criminalized in Botswana. The courts, in the case of Attorney General of Botswana v. Rammoge and 19 Others, confirmed that equal enjoyment of human rights meant that everyone should be able to exercise the right to freedom of association, regardless of status, including sexual orientation. There is a similar situation in Malawi, where the refusal by the government to register an organization of LGBTIQ people on the same grounds is before the courts. 

The recently amended NGO Act in Malawi requires compulsory registration for all NPOs to be able to operate, with penalties for operating without registration that can be applied against every officer of the organization. In addition, registered organizations are required to submit an audit report annually; failure to do so can result in an organization being suspended or deregistered.

The Private Voluntary Organizations (PVO) Amendment Act of Zimbabwe, recently signed into law, amends the PVO Act to require the re-registration of all organizations in Zimbabwe that were previously operating as trusts or any other form of organization. These organizations must register as PVOs if they provide services to the public or receive public funding or donations. An application for registration (even of existing organizations) can be refused if the registrar decides that the organization’s activities are not in line with their stated objectives or that they do not comply with the requirements of the Act, which includes the receipt of money from “illegal” sources. Additionally, if a PVO intends to change its name or its objectives, it must make a new application for registration, which can also be denied. The operation of an unregistered PVO attracts criminal and civil sanctions for anyone in management. In terms of the law, even organizations that do not qualify for registration as PVOs can still be compelled by the minister to register if considered to be at high risk or vulnerable to terrorist financing. The regulating authorities (the registrar, NGO board, and the minister) wield immense, almost unchecked power including the power to deregister an organization and suspend and replace the governance of an NGO with their own appointees. 

Zambia has also proposed legislation to amend the NGO Act to include compulsory registration of all NGOs. The difference with the Zimbabwe PVO Amendment Act is that existing legally registered organizations are deemed registered under the proposed law. However, all organizations would be subject to a licensing requirement after five years. An organization whose activities are considered to be against the law can be denied a license. The law proposes that unlicensed organizations would not be allowed to operate in Zambia, with criminal sanctions for operating without a license. The registrar would have extensive powers to regulate an NGO, including suspension or deregistration. 

Amid all this excessive regulation, activists flounder. The most effective advocates are community advocates, as the adage “nothing about us without us” implies. Freedom of association, a fundamental right, has enabled communities to organize and advocate for the issues at heart, including human rights, healthcare, economic and social inclusion. It has also enabled them to participate in public processes and increased civil engagement. 

The levels of organization for communities differ, from community-based organizations to national, regional and international organizations, and their structures and needs are different. Their resource requirements are also different. Some CBOs are not even formally organized with employees or other organizational structures but can advocate for their communities, gather and sometimes raise resources. A rigid regulatory system for these, with rigorous auditing and reporting requirements, is likely to deplete the capacity for activism and not be sustainable financially. In addition, the excessive intrusion of the state into community or social groups is not in line with plural democratic or transformed societies. 

Regulation may be necessary in some instances, such as the handling and accountability of public funds and safeguarding of vulnerable communities, but a truly risk-based approach to regulation that does not impose onerous burdens or restrictions on civil society is needed. Additionally, the disproportionate focus on civil society for regulation regarding money laundering or terrorist financing is largely unnecessary. Claims that NPOs are particularly vulnerable to terrorist financing are highly exaggerated and do not justify singling them out for increased monitoring. Even the FATF has recognized the unintended effect of its Recommendation 8 being used as a pretext for draconian interference and issued revised guidelines that dissuade states from imposing regulations that hinder the important and necessary activities of NPOs for society. Other countries like South Africa, whilst complying with tightening up NPO regulation, have applied a risk-based approach to the registration and regulation of NPOs. 

In conclusion, current and emerging risks with illicit financial flows cannot be ignored as they affect society in general, including government and commercial entities. However, adequate laws and regulations can be enforced to combat money laundering and terrorist financing without risking the life and structure of activism by forcing rigid regulations. 

Tambudzai Gonese-Manjonjo is the deputy director of the Southern Africa Litigation Center.

Antisemitism, racism, and Islamophobia, are terrible things to have to deal with, and we must all always speak out and reject them. But the reality is, as a proud, Jewish, gay man, living in Washington, D.C. today, I am more afraid of Donald ‘felon’ Trump, his Nazi sympathizing co-president Elon Musk, his own Joseph Goebbels, Stephen Miller; and his Cabinet flunkies like Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem and State Department’s Marco Rubio, than I am of any legal college demonstration. Mind you, I say legal.

We live in a world where Trump has made all kinds of outrageous behavior acceptable. He has dined with white nationalists, said there are fine people on both sides in his first comments when the Charlottesville riots occurred. Today, Trump sits with terrorists in Qatar, accepting a plane as a bribe, and negotiates with terrorists like Hamas. This is the world Donald Trump has created. That is what I fear the most. It is a world where Donald Trump has made it acceptable for racists, homophobes, sexists, antisemites, and Islamophobes to spout their hate in the public square.

This past year I published my memoir, and wrote about being a first generation American. My parents came here to escape the Nazis — my father from Germany, and my mother from Austria. My father joined the American Army and went back to fight the Germans. His parents were gassed in Auschwitz. I understood from them and their friends, what antisemitism was. But I grew up in a Jewish community in New York City, and as I wrote in my book, never felt any of it myself until I was 13 on a trip through the Midwest and was called a ‘Kike’ and had to ask someone what that meant.

As to being gay, I knew I was, even though I didn’t understand it, when I was 12. I could, and did hide that, until I was 34. I then came out in D.C., which turned out to be an easy place to come out. But it was near the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and that made you very careful. You were told not to have your insurance company pay for a blood test, so God forbid, people would think you were gay, or worse if you did test positive. There was rampant discrimination and fear regarding HIV/AIDS at the time. I know I lost at least two jobs because I was gay, yet luckily, neither of those impacted my career in the long run. I became a gay activist, fought for my community, and things got better. I had worked for Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), sponsor of the first Equality Act, before I came out, and met many gay people who were very supportive and became lifelong friends.

Today, Donald Trump, literally through his actions, threatens the lives of trans persons. While we are celebrating WorldPride in D.C., which as a city is a very welcoming place for the LGBTQ community, countries around the globe have told their citizens to be on alert if they come here. The United States is on their watch list for unsafe travel because of Trump’s actions.

When Donald Trump was elected the first time, his racism, homophobia, sexism, and Islamophobia immediately came to the fore. It had a negative impact on the culture in our country. It actually changed the culture, and that, and he, have only gotten worse over time. Today, Trump and his MAGA minions, are truly frightening. Again, trans people are afraid and antisemitism and Islamophobia are rampant in our nation.

Trump tries to blame it on some foreign students, but reality is, it is his doing. He and his MAGA cult. They are the ones I fear, not a graduate student at Columbia who supports Palestinians. It is the Netanyahu government in Israel that is making things worse. Yes, Hamas must be defeated as they promote genocide against the Jewish people in Israel. But the Israeli government starving millions of Palestinian people in Gaza, who are not Hamas, is not helping anyone. It simply creates more antisemitism. Trump going back and forth on his support of Netanyahu, and then saying he wants to displace every Palestinian from their home in Gaza to build a resort, creates more antisemitism. Trump is the guilty one, not the Columbia student who speaks out for his Palestinian family.

Where this will end, I do not know. But my heart breaks for the two innocent Israeli diplomats recently killed on the streets of D.C. by a terrorist who basically was given permission to act out by what Trump is doing in the world. What he did was vile, and he should end up in jail for the rest of his life. Everyone needs to speak out every day, and say antisemitism is unacceptable, and must be stopped. I never want to see Germany in 1939 replicated here. But that is what Trump and his MAGA cult are doing. They threaten everyone who they disagree with, and seek vengeance for suspected slights. They are literally trying to destroy our democracy. By what they are doing they give the terrorist who ended the lives of that beautiful young Jewish couple in D.C., implicit permission to act. Because if a president can act like a criminal, why can’t he?

We are all stuck for the moment, suffering in Trump’s alternate universe, where it’s OK to lie and insult foreign leaders who are your guests in the White House. Where it’s OK to lie and say you have a beautiful bill that won’t add to the deficit when it’s actually a disgusting bill that will add $4 trillion to the deficit. Where it’s OK to screw the poor and make the rich richer. Where you can scapegoat trans people and make their lives hell. Where you can invite racist South Africans into our country, and send legally here Venezuelans back home, to maybe face death. Where it is OK to take grift from Qatar in the form of a $400 million plane that will cost the American taxpayer over a billion dollars to retrofit for your sorry lying ass to use. That is the Trump alternate universe we all currently live in. 

But as this alternate universe begins to unravel, I have a gut feeling the American people, or at least enough to make a difference, will wake up one morning and say ‘we’ve had it with you and your MAGA cult’ and finally rebel. My hope is they do it in time for the 2026 mid-term elections. By then there will be very few Americans who themselves, have a friend, or relative, who have not been negatively impacted from the actions taken in Trump’s alternate universe. They, or someone they know, will have lost their job. They will have lost their healthcare, or know someone who did, or find their rural hospital has closed. They or someone they know will have trouble applying for Social Security because their local office has been closed. They will know a veteran who can’t access their healthcare, because they were fired, or their VA hospital has fired so many care givers. They will see their grocery bill go up, and all the Christmas gifts they hoped to buy for their children become unaffordable because of Trump’s tariffs. They will see their rent rise, and have no recourse but to find the money to pay it, or lose their home. They will be told they can no longer get their annual flu or COVID vaccination, and even if they could, their health insurance will no longer pay for it, and that is if they still have health insurance. Their prayers for a cure for their own, a relative, or friends’ illness; cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS, or HIV/AIDS, will have been dashed, as in Trump’s alternative universe all the research looking for those cures has been defunded. 

They will wake up one morning to a nightmare realizing Trump lied to them. That he has appointed the biggest collection of incompetent fools ever to run the government. They will finally understand it’s not the government that is bad, but rather Trump and his MAGA minions. They will see too late that in Trump’s alternate universes it was OK to fire the people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) so we no longer get predictions of hurricanes and tornadoes, which allowed communities to get advance warning. Then when they hit and create havoc and death, people will find out in Trump’s alternate universe the Federal Emergency and Management Administration (FEMA) has been defunded, so there is no help for them to rebuild their lives. 

I believe that one morning people will wake up to reality, and realize that yes, President Biden was diminished and should have said earlier he wouldn’t run for a second term. But their lives were still better and safer than they are now in Trump’s alternate universe. It is Trump who is diminished, and is diminishing them, while screwing them. They will recognize in Trump’s alternate universe the poor in the United States are expendable and don’t matter except as pawns in his desire to rule the world. He thinks it’s OK to screw the heroic people of Ukraine, and all of our allies in NATO, as he bows down and kisses Putin’s ass. That he can actually talk about displacing millions of Palestinians, so he can steal their homeland, and build a resort. That he can go to the Middle East, bow to their sheiks, and cut deals for his private company to build hotels and resorts. 

So again, it is my hope and prayer, that before 2026 they will realize Trump never had a mandate from them, the people, to enter his alternate universe. Contrary to his rants, while he won the last election, the vote was split nearly evenly. So, it won’t take many voters to throw his MAGA sycophants out of Congress in 2026. It won’t take many to rise up and say, “We have had it with your alternate universe.” They will refuse to continue to live in Trump’s alternate universe, where we get hurt, and you and your friends get richer on our backs. They will say, “We are ready to reclaim our country, to bring back common decency. You will not continue to lie to us and we will not continue to be fooled. We finally see through you, and see who you really are. We will keep you from doing any more harm to us, and our country, in your last two years in office.” Then the people will cast Trump and his MAGA sycophants in Congress out. They will see to it that he ends up on the dust heap of history and ensure that one day his tombstone will read “Here lies the lying felon who tried to destroy our county, but we stopped him, and took it back.” 

We the people, will eventually win against Trump’s alternate universe, because good does finally triumph over evil, and Donald Trump, you are proving to be pure evil. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.