This paper examines shifts in the dynamic between development donors and civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, using assemblage theory to elucidate recent developments in international interventions that seek to govern Zimbabwean NGOs. Civil society in Zimbabwe has faced significant challenges over the past decade from a coercive government and an economy in crisis. Development donor funding, a vital source of financial support, has also transformed over this period, due to dwindling resources, the introduction of new disciplinary mechanisms and shifts in donor priorities. Changes in the way civil society support projects are designed have been particularly important, with an increased emphasis in co-operative projects, where civil society organisations come together to deliver common goals dictated by donor objectives.
This paper argues that these interventions are creating new civil society assemblages, in a governmental project which seeks to discipline NGOs, rendering them as technical instruments that are legible and practical for promoting a particular vision democracy and development. The paper draws on the growing literature on assemblage theory in anthropology, geography and international relations, to examine the assembly of civil society through a set of practices that seeks to improve Zimbabwean society through bringing together various local and international elements to form and sustain interventions, which are powerful, but inherently unstable. In the case of Zimbabwean civil society, local organisations are brought together into consortia, often headed by international NGOs, which are intended to harness and enhance particular aspects of each component element to produce a coherent whole that will deliver democracy, human rights and good governance. Each organisation within the consortia is expected to play a specific, technical role, one that is complementary to the others, subordinated towards a common goal. The assembly of these consortia, as well as the efforts required to sustain them, have significant implications for the nature of Zimbabwean civil society, and the way in which development donors seek to govern it.