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Zimbabwe: Even With a Commission,Graft Breeds in Country
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Zimbabwe Standard (Harare)
3 February 2008
Posted to the web 4 February 2008
Vusumuzi Sifile
ON Monday last week, two senior government employees -- Attorney General Sobusa Gula-Ndebele and Grain Marketing Board (GMB) operations director, Samuel Muvuti-- appeared in court on corruption charges.
That same day, a close ally of President Robert Mugabe, Nicholas van Hoogstraten, was charged with illegally dealing in foreign currency.
Could this be the beginning of the end of the honeymoon for corrupt government officials and businesspeople? Is the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) beginning to get tough?
Could Muvuti become the first top official to be prosecuted by the commission -- more than two years after its establishment?
Two weeks ago, Vice President Joice Mujuru said the nation was suffering because of high level corruption.
"When we appoint some of these people," said Mujuru at a function at Hupenyuhutsva Children's Home. "we assume they are capable, but I think to some extent we have misjudged some people who hold important positions.
"They are full of the individualistic feeling and practice. We know what happened during Operation Restore Order. This is what we call corruption; it is not good. Our society is no longer clean. It's like we are developing crooks."
A month earlier, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor, Gideon Gono, said he knew many top officials were engaged in corrupt activities.
Gono said corrupt officials were responsible for the three-months- long cash crunch, which forced him to introduce six sets of high denomination notes.
On two occasions, Gono said he was prepared to name and shame the officials. But he seemed to develop cold feet, when he failed to turn up for a meeting with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance.
Over the past few weeks, The Standard has gathered information the RBZ has taken part in corrupt activities.
Even President Robert Mugabe has on many occasions hinted that he is aware most officials in his government are corrupt. In one memorable speech a few years ago, he spoke of top people taking "ten percent" of the total value of each government contract.
But despite this acknowledgment of corruption, there appears to be little progress in stamping it out.
In its Integrity Systems Report on Zimbabwe in 2007, international corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI) said: "Corruption in Zimbabwe is fast becoming a way of life.
"The vice has become so deep-rooted and institutionalized that some people now accept it as their sole means of survival due to a total collapse of systems that offer checks and balances," said TI.
Zimbabwe is among the 12 countries ranked 150 in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). This, said the TI, is despite the fact that Zimbabwe has a Ministry of Anti-Corruption, and the ACC.
The ACC was established in 2005, but up to now, its "effectiveness is yet to be fully realized". There is growing belief the ACC could actually turn out to be another white elephant, like The Ombudsman.
John Makumbe, a respected political analyst, believes corruption is an indication of the rot in the entire governance system of the country. Makumbe said there was no way efforts to fight corruption could yield anything when the "very people who are supposed to fight it are leading the corruption vicious circle".
"When systems of government collapse," said Makumbe, "people resort to corrupt means of survival. At the moment, there is no commitment whatsoever to fight corruption. It is almost like there is no one running the country."
Makumbe said during an election campaign, like this year, the situation was most likely to get worse.
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"There is no political will to fight corruption, especially in an election time like this. The cost of fighting corruption is very high for the government. So they would rather leave things as they are. Look at what we have just witnessed: we have Gono being stopped from exposing cash barons. This was to avoid the possible political damage that would result."
The Commission's deputy chairperson, Rutendo Faith Wutawunashe, said it was not only senior figures who were corrupt, "even small ones are so serious".
"Some of them are so small, but they are the most serious," said Wutawunashe. "They move trillions of dollars. Some of these small ones are fronts for the big fish."
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