Financial Gazette (Harare)
Charles Rukuni
20 September 2008
analysis
Bulawayo — Zimbabweans should take advantage of the new political dispensation to curb corruption - the country's biggest vice, which has corroded society and created a culture in which some people firmly believe one cannot do anything without a "connection".
A veteran journalist who has been covering events in the region for nearly two decades says ordinary Zimbabweans should take the lead and not wait for the government because they are the ones worst affected by corruption.
The journalist said this was what happened in Kenya when the people removed President Daniel Arap Moi and brought in Mwai Kibaki.
"People did not wait for the new government to take action. They did it themselves. The same should happen here in Zimbabwe. People should stop paying bribes to the police, especially the traffic police, to ZIMRA (the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority) officials and to officials at the passport office. That would be a good start," the journalist said.
The establishment of an all-inclusive government, which says it will depoliticise the civil service, promote freedom of expression and bring back the rule of law will usher a new era under, which corruption can easily be eradicated.
Former Transparency International Zimbabwe chairman Goodwill Shana in a paper on the state of corruption in Zimbabwe, which he wrote two years ago, said there was need to change the model of governance to curb corruption. The methods he suggested to curb corruption are all incorporated in one way or another in the new unity agreement signed on Monday.
Shana said in order to address corruption, there should be a restoration of the rule of law, an end to political patronage, which provided immunity and impunity to perpetrators of crime and corruption, depoliticisation of the civil service and independence of the judiciary.
He said there should be vigorous non-selective investigation and prosecution of anyone engaged in or suspected of being engaged in corruption.
Giving a historical perspective of how corruption had taken root in Zimbabwe, Shana said there was very little corruption in Zimbabwe in the first seven years of independence. This period was marked by an active democratic climate though leaders of ZAPU and other opposition parties were continuously persecuted.
He says there were only two major corruption scandals during that period, the drought relief scandal involving Samson Paweni and another scandal involving Charles Ndlovu, now Webster Shamu.
The rot started after the 1987 accord and the de facto imposition of a one-party state. He says the number of corruption cases rose from two in seven years to three to four a year until 2002.
Major corruption cases included the Willowvale Motors scandal, the War Victims Compensation fund scandal, the Grain Marketing Board scandal, the VIP Housing scheme scandal and the Harare International Airport scandal.
"The vast majority of the cases involved high ranking politicians some of whom are still active in politics and or in government having been surreptitiously recycled back into positions of authority even when they had been convicted and sentenced," Shana said.
The situation got worse after 2002 because of political polarisation following the strong challenge to ZANU-PF by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Shana said. Accountability and professionalism now subordinated to party politics. Corruption was justified as political strategy.
As a result, the economy took a tumble, but this made the political elites even more powerful because they could then decide who received what from the shrinking national cake.
The agreement signed on Monday, if fully implemented should put all this to an end and usher in a new era, but it is up to the ordinary people to take advantage of the situation and correct things for themselves.
A member of the anti-corruption commission told army officers last year that the most effective way to combat corruption is prevention.
"It does not necessarily require the police to prevent corruption. It requires society, because corruption by definition and practice is a social phenomenon," he said.
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