Last week, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga launched a scathing attack on corrupt tenderpreneurs, who have continued to amass wealth through their shady business practices. This was not the first time that Chiwenga, who was guest of honour at the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce Annual Congress in Victoria Falls, has fired salvos at what he has termed zvigananda, a Shona term that literally refers to blood-sucking insects.
These attacks have been seen by many as signalling the existence of a chasm within the country’s presidium as well as the ruling Zanu PF’s cockpit.
About a month ago, social media had heated discussions on the Trabablas Interchange, formerly Mbudzi Roundabout, in Harare.
The heated exchanges were primarily centred on the cost of the construction work which some feel, at between US$80 million and US$100 million, was inflated. There were also some who thought the structure itself does not meet expected standards and point at shoddy workmanship.
However, for many, it is the choice of contractors that has become the talking point, with most people alleging the ugly hand of corruption had reared its ugly head in the key decision on who would be given the massive interchange work.
While this discussion around the marvelous interchange played out, the day-to-day trials and tribulations of the rest of the citizenry were temporarily shelved.
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For centuries, corruption has been rampant globally, including in Zimbabwe, costing societies decades in national development.
According to Transparency International, Zimbabwe was in 2024 ranked 158 out of 180 on the corruption index with a score of 21, three points lower than the 2023 score of 24. The average for sub-Saharan African countries was 33.
Graft has become institutionalised in the country and has seen politically-connected individuals — tenderpreneurs — benefitting from government tenders, opening doors for them to big money.
The Zimbabwe United Passenger Company, which showed some flashes of life, especially during the Covid-19 period, is mothballing while we watch. The number of buses the country took delivery of and were funded through public resources, are hardly visible on the roads and no one has bothered to explain.
Why has Zimbabwe continued to have mushikashika when the police are on the roads all day, throughout the year? Most of the mushikashika operators pay their way through and continue operating.
Despite all the noise over the vices associated with mushikashika, nothing seems to happen.
Attempts to get rid of them are limited to periodic police operations that net and impound vehicles belonging to nonentities, deliberately leaving those owned by the well-heeled and law enforcement agents.
The Harare-Chitungwiza railway project — a grand plan since Independence — might never see the light of day owing to key housing and other developments along the perceived route. Harare's own metro rail service has remained in the planning room despite all the noise around the project less than five years ago.
The death of young musician Garry Mapanzure on October 13, 2023 after a road traffic accident in Masvingo put into question the capacity of Zimbabwe’s provincial and national referral health centres as well as emergency rescue services.
The needs of these institutions are known to everybody, including those in the Health ministry and the upper echelons of government who are appraised on these regularly.
Today, we now hear plans to procure cancer machines for the same provincial and central hospitals — a development that has been roundly criticised for its lack of transparency.
As long as programmes financed through public funds are not transparent, they open authorities to criticism. Interestingly, the authorities do not seem to care at all, no matter the amount of noise around their actions.
Local authorities in the country have been accused of priorotising personal perks ahead of service delivery. This has led to basic services such as water supply in major urban centres, particularly Harare and Bulawayo, being pathetic.
Management teams at councils such as Chitungwiza have dismally failed to provide water to residents, a key aspect of service delivery, exposing residents to countless health challenges.
Interestingly, water has grown into lucrative business, especially in Chitungwiza. Residents buy water from the multitudes of bulk water suppliers who have invaded the populous town.
Meanwhile, residents pay council for water that is not coming and when it does, it is of poor quality.
Unconfirmed reports say those charged with supplying water are the ones involved in the water supply business.
The poor, who have found ways of co-existing with raw sewage and other garbage day in, day out, bear the brunt of these service delivery deficiencies.
Those who superintend over the affairs of local authorities quickly migrate to leafy affluent suburbs on being voted into power — a passport for free residential, commercial and industrial property which they often sell off to finance their new-found lifestyles.
They hardly have time to attend to service delivery issues — water, the daily sewer bursts, potholed roads and refuse collection among others.
Constituency Development Funds have not gone beyond drilling a couple of boreholes and no one seems to care about what happens to the other funds.
Noone seems to bother about accountability even to those very constituents whom they purport to represent.
Land barons have become filthy rich through corruptly-acquired land, including wetlands and other areas not fit for human habitation which they sell to desperate home-seekers.
Meanwhile, the poor get poorer and are often mocked for not literally not “waking up while others are making money”.
Corruption is being worshipped as the gateway to affluent lifestyles.
Mai and Baba Punha out there in Dotito, Mt Darwin as well as Muhlangureni, Chikombedzi in Chiredzi whose children walk close to five kilometres daily to and from school barefoot and on empty stomachs vote religiously every five years hoping to see transformation in their lives.
Sadly, they toil all their lives, living on the fringes of economic activity relying on donated trinkets and food handouts.
- Wilson is the founder and leader of the Democratic Official Party.