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Brian Chitemba
GOVERNMENT efforts to combat graft in Zimbabwe have failed to yield results because the investigators are often implicated in many of the cases.
According to the Anti-Corruption Trust of Southern Africa’s latest report, corrupt leadership which siphons the country’s economy for personal gain was a barrier to a corruption-free society. Several senior Zimbabwe government officials have been fingered in looting of the country’s resources for personal aggrandisement at the expense of the impoverished masses.
The Namibian-based group showed that an inadequate anti-corruption legal framework, a culture of corruption and compromised anti-corruption bodies were scuttling efforts to weed out corruption.
Since its inception in 2005, the Anti-Corruption Commission of Zimbabwe has not recorded any strides in fighting graft and the body still has a lot to do to prove that it has a sting. Instead, some of its commissioners have been implicated in scandals.
The anti-graft watchdog said Zimbabwe was not genuinely committed to combating corruption since graft was still widespread and loopholes in the judiciary and police force cast doubt over government’s commitment.
It said there was still a lot to be done to fight corruption within the law enforcement agents, particularly traffic police, who are notorious for demanding bribes.
Anti-corruption officials, the report stated, tend to focus on small cases and target “small fish” while ignoring rampant corruption by government leaders. On the other hand, the police lacked integrity in investigating corruption cases since they were equally implicated.
“The police force needs to be capacitated and cleaned of ‘bad apples’ in order to restore people’s confidence and make them effective,” said the report. “The professionalisation of the police force is key to the eradication of corruption in Africa.”
The report further stated that an effective judiciary was based on the rule of law and as the upholder of the constitution, controversies should be properly brought before the courts, but some adjudicators were being implicated in corruption, rendering it ineffective.
The watchdog said many Sadc countries were not sincerely signing and ratifying anti-corruption instruments, but only did so to mislead donors into giving resources.
To stem out corruption, the report suggested that leaders at all levels should be formally vetted before holding public office as well as funding the police, judiciary and anti-corruption bodies to help make them more effective.
“Regional and international bodies such as the Sadc, AU and UN should make the implementation of anti-corruption instruments by all signatories mandatory. These bodies should specify time frames within which the implementation should be done and impose sanctions for failing to do so. Such sanctions can include, but not limited to, automatic cancellation of the signature and ratification thereof. Banks that are accepting corrupt money from dictators and others should be named, shamed and blacklisted,” read the report.
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