By Noah Mangwarara.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News of The South) –
It was certainly with great relief and excitement that the nation listened to the inauguration speech by the new president Emmerson Mnangagwa who emphatically chastised and vilified corruption.
Mnangagwa declared a war against graft marking a total shift from what we had gotten used to as a nation. In his words, “indiscipline must stop” – such rowdiness had manifested itself in different forms and sheds, with its ugly head literally exterminating the very backbone of our society. The level of thievery in high offices and even to the lowest level in our social hierarchy had reached alarming levels. The level of corruption could be likened to the state that the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible had reached which prompted their destruction. One wonders if there were still at least fifty people not corrupted in this country.
The corruption didn’t even spare the clergy with high profile scandals involving men and women of the cloth have been recorded; are they still men of God or they are now mutated to being men of Gold because of the love for money? As if this wasn’t enough, the level of corruption in the police force was probably higher than any other arm of government; we were short of additional police officers to police the police; maybe this explains why the army intervened. Surely the call by the president came at the right time. If it had delayed, one wouldn’t want to imagine how the country’s affairs were going to unfold only a few months down the line.
It is a great mistake to think that the corruption scourge in the country started a few years ago. It has been bad leadership throughout the 37 year reign of the former president with corruption eating into our democracy. Corruption has been rife from as far back as the first decade of independence. Probably it’s not the best time to ask where the leadership was in 1986 during the National Railways Housing scandal. Probably this one is too small a case to mention but in 1989, the high profile Willogate Scandal rocked the headlines. Unfortunately nothing was done about it, except that one minister who still had a bit of a conscience then chose to resign from his post; unfortunately he committed suicide four days after the resignation. The War Victims Compensation Fund Scandal followed in the 90s, whereupon some of our present ministers were declared to have 90% disability yet more than twenty years later, the same disabled cadres are still holding public office. The 1996 Grain Marketing Board Scandal cannot be forgotten easily with $128 million having gone down the pockets of a few individuals at the expense of the whole nation. Again, nothing was done about it from the powers that be. The NOCZIM corruption case of 1999 and the ZUPCO Bus Purchase Scandal also came aboard, with a few small fish taken by the net then but the real culprits were spared. A lot has surely happened in our parastatals. Of all the thriving parastatals inherited in 1980, there is not even one that is functional, maybe with the exception of those that have been commercialized. Following the turn of the century, we likewise had renowned high profile corruption cases; the Airport Road Scandal with a contract of US$15 million ballooning to more than US$80 million in a space of 4 years- this can only happen in Zimbabwe. The Zimdef loot also comes to mind; those involved were protected; a case of canonizing thieves and rewarding them. More recently of-course, the $15 billion Chiyadzwa Diamond Corruption scandal is still fresh in our minds- whither Zimbabwe. Corruption has for sure been evergreen in this country since 1980.
The cases highlighted are only a snapshot of the many other scandals to have rocked various spheres of our economy. Don’t try to calculate the amount of money that had been extorted over the years through the police road blocks. How could a country endowed with such massive natural resources ever reach the pinnacle of its potential when the very people who are entrusted with the resources are on the forefront of looting? Our growth as a country is indeed hampered and stunted because of corruption. Zimbabwe is so poor because it has been poorly governed in as much as there has been so much talk about the western imposed sanctions. The few who have been brought to book are only the very small thieves but the real culprits and economic saboteurs continue to live freely as their ill-gotten wealth is celebrated – what a disaster. These real thieves move about declaring how rich they are and everyone clap their hands for such rubbish as if encouraging them to keep messing on the economic frying pan to the total detriment of all and sundry, including future generations. The next moment there is an election as the harmonized elections due next year, such people known for defecating on the economy are given another.
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