The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
THE scourge of corruption that had pervaded the society was like a gangrene with jaws wide open and ready to swallow not only the remaining vestiges of the country’s social order but advertently causing a severe economic retrogression whose effects were seismic and felt by all.
Corruption had become cancerous under the previous political administration. It had become rampant almost embedded and an accepted way of life for the Zimbabwean society.
The extent to which it had spread was such that it could be engaged in openly despite the known legal consequences that were of course rarely effected, making it look very petty.
The economic dangers of corruption, no matter how small, are so many.
According to a 2013 market brief by the African Development Bank, corrupt practices distort markets and stifle economic growth and sustainable development, including robbing countries of critically needed resources.
It reduces efficiency and increases social inequality while capital has a strong tendency of shying away from risky markets where corruption is rampant.
The increase in corruption cases in Zimbabwe was repelling foreign direct investment which Zimbabwe so much needed to turn around its economy with allegations that Government and public sector bureaucrats were demanding bribes if an investor was to gain entry into certain sectors of the country’s economy.
This had an adverse effect of increasing the cost of doing business in the country, thus frustrating and turning away investors in the process. As a result of damning reports of corruption, the competitiveness of Zimbabwe in attracting foreign direct investment was seriously compromised as foreign investors make use of global corruption indexes before they decide on where to invest.
Zimbabwe has however, been performing obscenely on the global corruption index while the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission has often been referred to as a toothless barking bulldog as it has always been compromised and failed to prosecute politicians as a culture of impunity became serious.
Proposals have been made to adequately fund the commission and give it enough ammunition and arresting powers to deal effectively with issues to do with corruption without fear or favour and without respecting political office.
This however, was not the case with the previous Government where implementing the simple resolutions was difficult and as painful as labour pains.
However, the coming in of a new political dispensation in the country did not only break the power jinx that seemed to have been carved on stone, it brought a whole lot of hope to the country’s populace that had for long yearned to see an end to the economic and social malady that was a result of a number of problems, among them corruption that was fuelled by a Government that paid little attention to it.
A deep seated culture of impunity was growing strong, undisturbed, unchecked almost legal and yet hurting and thinning the moral fibre while excessively bleeding the national economy.
Shockingly however, the culture was watered, cultivated and even mulched by Government ministers and their respective departments that were taking the lead in promoting corruption, mendacity, abuse of power while at the same time turning the country into a police state.
The law was applied selectively in the country and it became apparent that arrest and prosecution was reserved for the poor and not connected citizens while those with fat pockets could easily buy their freedom.
The law was twisted and taught to know and respect certain faces while those that were mandated to make sure the law was adhered to were compromised and even entangled directly or indirectly in the web of corruption.
The rot in the Government was now stinking high and wide and could no longer be concealed. What made it more nauseating was that those who were fingered in corruption even with glaring evidence were immune to prosecution.
They were protected to the point of even mudding the waters before investigations were instituted lest they would penetrate their ruse.
They would go to the length of embarrassingly persecute those that would have reported them. It therefore became a society where people were supposed to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, at least to a certain clique — a society so much divorced, blind and ignorant to the definition of justice, fairness, professional and ethical conduct.
It was a society that was sustained by lies of the glib intellectual misfits who were using their political leaning to the First Family as a cushion against the tentacles of the law.
They lied in order to avoid accountability or conversely to seize the reins of accountability to the point where the social contract between the government and the governed becomes theirs alone to write.
They lied in order to keep the coffers of ideological purity full. And more often than not they would use the money they got corruptly from the country’s poor citizens to buy those they wanted and those whose ideas and influence they couldn’t bury.
They sought to endlessly enrich themselves at the expense of the public and while at it tried to turn their personal morality or religion into everyone else’s legality or religiosity — a culture where the big birds pluck the feathers of the small poor and helpless birds to build their nests.
It was a system that had become so rotten at the core and where the centre could no longer hold. A system commandeered by power drunks who glorified corruption and whose views and instructions and orders were like those from God’s deputies — they were sacrosanct, for they fooled themselves by the mistaken belief that they knew everything.
Unfortunately, it was also a system where those that were incompetent were rewarded with positions in Government, where to be guilty meant innocence, where malfeasance brought honour to office, where the zealous obsequious poseurs were heroes and where to be absent was to present.
It was therefore a culture of impunity on corruption that brought the country’s economy to its toes but with the ushering in of a new political system revived the remaining flick of hope in the minds of many.
While it may be too early to look for results which are starting to manifest, it can never be too early and wrong to be optimistic that the new Government will turn the clock to the days of prosperity and economic bountifulness if the budget is to be followed to its letter and spirit.
Those that are steering the country are not by any means helter-skelter creatures who keep on returning to the same poisoned troughs that claimed the scalps of the previous administration.
They seem to be aware that the terrain ahead of them is fraught with obstacles and should plan and execute everything with detailed discipline. Negligence, incompetence and corruption and the culture of impunity to it should never be tolerated.
The law should be impartial in its application and those that engage in the vice should be locked and the keys thrown in the ocean.
The country however, is optimistic that the commitment made by all Government ministers and confirmed in the budget statement to end all forms of corruption and to deal decisively with it without having sacred cows will not remain a statement on paper but will be followed with practical steps towards a corruption free environment.
