The Sunday News
CALLWAY (2019), says corruption is a matter of “dishonest or illegal behaviour especially by powerful people,” including, for instance, Government officials or the police; and primary examples of corrupt behaviour are bribery and any other inducement by improper or unlawful means.
In addition, the varying forms and expressions of corruption may, in fact, form an unending list, since new, more sophisticated, subtle or covert forms are pretty sure to arise. The more corruption is exposed at any given time and place, the more subtle and covert it tends to become.
Corruption destroys the moral fibre of our societies just because some people have allowed greed to take over their moral campus. What is key to understand is also that it takes two parties to make a corruption deal sail through, so in as much as we blame office bearers for taking bribes and indulging in corrupt activities, the general public also has a role to play to stop the rot.
Last week, we published a story on a corruption case that took place at the Lupane Provincial Registrar’s Office where a Pakistan national was issued with a Zimbabwean National Identity Card bearing a common local surname, Sibanda, and had his passport application processed on the same day.
Investigations by Sunday News revealed that the inquiry into the case by officials from various arms of the State indicated that the office could have been a haven of corrupt activities and might expose the grave amount of rot and breach of national security that exists in the Registrar-General’s Offices countrywide.
Sunday News established that Government officials, last year, upon receiving a tip-off from whistleblowers, instigated investigations on how the staff at the Lupane Provincial Registry Office connived to give the Pakistani a Zimbabwean National Identity Card and processed his passport application. A series of investigations done by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage led to the sacking of the Provincial Processing officer, Mr Reward Jani. Furthermore, Mr Jani was arrested for contravening section 174(1) (a) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act (Chapter 9:23) for criminal abuse of duty as a public officer.
However, he has since appeared at the Lupane Magistrate Court and was remanded out of custody on a bail of $500.
Mr Jani was to appear again at the Lupane Provincial Magistrate court recently contesting his dismissal but the hearing was deferred to 28 August owing to the Covid-19 lockdown.
“There are many people who were made to fork out bribes in order to get IDs or passports. Some are afraid to speak out but that office in Lupane is full of corrupt people,” said one of the workers who declined to be identified.
Last year, our sister paper, The Sunday Mail unearthed another scam at the Department of the Registrar-General in Harare. The paper said “besides the fact that only those willing to engage in corrupt activities like bribing officials or abusing the authority of certain high offices get served — identity documents are being parcelled out with reckless abandon to anyone with money. Refugees with access to the greenback, criminals trying to evade justice and foreigners seeking use of Zimbabwean documents can easily get their hands on this country’s identity particulars.
One can even change their identity in a matter of hours and no one would be the wiser.”
While those with money to pay bribes seem to be getting preferential treatment, what is disheartening is that the majority of the people who are in need of these important documents are made to wait for days if not months to get served.
Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe is on record saying he suspected that “something fishy was going on at the passport offices”. He promised to deal with the culprits once and for all.
“My sixth sense was telling me that all was not well at the Passport Office. During my tour of the Bindura Passport Office, I noted that almost 90 percent of the people that were being assisted had come from Harare. The queue was also moving very slowly and I couldn’t understand what was going on. We are going to conduct our own investigations and I’m confident that we are going to apprehend those that are engaging in these nefarious activities,” he said.
We believe that a thorough investigation should be made on the operations of various offices countrywide so that corruption is stopped forthwith. People must believe in Government departments, but as long as issues to do with corruption keep coming up, that confidence will go down, which is not good at all.
