Whatever the truth of the matter about the drama swirling around the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) after its High Court-acquired warrants to search the offices of three Zanu PF-affiliated Cabinet ministers and those of the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) — the latter possibly over diamond dealings — to get evidence of alleged massive corruption were cancelled on procedural grounds, it shall emerge. Time will ensure that.
Report by Conway Tutani
After former South African president Thabo Mbeki’s damning accusations of bribery demands by Zanu PF ministers to potential investors from South Africa, nothing – absolutely nothing – has been done. Now, ZACC has been stopped in its tracks and is, instead, itself under severe attack.
True, procedure should have been followed and courts are sticklers for that, but must the probe be abandoned solely on those grounds, especially following Mbeki’s damning allegations? Surely failure to adhere to procedure cannot cancel out the imperative need to continue and facilitate investigations in view of the possible enormity of the crimes committed – and here we are talking of possibly hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.
A State media editor was roped into a clear hatchet job on ZACC with a report headlined Labour dispute opens Pandora’s box at Anti-Corruption Commission and appended his name to it. The story could have been easily written by the most junior of reporters.
But, nay, to give it “authoritative weight”, it had to be written by the editor himself, but people in the know were not fooled. We will read and hear more and more from such media growlers on behalf of the system as we approach the elections. It’s a crying shame.
To buttress this crusade against ZACC, this week again we had another report in a daily newspaper from the same State media stable to the effect that only the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has the mandate to carry out criminal investigations and arrest.
But it doesn’t follow that it has to stay that way. The way to do things can change guided by the need to keep ahead of crooks and criminals and also the fact that the police can be pushed around by their ministerial bosses to pursue or abandon investigations on political and other grounds.
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You don’t treat the scourge of corruption involving the high and mighty with kid gloves. But in our situation the Police Commissioner-General has professed endless times to be through-and-through Zanu PF and, thus, could well be disinclined to arrest his political bosom buddies – and so far this hasn’t happened.
French authorities this week raided the Paris apartment of former Finance minister Christine Lagarde, now the International Monetary Fund managing director, in search of evidence pointing to possible abuse of office when she was in government. There are no sacred cows.
But in Zimbabwe, ZACC and even the police operate with one hand – or even both of them — tied behind the back, resulting in practically nothing being done over cases crying out loud and clear for investigation. This puts the fear of the Lord in people. For sure, the chefs have been lording it over us for a good 33 years.
There is a clear circumstantial case for investigation to possibly get concrete evidence to establish if there is a link between some of these individuals’ fabulous wealth and their billion-dollar-generating ministerial portfolios.
True, there is no honour among thieves, but such serious allegations as raised by ZACC should be fully investigated with vigour and urgency. So, it really doesn’t matter that the alleged informants could be tainted themselves.
Anyway, some of them are, but they still provide invaluable information even as a plea bargain across judiciaries worldwide. The ZRP must not behave as if it does not rely on criminal informants. You set a thief to catch a thief.
And there must no sideshow of arrests over corruption allegations within ZACC itself calculated to deflect attention from the ministers under the dark cloud of suspicion. Go ahead and investigate ZACC, but the nation is watching if the same vigour and urgency will be applied to probe the three ministers and a ZMDC senior official. One of them is reported to have been throwing money like confetti in one of the working class suburbs of Harare, paying school fees and funeral expenses for the whole community in a blatant and obscene vote-buying spree ahead of the elections.
The fact that there are rotten eggs in the ZRP does not disqualify the police from their function of crime investigation – so must that apply to ZACC.
It is also hoped that the arrest and prosecution of four staffers in Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s communications office and their lawyer is not a political tit-for-tat to distract voters from the grave and burning issue of corruption as we approach elections.
“An unchecked culture of impunity and the abuse of power as well as public resources rob children, young people, rural and urban poor people of the fruits of freedom . . . Corruption is theft. It steals textbooks from our schoolchildren. It steals drugs from sick people. It steals social grants from old people and poor children. It robs citizens of hope and destroys dreams,” says South African politician Mamphela Ramphele. Zimbabwe, it seems, is dripping with corruption.
