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Back in the village in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, it is unthinkable for chicken to begrudge the stew pot and not the knife that slit its throat.

There, the village autochthons say the pot never boils live chicken so chicken should not waste time hating the stew pot. I am just a stew pot, never the knife! Allow this villager to boil the broth and it is up to you to have who brought you to the pot.

This country has of late been inundated with calls to end corruption. It is fact, not fiction, that corruption is rife and that it is growing each day.

The talk about the fight against corruption has been more of a talk shop than real action. The talk is too much. The talk is all over the place, in homes, in kombis, in buses, in bars, in kitchens. Corruption, corruption, corruption!

The Government has set up an anti-corruption commission and that alone is an admission that corruption exists and that it needs to be thwarted. We failed as a country to nip corruption in its budding stages until it became so endemic to a point where we now have come up with an anti-corruption organisation. We now have to invest in anti-corruption. It is becoming expensive for us.

While we applaud the Government for establishing the anti-corruption commission this villager, the son of a peasant, will argue that the Anti-Corruption Commission is far from being effective because it has not been decentralised to the lowest strata of the communities.

For example, it is known to everyone that rural and urban local government are serious centres of corruption and there are no specific allocations for fighting corruption at that level. The approach is superfluous at most and haphazard when a few people are arrested. It has to be systematic. Fighting corruption must be a second by second thing, not an annual and once off event.

The full import of this is that there must be an anti-corruption unit set for each rural district council and for each urban council. There must be serious investment in decentralising the fight against corruption.

Who doesn’t know the level of corruption in the police force? We have all seen policemen being arrested for as little as $3 bribes. We have seen police men being “arrested”, by the public, over fake receipt books. Kombi crews have stories to tell. Real-life stories about the police. All drivers have stories to tell about police on the highway. Criminals have stories to tell about being arrested and buying their freedom. But there is some effort in the police force leadership. You can see that something is happening: some movement to get rid of corrupt ones. It is not enough though.

The Government should seriously look into local authorities. There is a lot happening in councils and the proportions are alarming. The entire service delivery is compromised; collection of bins up to allocation of residential stands is fetid. It smells badly.

We owe it to future generations to keep Zimbabwe free of corruption, instil virtues and values of national discipline. We must restore honesty. We must restore dignity and fairness. We must deal with greed. We have a generation of greedy people, self-serving people, who think of nothing but lining their pockets.

The political parties are worse. There is too much corruption in the political parties; there is too much greed in the cadres. There is too much indiscipline and corruption.

Our major problem is that we have not arrested real big guys and convicted them of corruption. There is no community leader or public leader who has been prosecuted, convicted and given a deterrent sentence. There is no senior Government official who has been arrested, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to deterrent proportions.

Now is the time to reassert ourselves as a nation and bring to an end corruption. This is the time to equip the Anti-Corruption Commission and the time to make sure we decentralise the fight against corruption right down to the villages in Dande, Muchekawaora, Checheche, Chachacha, Nembudziya, Dete, and everywhere. This is the time. Please don’t hate the pot, hate the knife!