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While the delays and legal convolutions in some prominent corruption cases tend to grab the headlines, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and the teams in the National Prosecuting Authority have obviously been working hard behind the scenes with 59 percent of all cases opened since the commission was reconstituted in 2019 having resulted in convictions.

This means almost 60 percent of the trials of those charged with corruption-related offences have ended with the corrupt persons found guilty and sentenced.

On top of that figure must be trials of others accused which have yet to start or which are still in progress.

ZACC expects the conviction rate to pick up more as reforms within the criminal justice system are brought into action.

One of these is far closer cooperation between designated prosecutors and designated investigators so that by the time a suspect is arrested a good case already exists with documentary evidence in place and the witnesses lined up.

This will avoid the problems we have seen, admittedly when ZACC itself has not been involved, of interminable delays while evidence is put together and eventually magistrates have little option, but to release the accused person from remand, prosecutors can always come back in such cases once investigators have assembled the evidence and summons the person to court, but it would be better to strike when all the ammunition for a prosecution was ready.

Presumably with a seconded judge of the High Court in the driver’s seat, and legal advice readily available, ZACC is winning convictions, even with the delays imposed by Covid-19 lockdowns, because when the docket is presented for prosecution the loose ends have been tied up and a strong case is now available to take before a court. This is the best way of proceeding.

Besides the convictions, ZACC has also managed to recover US$2,884 million in assets and money that have been acquired through corruption-related activity.

This is as important as the convictions and any jail sentences. It is important that criminals do not profit from their crimes, and there are people who will suffer a couple of years in jail if when they come out they can be re-united with a decent block of money that will keep them in comfort for the rest of their lives. So we do need to claw back the cash.

We hope that when action is taken to recover the proceeds of crime, ZACC are looking at taking into account inflation, so the country receives full value for recoveries.

There still remains the problem that some of the money acquired might have been spent on high living and other complications that mean some or all is now missing.

Here we need a combination of civil law and criminal law, and perhaps even some legal amendments from Parliament.

Under our civil law there are now statutory ways of reclaiming all the assets acquired from probable corruption. Because this is a civil path, proof beyond reasonable doubt is not needed; we just need to show that corruption was the probable source of the assets.

This route has already been taken to grab fancy houses, even though the house-owners have no criminal conviction.

On the criminal side, Zimbabwean courts for a little over three decades have been offering mitigation in advance when setting sentences. This means that a thief can have a respectable chunk of a jail sentence suspended if they give everything back fairly quickly.

The argument was that the sentence would be reduced if they had already done so before trial, so they can be given another chance to do this after being found guilty. That has seen a lot of people get their money back.

But we think more could be done. Since corruption is driven by greed there appear to be sound grounds to ensure that conviction results in far more financial damage than the potential gain from corruption.

As with many crimes, fines can be imposed, although maximum fines are often laid down by statutes. But in the case of corruption a combination of civil penalty to reclaim the assets, plus fines that at least equal that amount seem to be in order. In other words, if you acquire $1 million of cash or assets corruptly then you will have to pay back and pay in fines a total of at least $2 million, adjusted for inflation of course, plus a jail term, which needs to be set at deterrent levels, but need not be forever.

And if the corrupt person is bankrupted by all these financial impositions it is unlikely that anyone else will feel any sympathy and most people will be happy to know that not only does crime not pay, it actually leads to poverty.

Of course this sort of system only works when most corruption does lead to conviction. If the odds are high you will not be caught or convicted then the gamblers will be active.

This is why the growing number of cases being dealt with ZACC, almost twice as many so far this year than last year, and the high quality of the investigations that lead to a high level of conviction are so important.

Corruption was a bane of Zimbabwean life, almost something considered normal. The Second Republic has stomped hard on it, and while there appears to be quite a lot of old cases still to be dealt with, there is a lot less new crime.

This is already helping to change the culture, that some things are unacceptable, but we need to keep up the pressure with investigations to ensure that we continue moving forward.