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Michelle Chifamba Features  Correspondent
When greed and poverty meet, the end result can only be corruption. This is the plight that Zimbabwe, which ranks among the 11 most corrupt countries in the world, finds itself in.
Independent research organisations probing corruption within Government ranks produce their findings to the police, yet the findings do not trigger arrests or further investigations.

Within the municipality and Government departments, evidence suggests abuse of office by an elite while the ordinary man in the street writhes in poverty.

Unemployed youths roam the streets of Harare in search of informal means of earning money while authorities – from the police, city council and other Government department officials – are always eager to swindle them.

In a letter to the police’s Serious Frauds Squad dated May 4 2011, the Elected Councillors’ Association of Zimbabwe and the Combined Residents Association wrote that they had evidence that people were fraudulently and corruptly acquiring pieces of land.

“Sometime between November 2007 and June 2008, a group of named people, connived to either sale or buy for themselves two Harare City Council stands of different sizes without advertising or going to tender as required by the laws governing the disposal of all urban land,” read part of the letter. Such corrupt dealings half a decade later haunt the desperate home owners whose houses face demolitions, yet justice has not been served.

As corruption flourishes, societal development continue to suffer the most, and experts have raised concerns about the plight of future generations.

According to the Coalition Against Corruption (CAC) – an independent body that fights corruption – there hasn’t been political will to combat corruption.

“The Government is failing to act on individuals who have been fingered in corrupt tendencies with the country’s anti-corruption body, Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, incapacitated,” CAC notes.

“While it is important to commemorate 34 years of black rule, let us not forget that corruption has rendered many Zimbabweans poorer than they were in 1980 while a few individuals in Government live in splendour,” said CAC director Terry Mutsvanga.

Like a cancer, corruption has spread within the blood cells of society to the lower levels of society and Government departments. Drivers’ licence applicants have to fork out money to smoothen the process while those not willing to pay bribes will remain prospective applicants.

A source from the Vehicle Inspection Department in Chitungwiza confirmed that “people fail to obtain driver’s licences because they fail to grease the right palms” with money.

“It is their driving instructors who are swindling desperate drivers seeking a licence in our name.”

According to a former primary school headmaster in Kuwadzana who preferred not to be identified, corruption has become formalised and legitimised.

“The levels of corruption are bleeding sores in this society. Even the poorest people, many surviving on just a dollar a day, have become accustomed to the idea of offering a bribe to get a basic service. I remember when I was still a headmaster, an old woman approached me for a service and she offered me money as a form of appreciation.”

“It got me wondering how this woman, who had failed to pay school fees for her grandchild had managed to raise money to offer a bribe. But for her it was a normal experience that she seemed to have been comfortable with, because she told me, ‘it has become the custom countrywide’,” the headmaster explained. It comes as no surprise in the eyes of many, that the 2013 Global Corruption Perception Index ranks Zimbabwe as among the 11 most corrupt countries in the world. Out of 174 countries surveyed, Zimbabwe comes in at 163, not far behind the anarchic failed state of Somalia, which takes the crown as the world’s most corrupt nation.

Says Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ), a local corruption watchdog organisation, “corruption amounts to the ‘dirty tax’, and the poor and most vulnerable are its primary victims, especially those in marginalised communities.”

According to TIZ, corruption is rampant within education, health, mining, sports, and in the judicial and agriculture sectors, not to mention the police and Government departments.

However, when asked for a comment, the TIZ was cagey with information, a revelation that Zimbabwe is slowly adopting the fight against corruption.

Zimbabwe’s corruption scourge has been exacerbated by an unemployment rate that has ballooned to more than 80 percent.

These are the visible symptoms of a failed economy that has killed off the dreams of a stable and productive life for many Zimbabweans and replaced them with a vision of a bleak and bitter future.

Economists are of the view that Government is to blame for the continued corruption as evidenced by the large number of ghost workers in the public service, which has for the past decade cost the country.

According to an independent economist, Government should seriously consider reducing its expenditure, by reducing the number of public service employees.

“The civil service is too big and we all know that 90 percent of the Government revenue is going to the civil service salaries, which is not sustainable. The Government needs to make very serious and hard choices of reducing its civil service bill so that they save money and direct the money to other pressing issues like infrastructure development that will stimulate economic growth,” said economist, Irimai Mukwishu.

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