Desmond Kumbuka: Why Zimbabwe cannot win war against corruption

By Desmond Kumbuka

The contemporary cliché “elephant in the room”, a metaphorical idiom denoting a dilemma too large (hence elephant) or complex to contemplate aptly describes the monumental challenge facing Zimbabwe today – the scourge of corruption. What we have in this country is a monstrosity so daunting in size and proportion – it defies conventional assessment.

Graphically, imagine a gigantic amoeba, that slippery aquatic creature that presents an almost impossible proposition to handle for any two-handed homo sapiens. It’s slimy multiple tentacles slither through impossible nooks and crannies with deceptive ease, reaching places where solid objects or naked eyes cannot penetrate.

In its wake, a ghastly web of skullduggery, deceit, manipulation, thievery – even murder, pass undetected while those behind the scourge, bland faces and smart suits et al, masquerade as paragons of virtue.

Corruption is by nature pervasive. It is insidious. It festers on those it attacks like an itch that will not abate. An itch so persistent in its nagging, it causes the afflicted to scratch persistently and continuously, drawing blood in order to assuage the craving. Like that aquatic enigma, amoeba, once its tentacles take hold, they multiply and their reach grows and spreads far and wide emasculating thousands if not millions of victims in both lives and resources.

Indulge me a little more to pursue this analogy in another direction.

There is a biblical tale in which Jesus Christ challenged a mob baying for the blood of a woman accused of having committed the sin of adultery. The rampaging mob threatened to stone the woman to death as punishment for her transgressions.

Jesus stopped the mob in its tracks with a simple but profound challenge. “He who hasn’t sinned, cast the first stone,” he proclaimed. The profound lesson from that tale is that it is easier to see fault in others while conveniently forgetting one’s own unexposed indiscretions.

I am always reminded of this bible story every time the issue of tackling graft in Zimbabwe comes to the fore because so ubiquitous is the behavior that few can honestly claim to be squeaky clean on matters of some sort of inducement in order to obtain a favorable outcome even if it means bending the laws a little.

How many of us can truly and honestly claim to have escaped the tentacles of corruption either as perpetrators or beneficiaries? – Ponder that for a moment.

Online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, defines corruption conventionally  as “a form of dishonesty or criminal activity undertaken by a person or organization entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire illicit benefit.  Corruption may include many activities including bribery  and embezzlement, though it may also involve practices that are legal in many countries.”

Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain. Corruption is most mostly prevalent in so called  kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco-states and, of course, the so called Mafia states.

While Zimbabwe may not, in the strictest sense, qualify as a kleptocracy, oligarchy, narco-state or Mafia state, even though some writers and commentators have gone that far, what can not be denied categorically  is that  the level of graft in Zimbabwe is such that all shades of the above can be found. 

Let me give a few real time illustrations of how it all begins. How many of us have been stopped at a police roadblock and, to avoid the bureaucratic rigmarole of being charged for a minor traffic offence have discreetly “backhanded” an eager policeman a few bond notes for him or her to ignore the nuisance of what to us may appear to be a minor traffic infraction.

There is an unwritten but somewhat mutual understanding that no motorist wants to be dragged to a police station to spend hours in the laborious process of filling admission of guilt forms and then ultimately paying a fine anyway when a bribe of a few dollars, often even less than the fine, can make it all go away. It must be noted here that the police themselves appear to deliberately make the bribe option more attractive by deliberately  making the legal route humiliating and time consuming.

In fact, it works out a lot cheaper in terms of time and money to simply pay off the policeman who will gratefully accept the bribe to supplement his meager income.  Yet technically, that is corruption writ large.

The point here is that corruption is such an insidious and intractable malaise, much like an contagious infectious disease, that is spreading in much of Africa like an epidemic. True, corruption is a global problem but because of widespread poverty in Africa, its impact is far more glaring and devastating.

While many would say Zimbabwe has not yet attained the status of being the most corrupt state as established in Transparency International Corruption Index Annual reports, it nonetheless continues to rank poorly dropping three places between 2017 and 2018 to 160 out of 180 countries in the latest edition of TI reports.

Despite token high-profile arrests of senior government officials including cabinet ministers, there is still little to show  real will to eradicate it. For the past three years, the southern African nation has scored a paltry 22 points out of a possible 100, showing that nothing much has changed despite the recent changes in government.

Thus, evidently, trying to expunge the demon of corruption from our larger society is proving to be  a herculean and complex task that few can honestly claim to be equipped to deal with.

At the risk of sounding pessimistic about the success of the President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s  new dispensation’s declared resolve to tackle corruption, this is clearly proving to be  easier said than done, even for the supposedly ferocious “crocodile.” The fact that state institutions mandated to fight graft have virtually collapsed under the weight of their own misdeeds does not help matters.

I am reminded of a tale attributed to the sages of ancient wisdom which went something like this: A  mother crab, another creature of aquatic mysteries that crawls sideways to get by, observing this peculiar trait in its offspring, admonished the youngster to walk properly, unaware that that is the way of all crabs. How does someone who is themselves deeply immersed in corruption muster the courage to point an accusing finger at the next person knowing their own affairs can not withstand close scrutiny.  

The Shona have their own saying “mbudzi kudya mfenje, hufananyina” meaning newly born goats will always copy the habits of the older goats around them.

Questions have been raised about how many of the Zimbabwe  government ministers and other senior civil servants can say they acquired their vast wealth  honestly and legitimately.

Even more intriguing is the fact that many of them were no more than middle-income workers earning average salaries before they entered politics. Suddenly,  without any evidence of other legitimate sources of income besides their ministerial salaries and allowances, now live opulent lifestyles surrounded by all the trappings of indulgent millionaires. It does not require rocket science to connect this sudden change of fortunes with the scourge of corruption.    

Not a single day passes without a story in the media about someone in a position of leadership either in government, parastatal organization or even the private sector being caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. The problem is ubiquitous – men and women with responsibility over resources of one kind or other, finding clandestine methods to direct those resources to their own selfish gain.

Indeed, I like to think the genesis of corruption is the more pervasive derivative – nepotism which starts as an innocuous and natural inclination to be helpful to those with whom we have a certain  natural affinity.

The Shona have a saying “Chawa wana idya nehama, mutorwa ane hanganwa” which, loosely translated, means whatever you have, should preferably be shared with close friends and relatives because strangers have a tendency to forget and can therefore not be trusted to return favours.

While the logic of the saying cannot be contested, its implications can be far reaching.  It provides the rationale why a minister in government or a parastatal head will choose to employ an incompetent relative rather than a better qualified stranger in a key position where he has deciding influence.

The case I have always cited as an example was the reaction of one chief executive or a parastatal organization when challenged over the apparent coincidence  of four key office-holders in his company sharing his surname and reportedly hailing from his home area.  He responded with without rancour: It is better to employ a devil you know than a total stranger in whom you cannot safely invest your trust.

There is still another dimension to this form of corruption arising from African family or community affinities. In Zimbabwe for instance, when the son of a relative or neighbor achieves success, the entire community celebrates and has expectations of the successful individual.

If the person becomes a cabinet minister or is appointed chief executive officer of some parastatal or private company, expectations of relatives and community at large also rise – it is pay-back time.

Invariably, every time that person visits the village, they are assailed with requests for all kinds of favours, not least jobs for unemployed brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins and even children  and relatives of neighbours regardless of qualifications  or merit.

Failing to respond to these expectations can have far-reaching consequences including the family being accused of vanity or pride (vanodada) and failure to “give back to the community that raised  them”. The immediate family may be ostracized from community events such as funerals and weddings, an infinitely worrying designation in a village setting.

That, dear reader, is where the roots of corruption lie buried in the African psyche.

As they germinate and multiply, they spread to larger catchment areas becoming more demanding for appropriate feedstock as appetites become increasingly insatiable and greed transcends fresh boundaries. 

Desmond Kumbuka is a freelance writer and can be contacted on [email protected]