Blitz CDF thieves, corrupt councils

development in various constituencies, are an unwarranted liability and should be consigned to political oblivion.
In fact, the time is long overdue for the weeds to be removed from the genuine crops of lawmakers.
They should be blitzed by the long arm of the law and, if found guilty of converting any cash from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), they should be made to sing the blues in jail. Such MPs, who abuse, and in that way forfeit, the trust of those who voted for them, deserve to serve not easy but hard time behind bars as a warning to potential CDF thieves that corruption cannot be tolerated as it taints the image of honest MPs who have the interests of their electorate at heart.
So far only a few MPs have been arrested by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission to stand trial for their alleged mishandling of money allocated for the development of their constituencies.
It is unlikely that MPs who pilfered the CDF are to be found only in 55 constituencies targeted for investigation by the Ministry of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs out of the country’s 210 constituencies.
But any maggots in the remaining 155 constituencies who might have started to celebrate, believing they had survived the scrutiny of the law, must now be having diarrhoea after Attorney General Johannes Tomana took the as-yet-unprecedented but prudent step by ordering an audit of all of the 210 constituencies before a resumption of the prosecution of those suspected of misusing the CDF.
By throwing the dragnet wider the AG must have properly read the uncompromising mood of law abiding citizens of this country who want to see a thoroughgoing clean-up to rid our society of any fat, corrupt maggots wriggling unbusted among law and God fearing Zimbabweans
Apparently, indications are that there are MPs who know about the sins of their colleagues or are themselves guilty of helping themselves to the CDF and do not want to die alone and so will implicate, even expose, colleagues for wrongdoing. Their evidence, as yet untested though it might be, the investigators will no doubt find it invaluable in broadening up the scope of their investigations.
This suggests a need for the AG to open a confidential window or windows through which those who wish to openly or anonymously send in information in aid of either the Anti-Corruption Commission or the police to do so unhindered.
The authority may then sift through the information, discard the cuff and use the gem of the data to throw the nose round the necks of suspected offenders.
A no-holds barred probe might spring up surprises, such as really big fish finding themselves entangled in the net, for it would be unthinkable to believe that only the sardines or kapenta alone nibbled at the CDF.
In this regard, should there be any shark caught in the net alongside the small fish, the Attorney General as well as other, “intrusive” investigators might need to be protected against a possible vicious fight back as the big ones try to untangle themselves from the legal net.
However, no fish should be too big for the net that is being cast wider still to account for wrong-doers in order to cleanse Zimbabwean society of any and all the insidious rot.
Is it ironically tragic that some MPs can turn their backs on the very people who sent them to that august House, the envy of many, otherwise more genuine aspirants in the country, by reneging on their promises to serve the voters who put them where they are now ensconced by not improving their welfare?
This pen is ecstatic in hopes that the broader investigations that the AG has ordered and the prosecution of suspected offenders in the CDF saga, will be concluded well before the general elections so that those found guilty may receive their just desserts and be black listed by their own black deeds from all future elections.
That, in this pen’s humble belief, will not only protect voters let down by their MPs, it will also give them an opportunity for a fresh look at those other candidates aspiring for a stint as Parliamentarians.
Indeed any stiff sanctions meted out by the courts on those found guilty of abusing the CDF are likely to deter would be offenders. The time also appears opportune for a parallel, legal siege on all of the country’s local authorities to round up those councils where corruption has been described as “endemic” by Dr Ignatius Chombo, Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development.
Mismanagement in the local authorities is not only an indictment of those councillors and staff of those bodies, it casts a dark, menacing shadow on the political culture of political organisations that administer the councils that fail to deliver services to ratepayers, while using most of the ratepayers’ money to give staff fat salaries and councillors allowances that they do not deserve because of their ineptitude, self-centredness and arrogance in the extreme for some of the councillors who appear to believe that they will remain untouchable as long as their party remains in the Inclusive Government.
But the Global Political Agreement which gave birth to the unity Government is not cast in stone and is likely soon to become just a proverb in Zimbabwe’s political history.
l Stephen Mpofu is the former editor of Chronicle.