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THE Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission has been very active over the past four years, with more than 400 public officials arrested on charges of corruption or related to corruption, so complaints that the commission is ineffective are unfounded.
While there have been more senior figures arrested, the majority come from local authorities, especially urban councils where from what we have seen, the ease of corrupt behaviour is startling, and the temptation to make money from illicit and illegal activity seems very high.
Most of those under arrest were either involved in sales of stands on council land, or State land assigned to a council, or were supposed to be buying equipment for services and did not follow the proper procurement and tender procedures, or created allowances and payments unknown to the law and standard practice.
Even outside the local authorities, corrupt behaviour when it comes to public land is not unheard of and this area seems particularly open to abuse.
In some cases new stands outside the proper town planning process were created and then sold. In other cases the stands were properly created but were then allocated or sold without following the laid down procedures, working down the waiting list for residential stands or advertising and putting out invitations to tender for the commercial and industrial stands.
The processes are remarkably simple, and were specifically designed to remove all elements of favouritism, personal benefit, nepotism and general unfairness.
We know the results, with some councillors and officials enriching themselves, either under the table by taking payments from stand buyers, or directly by allocating the stands to themselves, their families or personal friends.
Some of these deals have been uncovered but there are suspicions that others were better hidden in the paperwork, especially when public open space or wetlands were subdivided and sold off, with all town planning law and environmental protection law ignored or flouted.
So we have seen increasing nibbling around the edges of these open spaces, and only now being slowed, if not stopped, as authorities with more integrity take a stand.
In other cases we have rate funds spent on equipment which either never turns up, or is the wrong equipment or which costs far more than it should, because the public procurement process was not followed, or was not followed in full.
This has led to all sorts of problems and shortages, for example Harare City Council having only half the garbage trucks it is supposed to have, yet having a full complement of luxury and semi-luxury vehicles for personal use of senior officials.
Some of that may not be technically corrupt, just gross mismanagement, but it indicates the sort of attitudes that can arise and which can lead to corruption.
So far rural district councils are far less affected, although there have been the odd case.
In some respects this is because the opportunities and temptations are less.
Most rural local authorities do little in the way of stand allocations, although the growth of new rural centres and small towns does open the opportunities, and most have to buy to equipment one item at a time with everyone on the council taking an interest, so the corrupt cannot get any leverage.
In addition a lot of these purchases are made through use of devolution funds, with rural district councils appearing to be very keen on using this money as effectively as possible. But in many cases central Government does check on how the transferred funds are spent, and the possibility that any skulduggery will be found out is certainly a major deterrent. We also should not forget that many rural district councillors are a class above their urban counterparts, having been selected as candidates in a more careful process and then elected by people who demand certain standards of proven behaviour.
It is hard to just appear on a rural district council. Almost all councillors have come up from their communities, and these tend to want proven integrity and ability before they cast their ballot in either a primary or final election. These sort of processes need to be more widely adopted.
There have been delays in many prosecutions, some caused because of the Covid-19 lockdowns, and others because of the need to find enough evidence to prove that there were deliberate attempts to circumvent the rules, or such recklessness that the perpetrators simply did not care.
This is often difficult to obtain, or at least to complete the process. Usually the corrupt do not operate in the open, and have been known to destroy evidence.
Circumstantial evidence can lead to a conviction, but in some cases we may have to rely on civil action to at least recover what was stolen or obtained through fraud, even when we cannot find the final elements that could see jail sentences.
There has been uninformed criticism of “catch and release”, but neither the police nor ZACC hear bail applications nor set bail conditions. Generally accused people are entitled to bail pending trial unless there are good reasons to refuse this, and in many corruption cases that good reason simply does not exist, at least in the eyes of the law.
ZACC are now giving ever more attention to preventing corruption, not just hunting it down. While not ignoring the guilty, making sure that their ranks do not expand does make sense.
A lot of the prevention is simply changing attitudes among a swathe of public officials, that they are there to serve not to steal, and making sure that the systems set up to prevent the evils are followed to the full.
There might be a few loopholes, and there are people who can move a lot of land through a tiny crack, but every time we find one of those cracks we change the rules to fill it.
This also requires that the audit requirements are met, and that any weaknesses discovered by the Auditor General are instantly addressed.
Some councils seem reluctant to prepare accounts on time for audit, some have difficulty even preparing accounts at all since, and Harare is an example, they are using the wrong software.
That has to change since the sooner accounts are ready, the sooner they can be audited and the sooner untoward actions are tracked down and the handcuffs come out, and the sooner weaknesses are discovered and these are fixed so the dishonest simply cannot steal, or at least very easily.
Online Reporter