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Stephen Mpofu
The above is the probable response of the Zimbabwean public at large to two challenges that have recently grabbed the limelight in the public domain.
The first of these concerns Zimbabwe’s busiest border post at Beitbridge where money needed to turn the wheels of the economy now growing at a lackadaisical pace, or have ground to a virtual stop in some sectors, daily passes through the porous entry point unnoticed.
The Auditor-General unveiled the other challenge through a damning report the contents of which can be allowed to gather dust only to the detriment of both the government’s image and the country’s economy.
At Beitbridge the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) is reported to have been failing to meet its daily revenue collection target of $2 million because of smuggling and corruption – scams no doubt prevalent at other entry points including the Plumtree Border Post where cases of smuggling goods and other acts of untoward behaviour by workers there have also been reported.
An inter-ministerial committee led by Home Affairs Minister, Cde Ignatius Chombo, heard from one manager, Mkhululi Nkulumo, during a recent visit to Beitbridge Border Post that an average of $1.2 million and $1.5 million per day was being collected.
He said: “Our revenue inflows have been failing to grow, which saw the travellers rebate being revised downwards from $300 to $200 under Statutory Instrument 148 of 2015 (No 80) issued recently by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.”
Nkulumo said there had been an increase in smuggling and issues of under valuations by most travellers to avoid paying the huge amount in terms of import duties.
In addition, Zimra was losing money on goods that importers purported to be in transit and were later offloaded locally.
(The Authority does not charge duty on goods which are in transit to other countries.)
Beitbridge Border Post appears to have grown so porous or, to be dogged by corruption, that a young Zimbabwean mother working in South Africa is said to have smuggled her new-born baby to this country during the busy Christmas period but left it behind when she went back to South Africa as the baby bore no passport of its own and was not on the mother’s travel documents either.
This pen was unable to verify the baby-smuggling rumour which was, however, so scabrous as to validate the saying that “there is no smoke without fire”.
However, the government must be applauded for introducing high-tech mobile scanners at Beitbridge and other ports of entry to curb corruption, smuggling and increase revenue collection.
The government is also to be commended for procuring terrain-friendly vehicles among other measures to beef up the policing of border lines so porous that people jump them or smuggle contraband across them – depriving Zimbabwe of much-needed revenue in duty.
Regarding the other challenge, the Auditor General’s report fingered public officers involved in corruption but who remain out of reach of the law.
In the suburb of Killarney, in Bulawayo, recently passengers on a commuter omnibus travelling to the city and its driver watched in awe as an eagle shot down from the blue skies, swooped on a long snake crossing the road in front of the vehicle and soared back into the firmament with the serpent wriggling but unable to free itself from the predator’s intractable claws’ grip.
That eagle must be seen by Zimbabweans as a metaphor for the law in the two cases dealt with by this pen above and so the eagle – law must of necessity soar from above and pounce on all corrupt workers at all of Zimbabwe’s border posts and those in the public service whose heads have been circled in red by the Auditor General.
Our economy and Zimbabwe’s image will be safer with those maggots out of the limelight.
Legions of dedicated, patriotic, law and God-fearing young men and women are waiting in the turnstiles and rearing to go for those jobs being misused by corrupt, ungrateful workers over constipated by the security of their plum jobs so as to forget their responsibility to both their families and to the nation as a whole, while other people tramp the streets, unemployed.
That corruption has reportedly grown rampant in the public sector, which ought to set a good example to the private sector is no doubt due to a belief by the culprits that they remain untouchable in spite of their wrongdoing.
Which suggests that their bosses also benefit from the corruption and are therefore not fit to oversee the work of their subordinates; otherwise they would keep an eagle’s eye trained on any snakes in the system to pounce on them and dangle them to the law to take its course.
In the circumstances, the reported corrupt tendencies can be brought to an end once and for all if heads start to roll – and let the public see them tumble now.
derick.khumalo