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Zvamaida Murwira
Senior Reporter
The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission has taken its fight against corruption to rural communities where it has emerged that millions of dollars allocated for development projects may have been embezzled or misused by some public officials, along with sale of Presidential inputs, sale of State land and sale of food aid.
Development in some rural communities has been moving at snail’s pace despite the fact that Government has been allocating huge sums of money for a range of programmes.
To this end, Zacc has embarked on an exercise to visit rural communities and will also establish provincial anti-corruption awareness campaign chapters in all provinces as part of a deliberate measure to curb stealing.
The campaign against graft has since been given impetus by President Mnangagwa in August 2019 when he officially launched Zacc’s anti-corruption campaign.
The anti-corruption awareness campaign chapters will be anti-corruption neighbourhood watch committees, or local corruption watchdogs comprising local residents who will have the responsibility of promoting awareness among the public on the causes of corruption and its effects in society, enlisting and fostering public support in combating corruption
Zacc spokesperson, Commissioner John Makamure, who also chairs the prevention and corporate governance unit, is spearheading the programme and started in Masvingo on Monday before heading to the Midlands as he moves to visit all the provinces.
He will be addressing provincial secretaries and district development co-ordinators, traditional leaders, village heads, councillors, and police commanding provinces and districts.
In his address at the Masvingo chapter, Comm Makamure said Zacc, in its corruption prevention crusade, was widening its focus from urban areas to include rural communities.
“It is interesting to note that as ZACC, our current corruption prevention crusade, unlike in the past when focus was on urban areas, will now also target rural districts from where we have equally been receiving a high number of reports on corruption,” said Comm Makamure.
The campaign will focus on raising awareness among chiefs, village heads and villagers on corruption offences, and sensitising them on the importance and benefits of integrity, accountability and transparency in the management and distribution of national resources.
“It has been found out, in a number of studies carried out, that corruption remains a major challenge and obstacle to rural development,” said Comm Makamure.
“Millions of state funds allocated for rural development are embezzled by corrupt public officials in the execution of their duties, thus pauperising the vast majority of the rural population who are economically disadvantaged and who find it very difficult to survive in a corrupt system characterized by bribery.”
“Therefore, our awareness campaigns will sensitise the traditional leaders and villagers to be wary of such public servants and whistle-blow on them for the law to take its course.”
The relentless anti-corruption drive comes at a time when ZACC has scaled up efforts through other preventative activities such as institutional compliance checks, institutional system reviews, education and publicity campaigns.
“In addition, several reports of corruption in the rural communities have been received by the ZACC,” said Comm Makamure. “They include the corrupt distribution of Government and Presidential agricultural inputs and food aid, illegal sale of Pfumvudza inputs, unlawful sale of State land by some chiefs, headmen and village heads.
“Such abuse of office by people in position of authority in the country cannot escape our censure given the fact that traditional leaders are the custodians of our cultural values of “Ubuntu”, besides they have been bestowed with oversight role by the Traditional Leaders Act in ensuring the preservation of natural resources, land, flora and fauna as provided for in Section 5 of the Act.”
Comm Makamure called for collaborative effort to fight corruption.
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