ZACC denies targeting only high profile women, plans to decentralize more in 2020

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ZACC denies targeting only high profile women, plans to decentralize more in 2020

Mary Mubaiwa Chiwenga, the wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who is currently facing a myriad of charges which include fraud and the attempted murder of the Vice President.

…Minister Gwaradzimba calls for clarity on adherence to revolutionary ideologies

Ngoni Dapira
THE anti-graft body, Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), has denied claims that it is targeting ‘defenseless’ high profile women in politics to gain mileage on its mandate.

ZACC Commissioner and chairperson of the prevention, public education and corporate governance committee John Makamure said this on Monday at a local hotel in Mutare during the official opening of a two-day stakeholder consultative meeting on the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS), which is being carried out countrywide.

ZACC Commissioner John Makamure

This growing assertion on social media comes in the wake of the heated case of Mary Mubaiwa Chiwenga, the wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who is currently facing a myriad of charges which include fraud and the attempted murder of the Vice President, and was on Monday remanded in custody to December 30, 2019.

The other case which made headlines was that of former Tourism Minister Priscah Mupfumira who was arrested by ZACC in August on charges of corruption and criminal abuse of office amounting to US$95 million. She was however later released in September on $5 000 bail after spending two months in remand prison.

Commissioner Makamure said it is not factual to suggest such accusations, revealing that on the contrary 80 percent of their arrests were of male suspects.

“As of December 16, we have 71 corruption cases at court. In other words, the dockets we have submitted to the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) are 71. Of those cases the total number of arrests is 101. Out of that 101 cases, 86 are males and 15 females. 15 females is only 15 percent, so you can see from the figures that we are not targeting women only,” said Makamure.

He added that as ZACC their mandate is to investigate, prepare dockets then submit to the NPA for convictions. He said there is no political interference in their work and they investigate on merit every corruption matter brought forward to them. “The commission does not discriminate in terms of gender, political affiliation, or ones affiliation in society. Our mandate is very clear, we are independent and non-partisan and we are executing our mandate in line with the dictates of the constitution. We actually want to urge members of the public to bring forward more cases on corruption.”

Commenting on the incumbent Mubaiwa Chiwenga case, Makamure said as far as ZACC is concerned, they looked at evidence and merit of the case. “Regardless of what happened or who you are, we do not look at that. We spring into action the moment that a corruption case with evidence is brought before us and we look at the merit. People should understand how we operate. We receive information and we look at corruption only and no other issues,” said the commissioner who is also ZACC spokesperson.

He added that in 2020 they want to strengthen their investigation unit through hiring more professional and competent investigators who will be highly trained professionals coming from different lines of work like accountants, auditors, forensic experts and ICT specialists, to help unravel the complex corruption matters.

“But we also need to properly pay these experts. This is why we are investing more money towards investigations…In the past we mainly relied on officers seconded from the Zimbabwe Republic Police. They have done a great job but in addition to that we are saying we need experts from other areas then they are trained in the art of investigations.”

In October ZACC commissioners who appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice to speak on their 2019 budget suggested that for next year a $100 million budget would suffice, instead of the $23 million that was awarded by Treasury for 2020. In 2019 the institution was initially allocated a $6.4 million and later $36.7 million through the supplementary budget.

Makamure also revealed that he anti-graft body is next year planning on decentralizing further to six regions including Manicaland where an office will be set up in Mutare, as efforts to improve service delivery countrywide and be accessible to the public unlike the previous commission. ZACC currently has offices in Harare, Gweru and Bulawayo.

“Even the offices in Bulawayo and Gweru are small and need to be expanded. We plan to have fully fledged offices where people can walk in and freely report cases of corruption. We can’t have citizens reporting in Harare on what is happening in their city. This is on top of the agenda.”

To strengthen the anti-corruption fight, ZACC has also been engaging government to speed up the enactment of enabling legislation such as the Whistleblowers Protection Act, as many people are afraid to report corruption cases for fear of victimisation.

Makamure said corruption must be treated as an emergency that needs emergency response measures, which is what the NACS public consultations seek to achieve by coming up with practical, concrete measures and actions to combat corruption. Adding that one of the areas they feel strongly needs emergency measures is the criminal justice system, where a lot of people are ‘coming out unscathed and boasting nothing will happen to them’.

He said cases were taking too long to be prosecuted because of appeals after appeals, as well as poor investigations with no strong suit to lead to convictions. “We are asking for rules that allow corruption cases to be prioritised. One way is to have time frames by which corruption cases must be finalized. We are happy that we have the anti-corruption courts but we would want to have more of these established at the superior courts level like the Supreme Court and High Court, not just at Magistrate Court level,” he said.

He said ZACC is engaging the relevant authorities to be granted powers to prosecute in the anti-corruption courts and focus on prosecuting corruption cases, rather than the NPA. He said currently they are allocating 60 percent of their resources towards investigations for prosecution and 40 percent towards prevention of corruption, mostly because of the alarming rate of corruption in country in both the public and private sector.

The Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs Dr Ellen Gwaradzimba.

Officially opening the consultation workshop, the Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs Dr Ellen Gwaradzimba said the country is in a corruption crisis that needs immediate intervention for its economic turnaround efforts to be successful by 2030. She however said that there is need for a consensus by the populace to say ‘enough is enough on corruption’ at all levels, advocating for life audits to ascertain how some people accrued their wealth.

“Most of the challenges we have in Zimbabwe are emanating from corruption at all strata’s of society, though there is a tendency by the public to point fingers at government only, but the truth is at grassroots it is also very problematic. People are also condoning and facilitating corruption.”

Minister Gwaradzimba said the political ideology of Zimbabwe from the revolutionary background was Socialist, Marxist and Leninist but capitalism was now taking the lead, which she said should change. “As a country our political ideology influences the economic ideology. The conference (2019 Zanu-PF Conference) that we just attended as a ruling party is the one that formulates policies, which should be informed by an ideology which then creates an economic ideology. Socialism means the government needs to protect the majority of the people who are poor but I stand guided if I am wrong, we seem to have diverted to a capitalist ideology of survival of the fittest or a dog eat dog ideology…We need clarity on our ideologies,” said the outspoken resident Minister.

She however hailed efforts by ZACC on improving its visibility and accessibility to the public. She said the previous anti-corruption commission had been captured, which is why it was disbanded, urging the new commissioners to be the saviours of the nation in the ongoing fight against corruption.

“We are saying zero tolerance towards corruption and in Manicaland we are going to take it very seriously to nip it in the bud… Please develop some teeth ZACC and not be paper tigers. We hope that all the input from these consultations will be taken up to ensure buy in from the people and effective changes in your mandate to stop corruption,” she said.

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