Source: EDITORIAL COMMENT: Impunity breeds more corruption | The Financial Gazette June 29, 2017
AUDITOR General Mildred Chiri does God’s work.
Every year, the Auditor General (AG) and her team doggedly attempt to track every tax dollar.
Every year, they produce comprehensive reports on how central government, parastatals and local authorities spend tax and ratepayer funds.
For a week, or two, the press fills its pages with stories of how public funds are abused.
Then the noise dies down and the corrupt, the malfeasant and unpunished looters carry on as if nothing happened. Nay, they carry on because nothing happens.
Exposing corruption and abuse of public funds is noble, but this risks unintended effects when no action is taken against offenders.
Exposure with no consequences actually breeds impunity. Impunity breeds even more corruption.
Year after year, the AG’s detailed findings and enquiries draw feeble promises to end abuses and correct procedural flaws from officials, only to be followed with more — often worse —infractions.
Ministries routinely break Treasury rules, while frequently raiding parastatals under their ambit for cash. Parastatals, which have racked up billions of dollars in losses since 2009, flout tender procedures and overpay their fat cat directors and executive management.
Some serial loss-makers pay more in board fees than a director at profitable corporations such as Delta and Econet could ever hope for.
The Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation. has assets in virtually every mineral class found in the country, including gold, platinum and diamonds, but still records a string of losses. Yet it pays between $650 and $700 in board fees and an average $330 sitting allowance. Its generosity even extends to paying cell phone allowances to directors who have long left its service.
Another parastatal, the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ), paid $25 000 in board expenses between 2013 and 2015, when it did not have a board. The then mines ministry permanent secretary, Francis Gudyanga, was the MMCZ’s one-man board.
When a Parliamentary committee recommended Gudyanga’s removal from public service, President Robert Mugabe responded by moving him to another ministry!
Mugabe occasionally speaks against corruption, but his odd excuses for inaction border on reckless permissiveness, if not complicity.
In light of this attitude from the executive, Parliament becomes key in checking abuses. The legislature, through some of its committees, tries to exercise oversight and enforce accountability.
But it could do more. All too often, Cabinet ministers get away with bald-faced lies when they appear before Parliamentary committees.
Quite often, the Parliamentary committees appear under-equipped to confront dissembling ministers and officials.
A case in point is Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo’s June 19 declaration, before a Parliamentary committee, that the Zimbabwe Republic Police collects no more than $15 million annually in traffic fines, is a case in point.
The AG’s reports, Treasury figures and data produced by parliament’s own budget oversight experts show this to be a brazen lie, but Chombo, like many of his Cabinet colleagues, went unchallenged because lawmakers do not seem to have the correct information.
Parliament’s inability to bring offenders to account, compounded by Mugabe’s penchant to reward the corrupt and incompetent, means the good work done by Mildred Chiri will be in vain.
Corruption and abuse will always fester in an environment where impunity is the norm.
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