Lack of Zimbabwe witness protection law hampers fight against corruption 

Zimbabwe has no witness protection law, a top civil servant said recently, raising questions about the country’s commitment to addressing widespread corruption.

Despite years of public pronouncements by the government that it will step up the crackdown on graft, there has been little concrete progress.

This has cast the spotlight on the lack of legislation to help curb the amassing of unexplained wealth by politicians and public servants.

In recent months, the police and the Zimbabwe Anti-corruption Commission (ZACC) have made high-profile arrests that have included ruling party legislators accused of bilking public funds worth millions, but the courts are yet to secure significant prosecutions.

Last week, ZACC chairperson Loice Moyo said on state media that the country did not have any witness protection laws, effectively punching holes into the commission’s avowed anti-graft campaign.

“The absence of legislation that protects whistleblowers and witnesses scares away potential witnesses or whistleblowers, especially in high-profile cases where they can endanger their lives,” Moyo said.

In 2016, Transparency International reported that Zimbabwe was losing up to US$1 billion a year to corruption, listing the police force, local councils and the vehicle inspection department among institutions the most riddled with graft.

It is public knowledge that driver’s licences can be bought from vehicle inspection department officials.

Lifestyle audits of government workers initiated during former president Robert Mugabe’s tenure have failed to stymie the rot.

Members of parliament earn just under US$200 a month, according to a payslip posted by incarcerated Citizens Coalition for Change legislator Job Sikhala in 2020.

But MPs from the ruling Zanu-PF party are known to live lavish lifestyles thanks to what critics claim are opaque sources of wealth.

In the wake of the 2016 Transparency International report, then minister of information Christopher Mushowe said corruption was being fuelled by the reluctance of witnesses to come forward.

Six years later, that has not changed.

“Encouraging insiders to report wrongdoing and protecting them when they do is a fundamental pillar to fighting corruption, because it is often those on the inside who are able to notice the rot before outsiders see it or suffer its consequences,” said McDonald Lewanika, who heads the Zimbabwe chapter of the global translocal citizen activism network Accountability Lab.

The network was founded in early 2012 in an effort to work with young people to develop new ideas for accountability, transparency and open government.

“Insiders who act with integrity and seek to expose rot, illegality, unethical conduct, abuses and corruption can only grow in number and assist in clawing back on corruption if there are sufficient safeguards in institutions and the state to guarantee their safety,” Lewanika said.

Early this year, Transparency International reported that Zimbabwe ranked 157 out of the 180 most corrupt countries, citing lack of political will and ineffective law enforcement as the major reasons graft remains unchecked.

“Laws are there that make provisions for the protection of witnesses but there is no explicit legislation that directly addresses the needs of whistleblowers,” said Tawanda Majoni, the national coordinator of the investigative journalism nonprofit organisation Information for Development Trust.

“The problem we have is that the politically connected are arrested for optics and there is so much corruption in the fight against corruption that officials are compromised,” Majoni said.

The application of the law in corruption cases has come under scrutiny, with reports that some court officials have been fired for accepting bribes of as little as US$20, while public officials such as mayor Justice Wadyajena and Prisca Mupfumira, who served as minister of social welfare and of tourism, are still walking free despite being accused of laundering millions of dollars of public funds.

Despite the ZACC claiming in August that it had “overwhelming evidence” against Wadyajena, he has said he will remain the chairperson of a parliamentary portfolio committee in defiance of calls that the law take its full course in his corruption trial.

The US$95 million corruption case involving Mupfumira has not moved since she spent two months in remand prison in 2019. The former cabinet minister was recently elected to serve in Zanu-PF’s influential central committee, a move critics say points to lack of political will to firmly deal with party heavyweights accused of corruption.

The ZACC’s Moyo has lamented what she said were the routine “catch and release” cases fuelled by “witnesses shunning coming to court because they were scared”.

In July, the then ZACC spokesperson, John Makamure, said the low prosecution rate of high-profile cases was mainly a result of the intimidation of witnesses and the absence of legislation to protect them.

It has not helped that ZACC officials have themselves been accused of corruption.

“Proper remuneration as well as clear consequences of intransigence in these bodies will also assist them to be less prone to bribes and being corruptible,” Lewanika said.

“Capacity strengthening is not just about skills but also removing the incentive structure for corruption through ensuring that officers charged with fighting it are cushioned against the lure of quick money to make ends meet for themselves while the corrupt go scot free.”

It was announced last week that a bill was being drafted that aims to disqualify an aspiring legislator with a criminal conviction from standing for public office. But there is scepticism about the implementation of such a law, as conviction in high profile cases remains rare.

One of the recurring submissions by investigating officers in opposing bail applications is that accused people will intimidate witnesses, as noted by the ZACC’s Moyo.

Zimbabwe has installed “suggestion boxes” in public places, purportedly to ensure the anonymity of whistleblowers, but a lack of crucial evidence in court has hampered successful prosecutions.

“Those in power must stop shielding their politically exposed friends from getting their just rewards when they are caught on the wrong side of the corruption line. The ZACC says it is doing enough to bring big cases to court, but securing guilty verdicts has proven to be elusive as numerous cases have shown,” said Lewanika.

“It may be a case of deliberate and politically influenced mishandling of cases and or evidence — which suggests that those accused of corruption can corrupt prosecutorial or investigating officers to stay out of jail not because they are innocent but because our courts fail to prove their guilt.”