By Reason Wafawarova

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

THE Press is awash with stories on the spirited efforts by President Mugabe and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono to turn around the economy by embarking on a committed fight against financial indiscipline and corruption.

We have heard reports that President Mugabe wants to let the big wigs face the consequences of their evil and corrupt deeds.

Even if the President has been advised by anyone to do that, it is not and cannot be viewed as external pressure.

It is merely relevant and strategic advice to a man who has already resolved to act against our internal enemies disguised as patriotic comrades in the struggle for self-determination and social justice.

It is true that the campaign against corruption by the President and the duo of Dr Herbert Murerwa and Dr Gono can easily turn into political rhetoric if it is not followed by decisive action against the perpetrators in the public and private sectors.

If that were to happen, then we would have yet another sad chapter of economic faltering.

While cautioning against rhetoric implies that the campaign is more for political expediency than economic turnaround, it is in the context of how political credentials and profiles have been abused by some senior office holders that we have to view the danger of empty mouthing corruption.

This scourge has not only destroyed our economy; it has ruined our public service monitoring and accountability institutions.

It has destroyed the effectiveness of our law enforcement agents.

It has created a new crop of politicians who are basically con artists and mercenaries.

These people hijack the political system using their ill-gotten lucre to create an acquisitive political support base that exchanges money for votes.

Such practices have created a political Mafia and stories that some Zimbabwean politicians in the ruling party and the opposition surround themselves with seedy thugs, only buttress the reality.

This is, indeed, a very sad development and President Mugabe’s moves to curb the practice should be applauded.

As a former civil servant, I am writing this article from an insider’s perspective, to illustrate how corruption has come to be what it is now.

I did not write under a pseudonym because I want to join the fight against corruption without fear.

I will illustrate the scourge by citing experiences I had in the public service since 2000 when I witnessed near total looting and abuse of human, material and financial resources in the public service that left me wondering how some ministries managed to survive.

Starting with human resources, there was gross abuse of junior officers, drivers, secretaries, typists and even prisoners for personal business and private chores by some esteemed senior civil servants.

The most abused were drivers who were often sent across the width and breath of the country on various errands including, but not limited to, delivering gifts and groceries at mistresses’ homes and picking of school kids, (legitimate and illegitimate) from boarding schools, not forgetting looting farming inputs.

Firstly, the head of the ministry would allocate himself or herself six to seven vehicles to sustain his or her personal dealings, not to be outdone, the heads of departments would follow suit and allocate themselves say, two vehicles each.

To cover himself, the head of the ministry would also allocate the two politicians in the ministry six to seven vehicles each, this way the minister and the deputy minister found themselves surrounded by drivers ready to take up any duties.

Now the directors or heads of departments were five and they had deputies and that meant fifteen cars in the hands of the heads of departments, another seven with the permanent secretary and 14 between the two ministers.

That came to 36 vehicles, which was 99 percent of the ministry’s vehicle pool.

Typists and secretaries worked overtime typing private and personal paperwork for their bosses, prisoners toiled on senior politicians’ farms, some police officers were sent to scare some poor peasants occupying a piece of land coveted by the big wig and so on.

Now this diversion of public resources for personal use had the effect of producing a redundant workforce which received hefty salary packages for sitting around and fighting for the crumbs left by the senior management in their respective ministries.

Abuse of financial resources was the biggest let down.

Now that the whole ministry would have been deprived of resources and could hardly function in any meaningful way, the management embarked on unplanned and extravagant travel trips and workshops in order to access travel and subsistence allowances.

Some of the trips and workshops were well-timed to coincide with the opening of schools and the beginning of the farming season and at times the births of children from either the main or "small house" of the senior officials organising any of the two.

This basically transferred the T&S (Travel and Subsistence) budget into the senior official’s private life and all those officers for whom the money was bided with treasury were relegated to gossiping the day out in offices and corridors while Zimbabwe bled.

This behaviour was scandalous and it is high time the winds of justice prevail.

From T&S, the senior managers did not tire as they stretched their hands to purchase allocations ignoring procurement regulations like there was no tomorrow.

Prices were inflated, tenders awarded to non-existent companies and dubious colleagues from the private sector, invoiced goods never delivered and yet they were paid for and all manner of financial chicanery reigned supreme.

There were cases where a procurement clerk stationed at a Government institution would have in his possession a politician’s signed cheque book as well as an invoice book from the chef’s private company.

She would get a request for goods at the institution and drive into town with a vehicle accessed on the orders of the senior politician.

She would proceed to the dealers of the goods in question, write a cheque from the politician’s cheque book, get the goods, pull out the politician’s invoice book and bill the Government a hundred-fold the price.

Within a week, the payment officer would be pressured to process the payment without delay and off went the senior politician with a chunk of the taxpayers’ money.

Some may wonder, how one got away with such primitive madness?

If the procurement committee at the institution in question got wind of the scandal and took the clerk in question to task for flouting tender procedures, it would be told that the issue was a directive from head office and to call the minister if they had a problem.

They would of course not dare do that and chicken out.

Equally if the internal audit team unearthed the scandal, it would similarly chicken out. In cases where they reported to the permanent secretary, he would sit on the matter promising to look into it. If external auditors came, they would be told that the issue was raised internally and the secretary was looking into it.

Off they went and the financial went as well, and in came a new year, a new budget, a new secretary, a new minister and a new finance director and the matter died a natural death.

This is why I started by saying that corruption has ruined and killed our institutions as well as our economy, and it is high time the perpetrators are locked up in jail and the keys thrown away. Some of us had to leave our promising careers in the civil service because of these corrupt tendencies and I am happy that the chickens are coming home to roost for those bent on fighting us from within.

We have enough problems from the British government and its Western campaign against us yet these internal enemies have been snipping for the enemy and against us and now the tables must be turned on them.

We have already seen some of them fleeing to seek refuge in the backyards of the detractors who welcomed them with pats on the back.

Why should we spare them?

The writer is a former civil servant reading for his final year in a Masters in International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.