Corruption; the tried and tested smart sanction
While debate has raged about the impact real or imagined of the so called smart sanctions or restrictive measures or whatever you want to call them, there is in fact a more overt form of sanctions which needs no debate at all-it is corruption whose debilitating effects are there for everyone to see. No amount of sanctions imposed from outside will outdo the obliteration done to the economy by the self- imposed sanctions of corruption. If there was a time when authorities would deny any reports of corruption in government as well as outside government that time is gone because now this scourge rips through all of facets of a Zimbabwean’s daily life, there is simply no denying it anymore. Unfortunately these sanctions do not discriminate, they know no race, no political ideology, no tribe or creed it permeates through government departments, public utilities, private enterprises even the non- governmental organisations unfortunately some people think it is normal. Since independence we have seen high profile cases of corruption where public official breached trust bequeathed on them as public servants by trading or abusing privileged information to sometimes the outright pilfer government assets and this has been driven primarily by greed. Organisations like Noczim, GMB, and Zupco etc. have all dominated media headlines for all the wrong reasons ranging from manipulation of procurement processes to the actual abuse of property owned by these organisations. However more subtle forms of corruption are known to occur in public utilities which are not under the media radar as well as in private business enterprises and the ramifications are quite glaring because countless government initiatives to resuscitate the economy over the years failed as this greedy lot whose ranks continue to swell would pounce on resources allocated for such initiatives. Having statutory bodies like the State Procurement Board to source on behalf of government and the previous Anti-Corruption Commission to stamp out corruption yet that has not stopped these greedy ones from continuing their illicit practices as they have found ways go to around these institutions. Businessmen have established networks that essentially work to influence the procurement processes by acquiring privileged information concerning tenders illegally by using employees of the organisations inviting the tenders. However in most cases the invitation of tenders as a procurement method seems to have been abandoned by many businesses as they left role solely to the individual responsible to make decisions himself and we simply cannot over emphasise the moral hazard here and how deeply flawed this is. The more blatant forms of corruption often involve company officials demanding a share of profits before they can actually award the major contract and for most of these fly by night companies this is quite acceptable as they fail to see the bigger picture. Fortunately for most businesses this is not sustainable because they understand the consequences. Allowing this to continue unabated will in the long run affect competitiveness which in turn affects profitability because widespread corruption has the capacity to bring down the individual business as well as the entire economy. To their credit privately owned businesses launched an initiative known Tips-offs Anonymous platform set help eradicate corruption by encouraging employees or anyone concerned to come forward with incriminating evidence against company officials. The only problem now could be that people are not exactly aware of this and it appears only meant for the problem at private business level and not exactly acknowledging this to be a national problem which needs coordination between all the parties. What is positive though is that there is consensus that corruption is vile hence a coordinated approach towards this is paramount starting with telling people why we have to fight corruption. Education and information dissemination remains one of the powerful tools at our disposal that we can use in this fight because we already have literate and intelligent citizenry much willing to help fight this problem. That the economic crisis of the past decade was precipitated by corrupt practices across the entire economy has to be sufficiently emphasised just like we did with our HIV-AIDS awareness campaigns which most people agree brought about changes in behaviour and attitudes of towards this disease. People need to understand if corruption goes unchecked at their workplace this will without doubt result in the company facing increased costs, costs which may force the employer to refuse to increase wages or even worse to lay off some workers. For consumers corrupt practices often translate into higher prices something which is unwanted at this stage because the present wages are already meagre thus an increase in prices will further erode their disposable income. For the government the consequences are even bigger because in addition to losing revenues due to companies paying less taxes as their make little profits or incur losses and consumers spending less due to reduced disposable incomes, the government will be forced to borrow to cover its deficits created by lost revenues. Such a deficit works to hamper government welfare programs because normally it is social programs that are sacrificed when funds are running short so it is in the government to fight corruption. On top of that growing levels unemployment will present the government with a problem of social issues like protests and demonstrations resulting from these idle working class people as well as a threat to the country’s security. So it is in the interest of all parties to work together towards finding lasting solution to the problem of corruption. In other words people need to be informed about the initiatives like the tips-offs anonymous, how it works without endangering the well-being of the participants, whistle blowing initiatives which give incentives to participants who expose corruption need to be instituted as well . Wikileaks has been a revelation because it gives total anonymity to participants who are thus encouraged to expose what they feel is wrong and honestly the corruption levels merits us having such a whistleblowing site. Of course the education of the citizens and exposing the corrupt alone will not achieve much if there is no real deterrence to would be bribers and those who solicit for such bribes. This lack of deterrence arises from the fact that there seems to be no action towards most of those found to have acted illegally and this therefore reinforces this view that one can get away with taking bribes. In fact there has been far few convictions and custodial sentences of persons of abusing positions for personal gain and this is where the government more than anyone else should take the lead and walk the walk where senior people are implicated in illicit deals. The coalition government has said it will constitute new a body that will that will be mandated with working on these high profile corruption cases and one hopes this will work in some as this is appears to be the initiative of the three signatories of the coalition.
Terence Zimwara is an economic consultant
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