The Culture and Consequences of Corruption in Zimbabwe

The reasons were quite simple, how could a tiny, and shrinking white minority, really think they could continue to dominate the country. We had to do a deal, and if we did not do so, it would eventually be imposed on us, to the detriment of everyone. In 1976, Henry Kissenger, the US Secretary of State, came to the region and with the help of South Africa, imposed on us a road map to majority rule.

The result, in 1980, under the watchful eye of Britain we underwent a transition from a small, but competent settler Government, to a new Government dominated by nationalist forces that had fought a liberation war for nearly 20 years, armed and largely funded by the Communist regimes in Russia and China. The new Cabinet had 17 highly qualified Ministers in its ranks, but none of them had ever managed a company, let alone a country.

In the first decade we had the benefit of the remnants of the settler Government being in Government and in the Parliament. We had Chidzero as Minister of Finance and David Smith and Dennis Norman in Ministerial positions. We also had the support of the world, access to cheap finance, foreign aid and technical assistance. Growth was steady and positive. Inflation reasonable and we put our kids into school and massively expanded our health system. We were building and opening schools daily; they were exciting days. The changes were rapid – the white community left the country and by 1990, was down to about 50 000 from a peak of 280 000 before Independence.

Then the rot started to set in.  Mr Mugabe wanted a one Party State, and he crushed his main opposition in the form of ZAPU; by 1987 we were a “One Party State” with an unopposed strong man at the top – a typical African dictatorship. After 1990 the remnants of the Rhodesian regime faded away. And Zanu PF assumed total control of the State. The seeds of failure had been planted – the genocide that accompanied the destruction of ZAPU and excess expenditure above what we could afford, led to rapid increase in our national debt liabilities. In 1997 we overstepped the mark with payments to the liberation war veterans and entered the war in the Congo to support a change of Government there.

The collapse started slowly but by 2008 we were a failed State.

The corruption started slowly, we discovered we could print money in the Reserve Bank, Ministers found that they could use the State enterprises under their control to foster family and related employment and financial extras. New managers of these organisations and even companies in the private sector used their positions to make a bit of money on the side.

A typical example of this process was the privatized Cotton Marketing Board. In 1983 this organisation, supplied by about 300 000 farmers and handling nearly half a million tonnes of cotton a year – second largest crop in Africa, was sold under advantageous conditions to businessmen linked to the new regime. For a decade they did a good job and then found that they could under invoice lint and earn a bit of extra externally. This expanded gradually until they could no longer pay their growers a decent price. The corruption spread to operations and local sales until the organisation was bankrupt, unable to pay its creditors or the banks. The Directors fled and are no longer to be found. Last year the crop was less than 20 000 tones.

State owned and managed organisations that before Independence generated 40 per cent of GDP, half of all exports and a third of employment, failed and collapsed, their combined contribution to GDP today is less than 5 per cent. Billions of assets lie idle. Service organisations responsible for air transport, railways, road maintenance, water, power are unable to meet demand or have collapsed completely. We import 70 per cent of everything where before Independence we were largely self-sufficient.

But corruption took many forms, when we found diamonds at Marange in 2006, we engineered a takeover by 6 Party linked companies that by 2012 were producing more diamonds than Botswana at nearly 5 million carats a year. The revenues vanished and in 2014 President Mugabe famously complained that US$15 billion had disappeared. My own estimate is that from 2008 to today, over US$30 billion has been extracted from the sands of Marange, 70 per cent has “vanished”. Stories abound as to the culprits, but the reality remains – where Botswana sells their diamonds openly and transparently and pays for education and health and keep taxes low and affordable, we have simply stolen the proceeds. Marange does not even have tarred roads, or schools or clinics, it remains dry and desolate, 80 000 hectares that look like a First World War battlefield.

When Rhodes arranged for one of the top Geologists in the world to accompany him on a trip by ox wagon across Southern Rhodesia, he was looking for a second Witwatersrand. What they found was vast deposits of bluestone containing low grades of gold that were no substitute for the Reef in South Africa. Rhodes went on to build the greatest fortune the world had seen up to then based on gold and diamonds. The gold deposits they identified were exploited by hundreds of small mines which made the country a major gold producer, but never significant.

In 2000, following the collapse of the economy and our agricultural industry and then the emergence of failed State conditions from 2005 onwards, tens of thousands of our people found they could make a living by mining gold, having it crushed and processed and then sold to dealers. Today up to 700 000 small scale miners operate small illegal gold mines across the length and breadth of Zimbabwe. As a direct result we have become one of the largest gold producers in the world. But like diamonds the majority of the revenues simply vanish. It appears in places like Dubai where last year 450 tonnes of gold were sold by traders “without certificates of origin” from Africa. At today’s prices that is US$45 billion. The only other visible evidence of the scale of this activity here is that we are awash with US dollar cash and our people are building homes across the whole country.

There is strong evidence that corruption and price gauging in the fuel industry costs us about 25 cents a litre at the pump. That is more than the combined budget for health and education. The numbers are staggering. Then there are the Police Roadblocks – back again after several years after they were effectively banned by the new Government in 2020. Most often this leads to a bribe, paid in cash. When this activity was at its height it was almost a tax system and a colleague who runs a real estate company told me of an incident where a junior police officer in a blue Uniform and cap came in with US$250 000 in two steel trunks which he said came from roadblocks; he bought a house.

Civil servants demanding bribes for routine activities, licenses, mining claims, permits are legion and discussed openly. Individuals with no visible means of living, driving luxury cars and living in mansions. It has almost become a culture. I stated recently that the total cost of corruption here might exceed the budget. That is quite apparent to anyone living and working here. The casualties are many but for me a story last year from Gokwe of an elderly grandmother who had grown a crop of cotton and having it collected by force from her home by Cottco and then getting paid with a parcel of groceries, illustrates the problem. Its time we put a stop to this, the anthem that it is “now our time to eat” must no longer appear in our hymn sheets.