BULAWAYO – Prosecutor General Kumbirai Hodzi on Monday made startling revelations that key institutions mandated to fight corruption, including the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) which he heads, had been captured by what he described as “cartels”.
The judiciary and the police had also been compromised, Hodzi said, which has blunted efforts to combat “high-level” corruption.
“The cartels are responsible for most of the high-level incidences of corruption, and the nature of the cartels cuts across all the institutions – the media, the legal profession, the judiciary, the NPA itself and all other institutions that are mandated to fight corruption. Members of the public and business people are also involved in those cartels,” Hodzi said after attending a Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) anti-corruption capacitation workshop in Bulawayo.
The Prosecutor General spoke amid rising public anger at the failure to arrest and prosecute high-profile criminals accused of milking the public purse.
Last week, Zanu PF’s politburo stripped three top officials in its youth wing of their positions after they accused two party donors of running fuel cartels and price fixing.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has made fighting corruption one of his key targets, said by naming his associates – Sakunda boss Kudakwashe Tagwirei and Green Fuel owner Billy Rautenbach – as corrupt, the youths were threatening “party cohesion”.
“Members of the public have a legitimate right to be concerned because they live with everyday results of corruption,” Hodzi said. “The shortages that we are experiencing; the economic collapse which, however you look at it, is a result of corruption.”
Hodzi called for a “holistic and integrated bi-scientific approach,” The Chronicle reported, without explaining how he intends to deal with the infiltration of the NPA by so-called cartels.
Mnangagwa reconstituted the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) and created a new special prosecution unit to prosecute corruption cases, but both have enjoyed limited success – hamstrung by political interference, bribery and poor investigative capacity.
