Zimbabwe ‘lectures’ Botswana on anti-corruption
Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday May 15, 2023 06:00
Botswana through the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) this week hosted the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) in commemorating the Anti-Corruption Pitso under the theme: The fight against corruption 29 years and beyond: What has been the role of civil society?
In his welcome remarks, the Assistant Minister for State President Dumezweni Mthimkhulu said the Anti-Corruption Pitso is pursuant to an agreement made during the Bi National Commission 3rd Session held in February 2022 as well as DCEC-ZACC Memorandum of Understanding which effected in December 2019. “Following the signing of MoU, the two organisations have held several exchanges, one being the commemoration of the Africa Anti-Corruption Day 2022 that I officiated at, where we hosted the Zimbabwean delegation.
There has also been capacity building initiatives particularly in the area of Corruption Risk Management and operational matters, which Botswana has made several benchmarks.
“In line with today's theme, as Botswana we ask ourselves critical questions and seek and hope to engage Zimbabwe as well as all of you (stakeholders) in our quest to improve on our anti-corruption agenda. Through this engagement, we endeavour to get objective feedback regarding whether or not we have as a country, leveraged on the strategic positioning, intellectual capital and enhanced footprint enjoyed by the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Today we engage our mental and physical faculties in interrogating our strategies in the fight against corruption in the context of civil society involvement,” he said. Mthimkhulu said it is the technical sophistry by unscrupulous elements of the society that calls for the involvement of CSOs in the fight against corruption for it is, generally the CSOs, that drive community service and means for production. The Gaborone South legislator said where civil society is active in the fight against corruption, corruption does not thrive. “It is therefore our wish to see civil society working hand in hand with the DCEC to fight this monster. It is critical to ask ourselves whether or not the responsibility to fight corruption has been left in the hands of the DCEC 'alone' and if the answer is in the affirmative, what has been the result? We need to provide answers to the question that seeks to determine the involvement and the effectiveness of the CSOs in the fight against corruption in Botswana,” he said.
What Zimbabwe is doing
Making her remarks, ZACC Commissioner Thandiwe Mlobele as well as representatives from Transparency International, Zimbabwe praised the relationship between ZACC and CSOs. She said ZACC uses a multi-dimensional and multi-stakeholder approach in the fight against corruption. She said some of the stakeholders that ZACC engages include religious organisations, professional associations, universities, private sector umbrella bodies and development partners, among others. She said ZACC collaborates with actors outside government, especially civil society, who are essential to anti-corruption success. “Therefore, it is honourable that we are gathered here today to discuss how civic society assists in the fight against corruption and share Zimbabwe’s experience. Civil society in Zimbabwe has a fundamental anti-corruption role. Their activities range from preventive and awareness-raising initiatives to engagement in policy development and oversight of the application of anti-corruption laws and strategies. More specifically, they are working hard to empower citizens and put pressure on the public sector, in particular, to uphold their service delivery obligations,” she said. In addition, she said while ZACC’s Asset Recovery Forfeiture Unit leads the process of asset recoveries, civil society organizations in Zimbabwe have also become an integral component in this respect. Mlobele said some of them have knowledge of where tainted assets are stashed. “They also give the Commission reports on corruption matters to be investigated. Their importance, particularly, in the asset recovery process is enshrined in UNCAC, African Union Convention on Corruption and the SADC Protocol provide that State Parties should promote the active participation of individuals and groups outside the public sector, such as civil society in the prevention of and the fight against corruption. This is because the prevention and the fight against corruption is a shared responsibility,” she said. On the question of why Zimbabwe is ranked lower than Botswana in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) while they seem to be doing better than Botswana, Mlobele said they were frustrated by the poor rankings while they continue to put in a lot of hard work. “The CPI has been of concern to ZACC. We held a meeting with TIZ this year when the index came out. We wanted to find out why is it that we are doing so much but we are still ranked so lowly. It could be very discouraging to some extent. We also conducted our own study to find out exactly what the issues are and we found that the perception from the public, we found that most corruption is coming from bribery for traffic issues. It gives impression that there is a lot of corruption going on. Unfortunately it is not easy to follow up such cases as people do not come forward to give evidence,” she said. Mlobele said they also found that there is corruption in procurement hence they embarked in strengthening institutions. She said they realised that weak institutions uphold corruption. “Maybe why there is corruption is because our institutions are weak hence a programme to strengthen the 347 public institutions that we have in the country. So far, we have engaged 148 of those institutions where we realised there is weak corporate governance, very poor oversights coming from the Board. We have also realised that the Auditor General year in year out makes recommendations after making findings but they are never implemented. Embedded in those are issues including corruption. We then embarked on another project to encourage the institutions to implement the recommendations and I am happy to say that as of date, 81 institutions have responded to our call to evaluate implementation of the recommendations. That is a new culture that we are building. A culture to respond to the report as another way to reduce corruption,” she said. She further suggested that the issue could be political. “We are actually concerned by the international rating and we are taking steps to ensure we come out of the situation, but then it could be political and I am not qualified to the nitty of the politics,” she said.
Botswana CSO ‘absent’
Despite the gathering was meant to attract and engage CSOs, it was unfortunate that only a few turned up. The DCEC said they had wanted at least 40 to attend, however less than 10 were identified. “As the DCEC, in our invitation list, the CSOs were top of the agenda and we listed 40 of them. We must hasten that of the 40, we did not have contact numbers for all of them. But we did make an attempt to submit before BOCONGO to assist in getting contacts and inviting the CSOs. And even up to the last day doing follow ups, we were not able to get the favourable number of the civil society. We had expected at least 30 representatives because this meeting is about the civil society,” DCEC Deputy Director General (Policy) Erica Ndlovu said. She, however, said they have deliberate plans to collaborate with the CSOs as they are key stakeholders. She further stated that they would continue making more efforts to work with CSOs in the fight against corruption.