The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Post Correspondent
Everybody, well, almost, is talking about corruption by politicians including top political figures the size of cabinet ministers. Indeed quite a few have been targeted and exposed causing general awe and shock amongst Zimbabweans big and small. That is where we are coming from. That is history. Like it or hate it, history is indelible. The good thing is that the country discovered a way out and a way forward.
The new government, it is clear, seems to be determined not to leave any stone unturned. At least as far as the naked eye can see! Big and small heads will roll, and some are already rolling. It will, it appears, be a matter of time before every rotten apple faces the music.
It is all refreshing and pleasantly surprising to know that the government can descend a hammer on the heads of all offenders. The previous regime, everybody will agree, all the writing is on the wall, made more corrupt elements than it exposed and dealt with.
It is a huge relief to know politics can turn from black to white, well seemingly, almost overnight. Almost everyone (I said ‘almost’) in office was seemingly corrupt including those charged with keeping law and order. We saw that happen right in our eyes and under our noses.
What a sad reversal of political values! When that level of corruption became a way of life and a norm in society, it took turning to God or a strong army to STOP IT! In our case in Zimbabwe it took both God and we can call it His army, to agree to end stinking corruption of office in a beautiful country.
We are excited that the days of such corrupt leaders and officials in Zimbabwe are every day becoming numbered and slowly coming to an end. The ED-anti-corruption bug seems to be bothering every criminal of the past or presently still lurking in government corridors and offices. We all do hope that the end of G40 criminals around Robert Mugabe will not mark the beginning of new criminals around ED.
What is irritatingly interesting in the education sector is that everyone is focused on the new curriculum complaining about how it was rubbished by comrade Dokora, how Paul Mavima is looked up to becoming the ‘saviour’ and how it (the new curriculum) badly needs careful adjustments and wise touch-ups. Nothing is on the spotlight more than the curriculum; not least corruption.
Was there no corruption in the education sector during the RGM regime? Was there no corruption at the top, in the provincial and district administrative offices, education training colleges, universities and schools?
Some would prefer use of the Present Tense in asking these questions, and not the Past Tense. Is there going to be no corruption during the ED regime? Would it be a wrong idea to unleash the ED-bug into the education sector…NOW? Zimsec officials, school heads and teachers leaking examination papers? School heads selling school enrolment opportunities at both primary, secondary and high school levels?
This is a terrible cancer in the schools today. Teachers buying transfers from one school to another! Business deals struck between school heads and service providers in schools? School heads unjustly targeted for transfer to other schools to allow relatives and best friends to take over schools sweated over and developed by other heads? Unscrupulous bus-purchase deals between school heads and bus-selling moguls?
The worst-case scenario that comes to mind is the story of a female district education officer who allegedly made money by making deals with school heads. She is alleged to have received monthly ‘salaries’ from schools in order to protect the school heads from investigations and inquests around obvious systematic corruption.
In one case, the allegations continue, the grim-hearted district education officer faked an undeserved school merit award because the school head was her left-hand paymaster. When the people continued to speak, the notorious District Schools Inspector was transferred to facilitate investigations in her office.
When the net continued to close in and encroaching dangerously close to the top, she was finally allowed to retire and thus avoid an imminent opening up of a huge can of worms.
People speak when finally any big mountain falls. When these huge mountains finally fall as they will always do inevitably, skeletons are discovered in their office closets. God forbid! Zimbabweans are good at shutting up as long offenders are in office or in power.
As soon as they go, by arrangement or default, Pandora’s boxes open. Like the fury of an estranged woman (or man?) secret truths spiced by interesting and fierce lies and exaggerations occupy the mouths of gossip mongers. They know everything. They always knew.
But all dictators are told the truth only when they are gone. That is a rule of politics. It is also applicable in ordinary life. You do not reveal the infidelity or witchcraft of a wife whom you are still with; cooking your food and sharing the same bed. Or reveal the infertility of a husband who all along was father to your children. Grapes can only be sour when they are out of rich.
Thanks to the ED-bug that is determined to sniff every iota of corruption wherever it is or can be found. While everybody else is excited for whatever reasons about corrupt politicians being investigated, exposed and brought to book, my wicked interest is in the education sector. The communities are angrily full of stories of corruption in the education sector, but voiceless and hopeless. They have no solution.
When will parents finally rest from corrupt school heads who sell places for enrolment in their school? When will they rest from corrupt SDA’s that connive with the corrupt head to make money in the school away from the main objective of school to provide meaningful learning to children?
It is my fervent hope that men and women of wisdom will begin to help the government by exposing cases of corruption in their stations and walks of life. It is not uncommon to see fingers pointing at corrupt politicians and armchair magistrates and judges judging political offenders or criminals. How much more corruption do we have in the education sector? The politicians may have splinters of corruption in their eyes. But mind the logs in your own eyes!
Why is everyone openly talking about corrupt political leaders but saying nothing about corrupt school officials from top to bottom? Is the education sector clean? Schools must also experience the sweeping OPERATION RESTORE LEGACY broom and indeed the wrath of Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC).
Kana zvaramba zve education sector restore legacy ne ZACC, kana Tsikamutanda chaiye anoita! Kana mati izvi zven’anga zviri barbaric, bva tokushevedzerai Madzibaba Stephen kana Masango ve back-to-sender. Ko, vangatadza here back to the corrupter or corrupt ivo vachigona back-to-sender ye huroyi nehurombwa?
So long as the education sector has been seriously visited too, by soldiers, Tsikamutanda or Madzibaba-whatever, on the issue of ending corruption in Zimbabwe! Zvanyanya kani corruption muzvikoro umu vanhu vakangoti zii kunyarara!
If a government is helping to make life easier and more comfortable for citizens and other sectors are suppressing the people government is trying to cushion and uplift, such sectors are directly discrediting the government. We may not be able to say the same thing about Robert Mugabe’s regime which was surrounded by looters, thieves and other forms of corrupt criminals.
No wonder everybody else was becoming corrupt. They were taking a leaf from those above, we can safely say. But now that the new dispensation is determined to expose those criminals and corrupt thieves, all arms of government must be rid of corrupt elements, for they undermine political effort to get things right. In my view, I hope you can allow me to say a little bit of politics, corruption is a worse enemy of the government than those who oppose it by advocating a different political vision or dream.
Corrupt thieves and government-property looters; those who steal from the government that employs them, those who embezzle funds intended for community development and hoard medicines, wheelchairs, and agricultural inputs intended to make life easier for the poor Zimbabweans the government wishes to assist, are worse than opposition political parties.
These (opposition political parties) only cause ideological friction or damage. They are contesting political space, not ruining the economy and making the lives and livelihoods of Zimbabweans miserable. Corrupt government officials and civil servants are, in my opinion, direct enemies of the government. They bite the hand that feeds them and undermine government effort and credibility.
Education of the people, essentially, is government business. When government does its best to give the best education at the most reasonable cost, and the sector that is supposed to support the government in offering that kind of education turns around and makes nonsense of government sense, that sector is an enemy of government.
If those who are employed to make education make sense for government turn round and sell school enrolment places, interview ECD ‘babies’ who want Grade One places and make schools their entrepreneurial tuck-shops or income generating projects; if they are bought by bus-dealers in order to buy schools buses with no better purpose than common show off and competition from particular dealers, then they are enemies of government in every sense.
