Maridadi blames Mugabe squarely for the rot in the country

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER:  I would like to recognise in the Speaker’s Gallery, the presence of Chief Mutambara and Chief Muushwa from Manicaland Province.  You are most welcome.  You may proceed Hon. Member.  – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] –

HON. MARIDADI:  Thank you.  Mr. Speaker, the institutional framework to deal with corruption in Zimbabwe is there.  The Constitution is very clear on what should be done in cases of corruption but what is lacking in this country is the political will to deal with corruption.  I continue to come back to that, as long as somebody, somewhere makes a deliberate move to deal with corruption, Hon. Mpariwa as the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Accounts will again come back in the coming season and present a similar report on issues of corruption that have not been dealt with.

Mr. Speaker, other jurisdictions like Kenya, when you are employing somebody who deals with public funds like permanent secretaries, the interviews are done in public and the CVs put in the public domain.  People scrutinise the CV and when interviews are done they are done in public.  Mr. Speaker, when this particular permanent secretary from the Ministry of Industry and Trade came to the Public Accounts Committee, after she had been questioned, one of the Members of Parliament asked her what she thought her performance was.  As members of the Portfolio Committee, we rated here performance at below five out of ten.  This is a person who is running a ministry which is responsible for the resuscitation of this economy and yet she performs below par.

Mr. Speaker, the problem that I see in this is that we have jobs for friends.  People are appointed on the basis of patronage, people are appointed on the basis of political affiliation and these are not necessarily people that are competent to do the job.  That is the problem that we have.  For as long as we do not take the issue of corruption seriously, we will come back to this House and talk about ministries not adhering to the Public Finance Management Act.

In conclusion Mr. Speaker, I want to make a call to the Government of Zimbabwe especially, to the Chief Executive of the Government of Zimbabwe.  The State has three arms, the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive.  Each arm has specific functions and specific mandates.  Mr. Speaker, when Parliament has done its oversight role on ministries and comes to this House to present a report and make recommendations to the Government, the Government has not acted on those recommendations. Mr. Speaker, what remains is for me to say the Head of State and Government and the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces, President Mugabe, as the Chief Executive of this country, must now start making a move to deal with issues of corruption.

Mr. Speaker, in the just ended ZANU PF Conference, where all Ministers were there, some of the most corrupt people were accredited to sit in the same House with the Head of State and Government.  Some of the most corrupt people, some of them are actually on the wanted list of police but they were sitting there.  The level of impunity in this country is unbelievable – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.]

Continued next page

(460 VIEWS)