The menace of institutionalized corruption accounts for the stalled development of Zimbabwe despite the country being ranked among the economic giants in Southern Africa in the early 1980s. The chapter explores the trend of the dialectic nexus between the intensified militarization of the state and the rising levels of corruption in Zimbabwe. The nation's fragility is typical of the perpetual decay of norms-based governance at the mercy of the military. Consequently, a fragile state with a militarised executive tends to neutralize and weaken good governance structures such as the judiciary, military, and civil society. Corruption is not new in Zimbabwe, but after the 2017 military coup, the evident military cronyism in political appointments serving economic interests of the elite, which was somewhat clandestine under Mugabe's rule, coincides with high and rising levels of corruption without legitimate checks.
TopIntroduction
Ending corruption and moving towards governance that prioritizes and serves the basic socio-economic rights of citizens is one of Africa’s longest and pending struggles in the post-colonial era. Corruption has evolved to become more dynamic, opaque, and complex, and in more ways, resistant to solutions and attempts to address it (Hoffmann & Hendricks, 2018). Zimbabwe is not an exception in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The SSA region had the lowest ranking in the 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), scoring a regional mark of 32 out of 100. In Southern Africa, South Africa, which continues to grapple with state capture, public sector procurement corruption and local authority’s corruption scored 44, Zambia 34 and Mozambique 26; with Zimbabwe scoring 24, the worst in comparison to its counterparts.
Corruption has manifested and evolved in a post-independent state that had a strong socioeconomic base at independence that would have catapulted it to be a top regional economic performer, had it kept corruption declining the past four decades. The Zimbabwe liberation struggle, which ended with the 1979 ceasefire and elections in 1980 based on the Lancaster House Constitution, focused on fighting white minority monopolism and corruption. White supremacist nepotism and unequal distribution of wealth were dominant corruption domains. After independence, under the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) led government for the first four years, Zimbabwe was a stable state politically and economically compared to its neighbors (Riddell, 1984). The government led by the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe worked to engender equality by implementing socialist policies. Zimbabwe was a relatively corruption free welfare state committed to highly effective poverty reduction, with evident potential for growth and transformation.
In 1987 Zimbabwe changed to executive presidency under Mugabe, centralization was implemented, and military obsession became more apparent. Zimbabwe became a securocracy beyond a de-facto military state. Ever since, Zimbabwe has degenerated into a perpetually unstable economic state characterized by economic failure. These failures paved way for the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in the early 1990s with the currency devaluation reforms greatly depleting its purchasing value, despite SAP’s promises for recovery. By the time of the rise of opposition politics in 1999 and the land reforms in the early 2000, Zimbabwe was failing both politically and economically. The post-independence stability of the state was shaking and grand corruption cases had been recorded. ZANU PF policies of forced land takeover were broadly criticized, both the 2005, and later the 2008 elections were marred with electoral corruption violence, deaths, and high military involvement and the label ‘military state’ was revived in scholarly discourse.
A Unity Government was formed with the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 2009 and ‘the most democratic constitution’ was enacted in 2013. Past the unity government, Zimbabwe further plunged into instability because good governance and obedience to democratic principles had failed to take root, three decades after independence, as though the call to arms that ignited the flame of the liberation struggle had been long forgotten with its lessons unlearned. At this point it is important to mention that the post-independence state can be seen as similar in morph and form to the pre-independent state, especially in the context of institutional cultures and governance philosophy, an argument warranting the assertion that colonialism merely changed color and race in Zimbabwe.
The occurrence of the November 2017 coup was a culmination of party factionalism rooted in corruption and struggle for avenues for extraction of kickbacks using public office. The military effectively took over and mutated from being a stakeholder to a stockholder in the Zimbabwean political matrix. Apparent in this historical synopsis is the assertion that political corruption is the root of corruption in Zimbabwe.