MUTARE- The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) has denied accusations that it is targeting women and weaker politicians leaving the big fish involved in serious crimes.
By Donald Nyarota
The accusations come in the wake of the arrest of Marry Mubaiwa, wife of Vice President General Constantino Chiwenga on a litany of charges including attempted murder and externalization of more than US$1 million.
Addressing the media on the sidelines of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy sensitization meeting, ZACC spokesperson Commissioner John Makamure said these accusations were unfounded as the commission acted only on matters reported to it.
Makamure dismissed sentiments that the former model was being victimized for her domestic fallout with the Vice President.
“There are other sentiments being expressed that she is like a victim being persecuted, I wouldn’t want to comment much about a matter before the courts.
“I would like to dismiss those allegations as unfounded, just to give you some statistics as of 16 December we have 71 corruption cases at the court, dockets we have submitted to the National Prosecuting Authority.
“There could be other factors but we focus on corruption, we don’t care about the context in which that corruption has happened, our focus is the corrupt activity, we urge member of the public to bring more cases.
“Of those cases, the total number of arrests is 101 out of the arrested 86 are males and 15 females and this represents only 15 percent of those arrested, so from the figures you can see that the commission is not targeting women only.
“So, we do not care whether this person is married to that person or this person is related to that other person what we look at is the merit of the corruption case.
“But as far as we are concerned, we look at evidence of the matter that is given to the commission that’s what we investigate, it’s better for Zimbabweans to focus on the merits of the case, regardless of what has happened we don’t investigate those other matters, said Makamure.
He added, “There is no way that ZACC would have investigated a matter that has not been brought to its attention, so if you bring the matter to our attention we spring into action.”
Makamure also revealed that the commission is working on several high-profile cases that will be made public in due course.
He said their work was guided by constitutional provisions and would not be swayed by comments made on social media platforms.
“We also have quite a number of high profile cases, we are independent and nonpartisan and we are executing our mandate along the dictates of the constitution and we will not be swayed by sentiments aired by people on social media.
“There is no political interference in our work, when a matter is reported to ZACC no matter other circumstances it is the duty of ZACC to investigate that matter, after investigations if there are suspicions of corruption we prepare dockets and submit to NPA,” said Makamure.
