Southerton lawmaker, Peter Moyo, has urged all Zimbabweans to become corruption whistle-blowers to ensure strides are made in the fight against the vice, which is threatening the growth of the country’s economy.
The Zanu-PF government remains accused of lacking the political will to address the scourge of corruption in the country despite President Emmerson Mnangagwa having promised to do so when he took over power from the late former president Robert Mugabe in 2017.
In his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Thursday President Mnangagwa said his administration would continue the war against corruption.
“I just want to dwell on the issue that he (President Mnangagwa) pointed out with regards to corruption,” said Moyo in Parliament yesterday.
“The President alone cannot fix this problem. It needs all of us to put our heads together and make sure that we defeat this disease which has arisen in our country. Those people who surround the President sometimes ululate when he arrives and shower him with praises saying he is a good man and he has done this and that. If you look around, most of these people are corrupt. They are the ones who are instigating corruption in this country.”
He underscored the need for Zimbabweans to put their heads together as they fight corruption.
“You look at the people who are arrested at the airport with gold (Henrietta Rushwaya): those are the people entrusted to hold influential positions and they take that as an opportunity to loot the resources of this country and smuggle them out of the country,” he bemoaned.
“If you go to those people, they are the people who are saying ‘I am next to the President’ yet they are destroying the lives of our children in this country. I call upon every Zimbabwean to be a police officer or whistle-blower.”
Rushwaya, now suspended president of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation, was on Monday arrested at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare while attempting to smuggle 6 kilogrammes of gold into Dubai.
The legislator said it was regrettable that people who are entrusted with laws in the country were also corrupt.
“You now wonder why some people at different police stations have been arrested,” he said. “The President is trying his level best, but he is alone in this fight. If he was not on the forefront to fight corruption, you can be rest assured that the person who was arrested with gold at the airport was not going to be arrested. People had the audacity to switch off the CCTV so that they would not be seen but we thank God, there were people who were honest to defeat this Lucifer. I am happy for those people who are courageous enough.”
