Perspective Stephen Mpofu
“When guardians of the law break it with impunity, who will guard the law?” The above, with one or two word variations, is a lament heard in many societies where custodians of the law, the police, violate the law with impunity in the same way as, instead of coursing the prey, hunting dogs run with the hares. This is an indication of something having gone wrong in the hunter’s kennel .

Closer to home, something seems to have gone awry in the kennel of the Zimbabwe Republic Police with as many as 300 police officers having been sacked for corruption last year alone, according to Home Affairs Minister, Ignatius Chombo, in Harare recently. The Minister said the officers had breached the ZRP charter by receiving bribes from offending motorists, with some of them setting up illegal road blocks to extort money from motorists.

Now, if in a single year such a large number of law-enforcement agents fell afoul of their own guiding, legal principles, the mind boggles at what the statistics of similar crimes must have been like in preceding years. In the circumstances, does it surprise anyone that a bogus policeman infiltrated the force in one Matabeleland police station claiming that he had been sent by authorities above to monitor corruption in the anti-stock theft unit?

That it took quite a while before the fraudster was arrested must surely send a chill down the spines of law-abiding citizens who fear that dangerous enemy spies might just as easily weave their way into the force, thereby posing a big threat to national security.

In fact for some of the dismissed traffic offenders to have mounted unauthorised road blocks would suggest to any right thinking person that the offenders had foreknowledge of weaknesses in the ZRP’s monitoring system over operations in remote areas. It then comes as no big surprise that plans are now underway to introduce a new computerised monitoring system to oversee the goings on in areas away from base.

But computers breakdown in the same way as God-created human beings fall sick. So what happens when traffic cops with an inherent criminal instinct realise that Big Brother is not watching them? This pen fears that a relapse into crime might be possible. The reported offences by officers monitoring traffic no doubt calls into question criteria used in selecting and training potential police officers.

Just how thoroughly grounded in the forces’ ethical code are police recruits to forestall possible breaches? Or is there any regular re-education or refresher course to ensure that all the officers religiously observe their charter? Anyway, does the ZRP have in store sanctions, other than mere dismissals, that instill the fear of both the law and God among would-be offenders?

It would appear that the traffic cops caught in the illegal acts were daring in what they did knowing fully-well they would only be relieved of their jobs if caught red-handed, rather than be sent to jail. Just relieving the corrupt police officers of their duties is not punishment enough as it allows them to munch the spoils with their families or with friends.

The new computerised system to be introduced is not like herbicides that kill weeds including roots to protect crops. As such, those computers, however spanking new they might be, will only kill jobs, not the criminal element inherent in the offending officers.

Perhaps men of the cloth should be enlisted to preach the word of God at parades in order to inculcate fear of the wrath of God and of the law among officers with criminal tendencies. Some will obviously say poverty was what led the sacked police officers to try to take shortcuts to relative plenty by breaching the golden rules of their chosen career as immortalised in the police charter.

That might sound plausible but taking shortcuts to wealth might appear plausible to the criminally-inspired, but not to the law of the land. By the way, corruption, as has been said time and time again by both our Head of State and his lieutenants and other people, is an antidote to but not a touchstone for attracting direct foreign capital investment to boost Zimbabwe’s economic fortunes.

That being the case, therefore, no effort whatsoever should be spared in the crusade against corruption in every segment of Zimbabwean society and in every structure of our economy. Let us all turn this country into an international investment magnate eventually to put a morsel in every shrunken belly and a smile on every forlorn face.

Willpower will be the magical wand in face-lifting our country’s rather tattered image abroad.

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