Responding to allegations of internal corruption within the Augstine Chihuri-led force, Chirume said the information was not new to him, as he lived through 15 years of graft in Bulawayo.
“You know how this country is being run and in trying to report such issues, you may end up being killed, so we thought it wiser to remain silent and whisper among ourselves.”
Farms for officers
According to him and several retired and serving members, junior members suffer the most. Apparently, the age-old graft worsened when the government promoted war veterans without examinations in 2000, in return for them dovetailing junior members into supporting Mugabe’s party.
“State funds were diverted to senior officers’ personal use, with most of them burning state fuel as they drove to their new farms with truckloads of state equipment,” added Chirume.
Internal sources say police commanders in the ranks of Inspector and more senior ones were given A2 farms, which they spent most of their working hours attending to, using state resources.
Chihuri, who corruptly claimed 20 per cent disability and got a fortune from the war veterans gratuity fund, drove the corruption train. The police commissioner-general, a self-proclaimed supporter of Mugabe’s party, is said to have built himself three mansions in and around Harare wholly from state funds. Some officers who joined in the 1990s said they had to endure forced deductions from their salaries for having eaten in the police canteens.
“There were some of us who never lived in police camps, but were forced to eat 30 meals from the messes. Even when you did not eat there, the money was automatically deducted from your salary at the end of every month and there were no negotiations,” said a former Constable.
The Outpost
“Members were also defrauded through the police’s internal monthly magazine, The Outpost, for which deductions kept being made every month even when the magazine went out of print for more than three years. We were not told where the money went and no-one would listen when we requested that our money not be deducted.”
When the government launched Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle, meant to provide free houses to the more than 700 000 people affected by Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, senior officers allegedly benefited most from the new scheme, despite police having been the destroyers of backyard shacks themselves.
“I was based at the PGHQ’s human resources section by then and we were told to compile names and ID numbers of police officers so that they would benefit from the programme,” said a serving member of the ZRP. “When the list of beneficiaries was posted in various newspapers, Wayne Bvudzijena, then an Assistant Commissioner and national head of the police press and liaison office, was heading the list.
Other forms of corruption are said to include the nomination process for the lucrative United Nations assignments outside the country, with spaces apparently reserved for only those who are known to support Zanu (PF) and Chihuri’s closest bootlickers. (*not his real name)
Post published in: Analysis