By Tatiana Mhararira
Masvingo residents have called upon the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) to intensify awareness programmes particularly in rural areas and churches to educate people on coruption effects to promote increased reporting.
The residents complained that information on corruption was not clear to them and most people think corruption only involved people in higher offices.
Speaking at a community engagement meeting hosted by Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) in partnership with TellZim in Masvingo on April 8, 2025 Masvingo resident Sungano Zvarebwanashe said ZACC was supposed to escalate education and spread into remote areas.
“We encourage ZACC to take their education and community engagement programmes to rural areas since Masvingo is mostly constituted by rural areas. People there need to be enlightened on these issues as they are also affected,” said Zvarebwanashe.
She said most programmes mainly targeted the urban population but the rural folk was being abused corruptly by officials and traditional leaders hence the need to take awareness there.
Another resident Pastor David Vurayayi said ZACC should also educate religious and community leaders on corruption so that they cascade the message to their followers.
“As a religious leader I also recommend ZACC to teach pastors as well as community leaders on transparency and corruption so that they educate their followers instead of using the Police, residents are afraid and have no confidence in the police so they won’t listen,” said Vurayayi.
People with disabilities also voiced concern saying the education should also spread to their constituents as they too were affected by corruption.
Prazen Jakata said ZACC as a commission had not organised any programme targeting them and said they only hear about it in the media.
“Have your education as ZACC gone down to PWDs communities? We have never seen you. We actually hear about you from the media and somewhere else.
“We are saying come let’s have a dialogue as PWDs; we have issues that we want to share with you and I can count many issues that we do not know where to refer to because if we go to the police they will say this is not a matter that we should address then we go to the courts which then becomes very expensive for us to start igniting the issue with the courts due to lack of resources,” said Jakata.
Jakata said there was a pending case which involved Masvingo City Council which he said he thought ZACC could look into.
“We have an issue with our council whereby five residential stands were allocated to PWDs and they disappeared within the council chambers and we were told to report to ZACC by the council members but we did not know where to find you,” said Jakata.
On its part, ZACC representative, Masvingo Office Investigating officer Langton Shayanowako said they had taken note of the concerns and said it was work in progress having started by decentralising to provincial offices.
“We have taken note of the concerns, we will recommend to the superiors but I want to assure you that its work in progress and ZACC used to be centralised and now you can see we now have a provincial office, it means we are doing all we can to reach all areas,” said Shayanowako.
TIZ representative during the engagement said they had taken note of the need and with resources permitting, they would engage TellZim and other organizations to facilitate similar programmes in the rural areas.
