A SOCIETY WITH WARPED NORMS

 Sir,

Society seems to have embraced corruption as a way of life. Many people are of the view that bribery is a way of life, saying they cannot see how they can avoid paying bribes to continue with their lives on a daily basis.

And seeing that this is now a norm, it means that it will be difficult to uproot it. There is no stigma, socially, attached to it and those doing it are tolerated by society.

Talking of bribery, traffic police officers seem to be the most notorious in South Africa, Mozambique and Eswatini. Zimbabwe is no exception here.

Injustice

Those involved in the transportation and logistics business can attest to this as they suffer injustice in this connection.
In some cases, there would be nothing wrong with their vehicles but traffic officers will find fault with anything and everything just to get the motorists to pay something. 

And the trick they use to get bribes is that they threaten motorists with hefty fines or even imprisonment in order to get them to succumb to the pressure to pay.
In some cases the motorists who have been conditioned by this practice, actually offer the bribe as admission of guilt for known traffic violations.
And that is even more dangerous to society as unroadworthy vehicles are allowed to use our roads with the consequence of accidents that would have otherwise been avoided. I mean, after paying the bribe the fault is never fixed.

Detection

When it comes to procurement, we get into a difficult and tricky territory. In this instance the detection of bribery is hard to achieve given that the briber and the bribed need to protect one another. And as a result people have been enriched and continue to be enriched.
Notwithstanding that there is procurement legislation for government and policies for parastatals but rules continue to be flouted with impunity by benefactors of this practice.

If government can flout the procurement policies; tell me who else will comply with this legislation. Unfortunately, the Legislature only goes as far as insisting on compliance and lets government get away with it.

The Legislature has an opportunity to tell government where to tow the line but it has reneged on its oversight function, to our detriment.

Corruption

The moves to include corruption (of which bribery is a part) in school curriculum was a good move to inculcate a culture that frowns upon bribery and corruption in general.

And like they say ‘catch them young’, as much as we cannot change this society, we can at least influence the norms of generations to come. Who knows; we could be at the threshold of creating a generation better than ourselves.

B Dlamini

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