HARARE — Zimbabwe’s capital Harare recorded the highest number of suspected corruption cases in 2022, accounting for more than 70% of the total complaints received by the anti-graft body, according to its annual report.
The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) said it received 684 complaints of suspected corruption cases in 2022, down 38% from 2021, mainly due to its prevention initiatives and systems review checks in local authorities and public entities.
Of the total complaints, 481 came from Harare, followed by 58 from Midlands province and 43 from Bulawayo, the second-largest city, the report said.
The report, which was presented in the Senate on February 6, said ZACC referred 308 cases back to its investigations department, 147 cases to the police, and 19 cases to other government departments and organizations.
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ZACC’s former chairperson Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo, who submitted the report to the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs before her resignation in December, said the commission had established a new selection committee to assess the complaints.
“The Selection Committee is responsible for screening and selecting cases that fall within the mandate of the Commission and those that do not,” she said in the report.
Beitbridge Senator Tambudzani Mohadi, who commented on the report in the Senate, urged ZACC to engage in international cooperation with other anti-corruption agencies and organizations, such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the African Union (AU).
She said this would help ZACC to learn from other countries’ experiences and adopt successful approaches to the Zimbabwean context.
She also called for ZACC to decentralize its reporting offices to border towns, which she said were corruption hotspots.
