THE Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) says it has arrested 235 public officials for illegal land deals and other various offences including criminal abuse of office and fraud.
Zacc commissioner Gabriel Chaibva said the cases were forwarded to the National Prosecuting Authority of Zimbabwe for further management.
Of the recorded cases, 36 were completed while “tainted assets with an estimated value of US$135 million” were also recorded, he said.
“In year 2022, the commission received a total of 684 complaints of suspected corruption and of these, Harare recorded 481 cases,” Chaibva said at a workshop on Land and Corruption in Zimbabwe hosted by Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) on Monday.
“Midlands 58, Bulawayo 43, Masvingo 42, Mashonaland West 17, Mashonaland Central and Manicaland had 16 cases each, Mashonaland East (8), Matabeleland North (2) and Matabeleland South (1).”
The commission said many corruption cases were recorded at the urban councils and rural district councils.
“The reports of criminal abuse of duty and fraud remain the most prevalent crimes reported in 2022. These corruption tendencies were worsened by the emergence of land barons,” he said.
TIZ executive director Tafadzwa Chikumbu said they received many cases of human rights violations linked to land invasions.
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“Recently so many people were evicted but they were not compensated,” Chikumbu said.
“There are other cases [involving] the marginalised groups where investments come in the community and no one from that community benefits from those projects. Not even women and children benefit.”
Harare mayor Jacob Mafume accused land barons of exploiting loopholes in the system to sell unserviced land, leading to legal and social complications.
“Land barons have been a menace,” Mafume said. “We need to have a holistic approach, firstly we need to ban any invasion of any sort, and secondly we need to create proper criminal offences and thirdly, stop the selling of unserviced land.”
He also outlined plans by Harare to revise its master plan to address land issues comprehensively.
Zanu PF Manicaland Youth League provincial chairperson Stanley Sakupwanya accused councils of facilitating land corruption.
“Most of these land barons would produce council papers and all these double allocations that we are seeing are all because of the council,” he said.
