By Own Correspondent- According to a 2018 Human Rights Report prepared by the US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, “police frequently arrested citizens for low-level corruption while ignoring reports implicating high-level businesspersons and politicians”.

The country continued to experience both petty and grand corruption, defined respectively by Transparency International Zimbabwe as an “everyday abuse of entrusted power by low- to mid-level public officials” and “an abuse of high-level power by political elites”.

The report also exposed government over its failure to enforce its policy requiring public officials to declare their assets and disclose interests in transactions that form part of their public mandate.

Read the report:

“In February, President Emmerson Mnangagwa ordered a mandatory declaration of assets by senior officials. Arrests of senior government officials followed; however, most were Mnangagwa’s political opponents or supporters of former First Lady Grace Mugabe’s Generation 40 (G-40) faction.

In May, Mnangagwa created an anti-corruption body within the Office of the President to carry out investigations, by-passing the constitutionally-mandated Zimbabwe Anti-corruption Commission. The administration has since recorded one conviction related to corruption while most of those arrested were released on relaxed bail conditions.”-Newsday