Does the Mnangagwa regime have a different definition of corruption than the rest of us?

Zimbabwe is a strange place to stay.

Yesterday, the world marked International Anti-Corruption Day, and President Emmerson Mnangagwa addressed the nation with familiar-sounding commitments to "zero tolerance" against corruption. 

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His words, amplified by state broadcaster ZBC, were polished, confident, and filled with statistics meant to reassure Zimbabweans that the war against graft is being won. 

Yet for millions of citizens who live daily with empty hospital shelves, collapsing schools, broken roads, and a shrinking economy, the speech felt like another exercise in managed optics rather than an honest reckoning with the scale of the crisis.

No reasonable person disputes that there have been arrests, prosecutions, and convictions under the current administration. 

We cannot deny that around 2,500 cases have been investigated, more than 800 dockets referred to the National Prosecuting Authority, and that assets reportedly worth US$20 million have been recovered. 

On paper, this sounds like progress. 

In reality, it raises a far more uncomfortable question: how can a government celebrate recovering US$20 million over five years in a country that independent estimates suggest loses around US$3 billion every single year to corruption, mainly through illicit financial flows, minerals smuggling, shadowy procurement deals, and well-coordinated cartel activity? 

How can leaders boast about scraping together a glass of water while the nation is bleeding from a severed artery?

Let us be honest with ourselves. 

If Zimbabwe has lost an estimated US$3 billion annually to corruption, then over the five years since the launch of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, the country may have haemorrhaged up to US$15 billion. 

Against that backdrop, US$20 million is not a victory; it is a rounding error. 

It is not evidence of a serious war on corruption; it is evidence of how small, selective, and politically convenient the campaign has been.

The president proudly cites a 60% conviction rate. 

But conviction of whom? 

This is the heart of the problem. 

The targets of these prosecutions are overwhelmingly "small fish": low-level public servants, junior police officers at roadblocks, border officials taking bribes, or hospital staff exploiting desperate patients or prospective students. 

These acts are wrong, criminal, and deserving of punishment. 

They corrode the social fabric and traumatise ordinary families. 

But let us not insult the intelligence of Zimbabweans by pretending that these are the people bleeding the country dry.

A police officer demanding a bribe at a traffic checkpoint cannot deprive hospitals of cancer machines. 

A corrupt nurse demanding money for a training slot cannot collapse the national power grid. 

A border official facilitating small-scale smuggling cannot empty the national treasury. 

These are crimes, yes - but they are not the crimes that have turned Zimbabwe into a graveyard of broken public services and stolen futures.

The people responsible for that level of damage are not standing in the dock. 

They are standing at the high table of power. 

They are walking freely, dining with ministers, funding party events, and, in some cases, being rewarded with senior positions in the ruling party, ZANU-PF. 

Some are even whispered about as potential presidential successors. 

How do we reconcile that with any serious claim of "zero tolerance"?

What kind of anti-corruption crusade celebrates itself while the most notorious tenderpreneurs in the country are paraded in public as "businessmen and philanthropists"? 

What moral universe allows individuals who have never built a factory, never run a verifiable export business, never pioneered any genuine innovation, to suddenly amass obscene wealth that allows them to buy private jets, charter helicopters, and drive fleets of luxury vehicles - and yet never once be asked, by the highest offices in the land, a simple question: "How did you make your money?"

If those in power were challenged to name even one legitimate, verifiable company owned by some of these so-called tycoons, capable of generating such insane wealth, what would they say? 

Silence? 

Deflection? 

More praise? 

The truth is painfully simple: in the political culture that has taken root, corruption is not defined by the theft of public wealth. 

It is defined by whether one is inside or outside the circle of political protection.

This is why we witness the grotesque spectacle of men and women who loot hundreds of millions from public coffers later appearing in public, throwing cash and cars "like confetti at a wedding." 

This is why hospitals have no basic painkillers, no cancer machines, no diagnostic equipment, while those responsible for the rot are celebrated as role models. 

This is why schools are in ruins while a tiny elite flies overhead in helicopters. 

And this is why the president can, with a straight face, speak of "zero tolerance" while the real architects of national suffering enjoy total immunity.

Fast-Track Courts and special anti-corruption strategies are meaningless when untouchables exist. 

You cannot "weed out corruption without fear or favour" while fear and favour are the very operating principles of your system. 

A serious anti-corruption drive is not measured by how many small offenders you parade before the cameras. 

It is measured by whether the politically connected are treated the same as the powerless. 

By that standard, Zimbabwe is not fighting corruption. 

It is managing it. 

Containing it.

Weaponising it against political enemies, where the rare targeting of so-called "big fish" is less about justice and more about punishing those who have fallen out of favour with the ruling elite.

Sanitising it for allies.

So perhaps we are asking the wrong question. 

Instead of asking why corruption persists, maybe we should ask whether the Mnangagwa administration even defines corruption the way ordinary Zimbabweans do. 

To us, corruption is what leaves our mothers dying in under-equipped hospitals. 

It is what condemns our children to overcrowded, under-resourced classrooms. 

It is what steals jobs, dignity, and hope. 

But to those in power, corruption seems to be something far narrower: a crime committed by the weak, the politically isolated, or the expendable.

As long as that remains the definition, as long as the biggest looters are never regarded as criminals who belong behind bars, then all talk of "zero tolerance" is nothing more than theatre. 

And Zimbabweans have grown tired of watching performances while their country is being quietly robbed to death.

Maybe, indeed, this regime has a completely different understanding of corruption from the rest of us. 

And that, more than any statistic, is the real national tragedy.

© Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/