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Zimbabwe’s stunning overthrow of former President Robert Mugabe shocked the world – mostly because the people of Zimbabwe had just cause to oust him for decades. As president of Zimbabwe, Mugabe was so publicly corrupt that he led to the coining of the term “kleptocrat.” Since his overthrow, the new President Emmerson Mnangagwa has made combating corruption one of the priority focuses of his presidency. During his first State of the Nation address in December 2017 Mnangagwa said: “On individual cases of corruption, every case must be investigated and punished in accordance with the dictates of our laws. There should be no sacred cows. My government will have zero tolerance towards corruption and this has already begun.” Zimbabwe’s neighbors can attest to the fact that implementing and enforcing ambitious anti-corruption reforms are nonetheless quite challenging.
For a country with rampant corruption embedded across most business and industrial sectors, it is not surprising that Zimbabwe ranks 157th (out of 180) in Transparency International’s (TI) 2017 Corruption Perception Index, and 159th out of 190 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report, but that does not tell the full story. Read More...