Begging for bribes

The police in Zimbabwe are not being paid well, if they are being paid at all. A couple of weeks ago I was told by a colleague that the police hadn’t been paid since September 2008 – he’d heard this from two different policemen. His comment to me was “Zimbabwean policeman have all become beggars”.

It was put to me differently a couple of days ago when another friend said she had been told by someone in the police that they had been told to “earn their own money”. What on earth does this mean? Are they being told to go out and find second jobs, or are they being told to “do what you need to do to survive”? Zimbabweans would probably assume that latter.

The reason why my colleague described the policeman as ‘beggars’ is because of the behaviour of some at roadblocks. They’ll ask you their routine questions such as ‘Where are you going and where have you come from?’ along with the other routine question that always makes me stifle laughter: ‘Have you got any weapons?’ Some then ask if you have a ‘gift for them’, or if they see you with loaves of bread on the backseat, if they can have (not pay for) some of your bread. I guess this is begging but it looks like corruption to me.

That’s a Zimbabwean’s experience; I think the South African experience in our country must be so much worse. There is no other word for it other than ‘corruption’. It pays to have Zim number plates when you’re driving through a roadblock here. Zim plates are usually waved through with a brief question or two; the real income seems to come from the vehicles with the South African white ‘Gauteng Province’ number plates. I have feeling that this may be the dark side of telling the police to “earn your own money”.

I’ve been taking note of which cars have been pulled over whenever I’ve gone through a roadblock recently, and there was one block where I saw ten different vehicles stopped – all with GP plates – and I watched the yellow Zim plates being waved through after we went through. It was completely brazen and unsubtle. These cars will be driven by South Africans, or by Zimbabweans who have cars in South Africa and are travelling back, usually laden with goods and stuff for their families. From what I’ve been told, bribes are extorted from a lot of the ‘runners’ and ‘border crossers’, in Rand. I can’t figure out why else South African cars in particular would need to be stopped by the police.

My favourite roadblocks were along the road to the Matopos. Until recently there were two of them, set up ridiculously close to each other. (If it is weapons they are looking for, then I’m not sure where they think vehicles would find them in between too such close roadblocks on the way to the Matopos!) As with all the other road blocks, the police manning these two road blocks were also stopping cars with GP plates and allowing Zim cars through. But what amused me, is the fact that the police seemed to pull down the roadblocks at approximately 5pm.

I would have thought that if anyone was going to try and drive around with weapons, then doing so under the cover of darkness might be a good time to do so, so why close up at 5pm? The cynic in me thinks it probably has more to do with the fact that most people don’t like to drive around at night because of the potholes and animals on the roads, and I assume that extends to cars with GP plates as well. I’m guessing that the real business (corruption) is slow at night, so the police go home to get a good night’s sleep ready to start another hard day’s work the next day.

Such a shame they aren’t busy catching crooks or investigating the illegal abductions of human rights activists.

This entry was posted by Hope on Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 3:10 am. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.