Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) chairperson
Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo has only been in the job for a month, but already
two high profile government officials are behind bars facing corruption
charges.
Matanda-Moyo says she is determined to lead an effective
fight against graft, which she said has become entrenched in various
institutions.
Zacc has in the past been described as a tool used to fight
Zanu PF factional wars.
However, Matanda-Moyo (LMM) told Alpha Media Holdings
chairman Trevor Ncube (TN) in an exclusive interview on the platform: In
Conversations with Trevor, that
processes were already underway to restore confidence in
Zacc.
She also vowed to investigate cartels that allegedly
control Zimbabwe’s fuel industry. Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo, welcome to In Conversation
with Trevor.
LMM: Thank you Trevor
TN: You have been on the hot seat for less than a month.
How hot is the seat?
LMM: The seat is quite hot Trevor.
TN: Try and unpack that for us, what it means.
LMM: What it means is that when I came on to that seat the
public had lost confidence in Zacc and coming in to such a seat has always been
hot and the public
have so many expectations from Zacc and therefore the seat
becomes hot.
TN: Are you intimidated? Are you frightened?
LMM: Not at all.
TN: Tell us about that.
LMM: I am not frightened.
TN: How confident are you, that you are going to meet the
public expectations?
LMM: I am quite confident, looking at my background. I have
come from a very long way. I rose through the system.
I joined the system as a public prosecutor. I have
prosecuted before.
From prosecution I moved to the civil side of the law and I
was in the civil division of the Attorney General’s office and I rose up to the
ranks up to the
director of the civil division for some time then I moved
to be the director of public prosecutions before moving to the bench.
TN: So that answers the question who is Loice Matanda Moyo.
Well, let me get into the matter, you are married to the Foreign Affairs
minister. You have got a
lovely family. Do you want to share with us, how many kids you
have?
LMM: Well, we have got two children of our own. Two boys
and one has just graduated this year with a degree in software engineering.
So we are quite excited. The other one is doing Lower 6 at
the moment. Two boys, but I have got a sister who passed on in 2004,
she left two children.
I have taken those in as well. So they are our children,
again we are looking after them. And the girl last year she had 9As at O Level.
TN: Congratulations!
LMM: Thank you.
TN: You are a mother, a wife, you are a judge.
LMM: Yes I am a mother and a wife.
TN: That is a busy life. People talk about work, life
balance? Do you have that?
LMM: Yes I have got time to go to my sons’ schools. I look
at their books.
I talk to the teachers. I have got time to cook for my
family; I prepare the meals once in a while. We have meals together.
TN: What’s your favourite meal?
LMM: Traditional, for my family. My husband is traditional.
He likes zviyo sadza and everything, but the boys will not take that. Road
runner, nyevhe, that
sort of stuff.
TN: I must ask, I am struck by the double barreled surname
Matanda-Moyo. What is the meaning of that?
LMM: Well, Matanda is my maiden name and Moyo is the
married name.
Why I put a double barrelled name is to show my
independence. I am my own person.
I don’t want people to feel that I am owned by anybody that
is why the double barrelled name. My father’s name and husband’s name. So
that’s it.
TN: You are stating that you are independent. And in a way
answering people who say you are married to the minister of Foreign Affairs.
Does that hinder you or help you in your every day job?
LMM: Being married to a minister I think it’s actually a
positive thing because most people have been intimidated by ministers and
people of high profile but because I have been married to one, I am not
intimidated by people of high office.
So, I look at corruption from a corruption perspective and
not from a point of who is involved. So that actually helps me a lot.
TN: So you are telling us that there won’t be any sacred
cows.
LMM: Not at all.
TN: So, you will follow the paper trail?
LMM: I will follow the paper trail. And once there is
evidence of corruption those people will be brought to book.
TN: Your pronouncements since you came into this job have,
I think, have given the public some idea that you mean business. How are you
going to do things
differently?
LMM. You see when I took over from the former Zacc
(chairperson), the office was not well-resourced.
So, I am going to make sure that the office is
well-resourced so that it is able to carry out its mandate.
I am going to have the personnel trained so that the
personnel themselves are able to deal with the matters that come before them.
And we are not going to be
given any instructions from anywhere. We are our own
people. We are going to ensure that Zacc is as independent as expected. That’s
how we do our job
differently.
TN: You’re sounding confident that you don’t expect
political hurdles coming in your way to stop you from doing your job?
LMM: I don’t expect any and I also believe that by
appointing a judge, the political leaders do not want to interfere with Zacc.
TN: Let’s go to the issue that you have raised to do with
resources. What is your budget at the moment?
LMM: Well, we haven’t received any budget allocation, but
we are requesting what we want to work with and so far the government is
actually coming to assist us
and giving us what we want.
TN: What do you want?
LMM: Computers. We want to computerise our docket system.
We want to manage dockets with computerisation because as
you see trying to manage dockets using the manual system is quite difficult.
Papers can be lost
through the way, but once you have papers computerised then
our job will be easier and our evidence more secure.
TN: So granted this is the first month that you are in your
job. Going forward where do you see the biggest need for financial resources
arising from as far as
your work is concerned?
LMM: The biggest will be the investigation department and
the asset recovery department. That’s where we want to put most of our
resources in because that is
where our mandate is. So in order to fulfil our mandate we
really need to put resources in that department.
TN: Tell us about how you handle a case from start to
finish. Tell us in brief. Who is the complainant? Who brings the case to you
and then investigation?
LMM: Anyone can bring a matter, [complainant] can be a
member of the public it can be employees from that company.
It can be from the executive or political leaders.
So once we receive a case we then open a report book that
we have received this type of report and that matter is allocated investigative
officers.
They then find out whether there is evidence indeed and
while there is evidence we compile that evidence and then put it into a docket
system and put in
witnesses’ statements. We want the documentary evidence of
any other evidence that will assist in bringing the person to book or in
recovering the assets.
When that’s done, we look into the evidence itself and see
whether any crime has been committed and then we formulate our charges and then
bring the person for
a warned and cautioned statement, if it is criminal in
nature. If not criminal in nature and its only civil, our legal department will
then bring the matter
for suing in the civil courts.
TN: We have had instances prior to your coming where high
level politicians have been arrested and the cases have been to court and
nobody has been actually to
prison for crimes that they allegedly committed and that
kind of thing. That has affected the public’s confidence in Zacc’s ability to
carry out its work. Has
this now changed with you coming in?
LMM: Yes, with my coming in I have actually insisted in
thorough investigations. The investigation department will investigate the
matter. Before it goes
anywhere it is vetted by our legal department here.
And then the legal department looks at all the other legal
elements where they have been proven in the dockets and once they are satisfied
that docket will be
taken to the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority).
Again at the NPA before the docket is taken to court, they
also look at the evidence and if they feel that there is anything missing, they
refer it back for
investigation. So that’s the system that we have put in
place.
TN: So you are assuring the public that the investigative
side has been sharpened. That we are not going to have these cases like what is
now popularly known
as catch and release. So this is the end of catch and
release?
LMM: That is the end of catch and release.
TN: We have got a high level case at the moment, I the one
before the courts. There is confidence that the evidence that has been
unearthed is sufficient to
get the prosecution and determination in court.
LMM: Yes, according to us the evidence that we are getting
will be enough to secure a conviction though we can’t go into details of the
matter because the
matter is sub judice.
TN: Let’s go to the issue of capacity within you. How
comfortable are you with all aspects of capacity within Zacc. The investigation
capacity and all the
deliverables that are required to get prosecution
successfully?
LMM: At the moment it’s out of reach, but what we have done
is we are making synergies with our local universities. We are coming up with
training modules and then we are going to be training our officers. I am happy
to say that training has already started, i.e in-house training.
We carried out a lot of in-house training for our
investigators and our legal officers on what is expected of them and how to
conduct their work. So, I am
quite confident that the skills bit will be there in a
short piece of time. Give us about three months, we should be talking of a
different story.
TN: There is a lot of unsubstantiated allegations about a
lot of cases. We have seen party associated youths come up with allegations,
which were not tested.
Does that kind of behaviour, help your work in anyway?
LMM: That kind of behaviour does not help anybody. As I
have said in my press statement. You cannot deal with corruption at a press
conference. Corruption must involve evidence. It is not about tarnishing the image and
people’s names. People have got rights too. You see. So, if you do not have any
evidence against anyone of corruption, there is no reason to do a press
statement and then list people as corrupt. As Zacc we do not support that.
We actually call upon anyone who has got allegations of
corruption to report the matters for proper investigations and not to go about
it at a press
conference.
TN: Are you going to act against those guys that went on to
announce multitudes of allegations against people without any evidence?
LMM: Yes we have called those people to come forward with
the evidence they have and so far they have not come forward with the evidence
and if they continue
we will be forced to take action. As Zacc we don’t want to
look like we are following somebody. To me it looks like they are trying to
frustrate our work as
Zacc and I am not impressed by that at all.
TN: It’s tragic in a way because they are minimising
something, which is very important that society is dealing with in a big way,
which society finds is
affecting the quality of our life and for people to go out
and make allegations without quoting evidence is a culture that we should try
to discourage.
LMM: Yes, we should discourage that culture. We shouldn’t
fight corruption politically. Corruption is a crime and has nothing to do with
politics and anyone
can commit corruption irrespective of political
affiliation.
So let’s not try and politicise the fight against
corruption. Let’s fight corruption as a nation. Let’s come together as nation
to fight corruption that’s why my message is quite clear to Zimbabwe. Let’s come on board
as Zimbabweans and assist each other and fight corruption. Let’s not politicise
it because once we politicise corruption, we trivialise the matter.
TN: Corruption is not partisan.
LMM: It is not partisan at all.
TN: It’s colour blind.
LMM: It’s colour blind
TN: Corruption drives away investors. We have heard of
cartels in the fuel industry, cartels in the forex, in the market distorting
the market, making people’s
lives difficult, crippling the economy. Are you looking
into that and if you are, what progress are you making?
LMM: Yes, we are looking into that. We want to leave no
stone unturned because our investigators are quite busy investigating. We have
had it in our
intelligence department, which is going ahead with
investigations. So we are still waiting for those reports to come through and
once we look at those reports,
we then take the matters to our investigation unit and they
will come up with dockets. We really want to break those cartels because if we
want to move on as a
country, those cartels need to be broken.
TN: People are going to say you are a judge married to the
Foreign Affairs minister, how are we to believe that the judge won’t have
sacred cows when it comes
to dealing with corruption?
LMM: I am only married to one person, it’s the Foreign
Affairs minister and it’s not the whole executive. And I do not have any
relationship with the
executive. I do not move in their circles and I am not
close to the executive, so I am not going to be influenced by somebody and
being a judge I understand
what it means to be independent. I take my oath of office
seriously. And if you check my record I have never favoured anybody in my
dealings and I have been
dealing with those cases as a judge on the bench.
TN: So you will be able to push against the political
interests?
LMM: Yes, I can.
TN: Justice, what will be the key three or so things that
you think will be important for you to be successful in your office.
LMM: For me to be successful in my office I need support
from the public. I will need the legal framework in place like a Whistleblowers
Act as I have been
saying it is a very crucial piece of information. You can’t
fight corruption without the witnesses. This corruption is happening at work
places, for example.
So, once somebody comes over with some information,
basically they will receive a backlash from the organisation that they will be
working for. Some will even
be fired. Some will even be suspended. We have seen it in
the past. And it’s very crucial that we get the legal framework to fight
corruption.
TN: What’s the status of that legal framework?
LMM: It’s in the Attorney General’s office.
TN: Do you expect any improvement in your work once the
whistleblowers’ protection and the witness protection is in place?
LMM: Definitely, people will be brave to come forward. They
will be confident to bring their matters knowing that no repercussions will
come their way.
TN: When you look back let’s say five years back, what
would success look like to you five years down the line when you are writing
your reports. What would
success look like?
LMM: Success to me will be a reduction in the corruption incidences
in the country where we have strong institutions. We need strong institutions
like our
judiciary, NPA [and] police force.
We all need them to be strong so that they will be able to
deal with whatever comes their way, to deal with the scourge of corruption so
that our country will
even be prosperous and we start seeing investors coming in,
as corruption scares away investors. So we will have a better country five
years down the line,
once we start fighting corruption.
I am hopeful that we are going to get there.
TN: The job we have got is a tough job.
LMM: Yes it is.
TN: It’s a dangerous job.
LMM: Yes, indeed
TN: Do you feel safe?
LMM: I feel safe. I am very prayerful. I actually believe
in God. I want to believe that I am not here accidentally, that this is divine
appointment.
And I am not afraid of anybody and I want to believe that
Zimbabweans generally are not violent people.
What we are simply trying to do is to remove the scourge of
corruption from the country but I know corruption fights back. It’s a dangerous
job.
TN: Corruption can be well resourced. Are you ready for
that? It fights back.
LMM: It fights back. That’s why we want to be resourced and
we will need to also backup on our security side.
TN: If we are to be candid with ourselves, corruption has
become a sub-culture. It affects the politicians. It’s the police who are
corrupt, judiciary there is corruption, your common citizens are paying bribes for
drivers’ licences and all sorts of things. Where do you start? One would go to
the extent that we are all corrupt, where are you gonna start?
LMM: Exactly, corruption has actually become a way of life
in our country.
It’s actually sad, but what we have done here we have
departmentalised Zacc.
We have got the awareness and publicity department and it’s
going right into the communities to make people aware of the dangers of
corruption and how
corruption can destroy a nation and we are also coming up
with preventative methods to try and prevent the occurrence of corruption. So whilst we want to punish corruption which has happened
in the past. It is also our interest to prevent future corruption.
So, we are working on all those things at the same time.
TN: How big is that, the interface with the public,
educating the public?
LMM: I think so far it has about 30.
TN: With the staffing level?
LMM: We are coming up with an organogram where we want to
decentralise in the regions so that we will communicate our message faster and
we will be with people in those regions.
As you are also aware the Judicial Service Commission have
opened anti-corruption courts in Mutare, Masvingo, Gweru and Bulawayo.
So it’s us who are lagging behind and we are not in those
cities.
TN: How do you interface with your anti-corruption courts?
LMM: We are supposed to be feeding into the anti-corruption
courts.
TN: And the ZRP anti-corruption unit, is there a link
between you and them?
LMM: Yes we want to ensure that we do not duplicate our
functions because if we don’t interface then there is a possibility for us
investigating the same
matter.
So we are interacting with the police anti-corruption unit.
TN: If the police is involved Justice, why do you want
arresting powers?
LMM: The police are the police and we are an independent
unit.
Zacc was established after Zimbabwe ratified the UN
Convention against corruption and it’s a requirement under article 5 that there
be an agent which fights
corruption.
So it is a requirement within the UNGAC and the Sadc
protocol that there be independent agents to fight corruption.
The police cannot handle corruption at the moment seeing
they are also investigating murders, robberies, theft. Just think of any other
crime.
TN: So having arresting powers is an international best
practice. Is that what you saying?
LMM: Yes, and some in the world have gone further to
prosecute their own matters. In other countries they actually prosecute their
own matters.
TN: Can we expect that in the country. Do we have that
capacity? Is that what you want?
LMM: Yes, in future but right now we don’t have capacity,
right now we will feed into the NPA. Yes and see how it goes.
TN: Let’s go the National Society Security Authority (NSSA)
report, which you have looked at. I wish I was you having seen what’s in there.
We have got
(Tourism) minister Priscah Mupfumira, who is in remand
prison at the present moment. Are we to expect any other bombshells?
LMM: Yes, from the NSSA report more people will fall.
TN: And you cannot tell who they are?
LMM: Yes of course I won’t tell you because I am bound by
ethics.
TN: But there is going to be more shocks coming?
LMM: Yes.
TN: Any timelines like when is this going to happen?
LMM: We are still investigating because before arrest we
want to be sure that the persons are likely guilty.
We don’t want to harass people who are innocent.
TN: And also you have a peep in the Auditor General’s
report, which was shocking, been shocking over the past many years and nothing
had happened to anybody.
Can we expect something different thus time. Are we to
expect you to take action following the current Auditor General’s report?
LMM: Yes, we have started following up on the AG’s report.
I think last week we had convictions of persons who were selling drugs from
hospitals because we
really thought that was at the people’s hearts to find that
at Parirenyatwa Hospital, for example, they do not have drugs yet some people
are stealing those
drugs and selling them on the black market.
So those people are now being convicted and are awaiting
their sentencing.
So we are following up on the AG’s reports. What we have
done is we have gone through the reports and we are isolating them into criminal
and civil.
Where its civil we just want to refer them to our asset
recovery unit so that we recover those monies from organisations and persons
mentioned.
TN: No catch and release?
LMM: Yes no catch and release. I promise the nation on
that.
TN: Crime becomes sophisticated and I am delighted to hear
you talking about requesting technology. How ready are you to be able to track
high level
corruption, corruption that might involve international
cartels. How ready are you to deal with that?
LMM: We are still working on that. What we have done at the
moment is that we are coming up with memoranda of understanding with other
countries.
One with Botswana is ready for signatures. We are just
waiting for Botswana to tell us when. We have requested a date.
And with Zambia we are drafting an MOU. We have actually
also engaged the international communities to do tracking.
And they are keen to come on board to help us track where
our monies ended up in.
So once we find out that we have got monies let’s say in
Dubai or in UK we engage those countries to see how we can recover those
assets.
TN: Is it really helpful?
LMM: Yes it is. So helpful.
TN: I asked you about what success is going to look like in
five years. As you sit here you are sounding very confident, passionate, you
are ready for the job. Reality is there may be some pushback, will that weigh
you down?
LMM: Not at all. I am passionate to fight corruption. I
have been in the field for a long time. And so I will not be worn down.
TN: Tell us about the transition being a judge on the bench
and you headed to Zacc. How is that?
LMM: It’s just coming to the other side of the world. My
work is going to be tried by other judges there.
So, yes its quite tough time. It will give me pressure
because my colleagues will have to weigh my work. So I will try to give them
the quality that they look
for.
TN: Justice, Zimbabweans are watching you, they are
expecting so much from you. I am going to give you an opportunity now to
address Zimbabweans. What are you
going to tell them concerning corruption and what are you
going to do?
LMM: Yes, I want to tell them that I am ready to fight
corruption but I cannot do it alone.
I want Zimbabweans to come on board so that we fight this
corruption together.
If we fail to get there as a nation and if we succeed as a
nation.
So if Zimbabwe is not supportive, if you don’t come along
and we fight this corruption, then we lose together. So I want to tell the
people of Zimbabwe that this is their war but I have come as their leader. I am just leading the process and I will need followers. I
can’t fight it alone. So come through and fight this together I won’t let you
down
TN: What do you expect from the public?
LMM: From the public I expect cooperation, I expect those
with information to come with the information.
I expect the witnesses to come up and testify in court and
testify boldly so that we get those convictions that we want.
We want to recover the assets from those persons who have
robbed the nation of the much wanted resources that we want.
I want those members of the public with that information to
come forward so that they help me with that evidence so that we recover what is
owed to the nation
and we put the assets back to public space.
We also have the mandate combat corruption in the private
sector and I also want the private sector not to offer bribes to the public
sector because it takes two to tango and you find that sometimes it’s the private
sector, which actually comes to government and start offering these percentages
in companies they say give me this and I will give you 5%.
The private sector must stop offering bribes. We must go
back to having corporate governance and being accountable, so that we actually
nip this corruption in
the bud.
TN: Any messages to politicians?
LMM: Politicians do not interfere with us. We want to do
our job independently and may we also stop being corrupt and go into politics
because we want we want
to serve the nation.
Don’t go into politics because you want to line up your
pockets.
So it’s time to reassess yourselves and if you got into
politics to align your pockets with ill-gotten wealth get out of politics.
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