My friend, being an entrepreneur, has established a t-shirt business. Of course anyone will tell you that the key to a successful retail business is marketing. So, a few week ago, she decided to launch her brand in style with a launch party.

As good citizens, we went to our local police station to get the necessary clearances. Now last year, the Co-Ministers for Home Affairs publicly announced that all anyone needed to get a police clearance for an event was to report the event, who was holding it and how long it would be. The Ministers even said that as this was being done in the interest of public safety, there would be no need to pay any fees. It sounded simple when they said it, and being the Ministers responsible for this, I would think that they knew best.

It even seemed simple when we went to the police station. We told them about the launch, what it was for, and who was the contact person for it. The police checked if the bar had the necessary council licences and we got our clearance.

The afternoon of the party, I received a call from the police informing me that we did not have any clearances and I was to report to the police station. It wasn’t a problem with the licences for the establishment, which were in order; the police had a problem with the company that owned the brand. The exact problem, the officer could not articulate, but it was imperative that we go to the police station immediately.

Panicking, I consulted the bar manager who went, came back and reported: “Ah, they want a bribe.”

The bribe was a couple of T-shirts for the desk sergeants and some officers. It seems a small price to pay to establish a successful business. But isn’t it a sad state of affairs when any service involving a government institution must also necessarily involve bribery?

While my friend could afford to hand over t-shirts to the policemen, what happens to those entrepreneurs who cannot afford to pay? It’s not just the police that are asking for bribes, almost every government department involved in the establishment of business from the Company Registrar’s office to the City of Harare itself is illegally extracting large sums of money and goods from entrepreneurs. Surely the government, and in particular the Ministry of Small to Medium Enterprises must understand that corruption is killing small businesses.

The policy of encouraging entrepreneurship is a laudable one, but it will not work as long as corruption is allowed to flourish. If our politicians really want economic recovery (for further looting opportunities), then before they start looking East for handouts, they must plug the leaks that are happening in their own back yard.

This entry was posted on October 17th, 2010 at 3:13 pm by Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa and is filed under Activism, Economy, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.