Parly should rethink RBZ immunity

Columnists
It must have been an oversight when our parliamentarians acceded to granting RBZ officials immunity from prosecution through amendments to the RBZ Act in 2010. By granting RBZ officials immunity, what our lawmakers have done is to encourage abuse and excesses on the part of those at the Apex Bank in the discharge of their duties knowing full well that no one would ever take them to task.

 

This has therefore left those who are supposed to be superintended over by the RBZ exposed to the excesses and abuses of these officials.

It needs pointing out that the RBZ is not manned by saints or the descendants from St Peters as Gideon Gono, the central bank governor, always alludes to in many of his monetary policy statements. It follows therefore that, as human beings, its officials are not infallible — they are also capable of committing acts of omission and commission. Worse still, they can also get corrupt to the bone or be unnecessarily heavy-handed in a bid to settle personal scores. Because of that, it is extremely ne

cessary that those at the RBZ who go beyond their briefs should be made to account for their actions without any exceptions.

For starters, the RBZ is not the only regulatory authority in Zimbabwe. There are so many of them. Each and every industry has its own regulatory body whose mandate is to ensure that players in a particular sector play the game according to the rules. Of course, there are other regulatory bodies such as the Competition and Tariff Commission whose oversight role tends to overlap across the board. But all the same, their officials are answerable for their actions.

There should therefore not be any exception in the application of the law for there is nothing special that separates the RBZ from these other regulatory bodies.

It is actually incumbent upon the regulatory authorities themselves to exercise fairness and impartiality at all times and not be seen to be behaving like a spider web which catches only small insects only to let the big ones through.