2024/11/27 by Shumba, Missias
#FOS: Economics and business
paper · doi:10.71946/joiip-v1i1-2023-05
Bureaucratic corruption stands rooted firmly among the major debilitating obstacles constraining progress and positive transformation in emerging markets. This was confirmed by investigating its nature, causes and organization in Zimbabwe’s two key informal market sectors, namely the Street-based Vegetable and Fruit Vendors (Mavhenda/Abathengisi), and the Street-wise Bureau de Change (Chenji-mani/Osiphatheleni) sectors that sprouted in the country’s towns and cities after the turn of the new millennium. By analyzing qualitative data drawn chiefly from in-depth interviews with conveniently and purposively sampled twelve participants generated out of a population of eighteen in each of the three case studies undertaken in three separate cities/towns in the country, this study unveiled a prodigious view of the dynamic trends that bureaucratic corruption has tended to adopt in post-millennium Zimbabwe, and particularly also in contexts that involve protracted interfacing between these fledgling informal markets and key public entities, namely, law-enforcement and municipal agencies. The study’s findings demonstrated that corruption involving public officials and operators of these sprawling markets was prevalent, that rather than conflicting, the former and the latter collaborated, and that the former strived to cushion own strained corporate rewarding systems, while the latter used the vice to guarantee own market protection. The study refreshes attention on the sticky subject of corruption and furnishes academics, researchers and policy-makers with a panoramic view of its extent in contemporary Zimbabwe. Authorities are urged to urgently intervene by addressing the interests of both parties in the corrupt relationship before the vice incinerates the gains of national progress enshrined in the country’s highly subscribed innovation and industrialization agenda.