BY PAIDAMOYO MAZULU ROSA Parks is not just a name in the United States. She is a torch-bearer when it comes to civil rights movements. Parks one day decided not to give her seat to a white person in a public bus. A moment of defiance that remains etched in United States history of blacks fighting for equality. The United States has a dark history when it comes to race relations. The world is still in shock after a white police officer killed George Floyd by choking him in a public square in May last year. Today, the Black Lives Matter movement has received support from most sporting codes across the world. Fighting a nation’s demons is a herculean task. It is made harder because many leaders are not ready for change. Change is a word many use for political campaigning but are not ready to implement. Soon after getting power, they claw back to their familiar territory. Zimbabwe has its demons too and the biggest of them is corruption, embezzlement of public funds and outright abuse of authority by leaders. This has been a blot on the country’s history with no less than one major scandal every decade and for some good measure, the main actors are the same. Notable among the scandals are the Grain Marketing Board grain scandal when the country woke up to empty silos. The minister in charge then Kumbirai Kangai (may his soul rest in peace) got away with it and lived to tell the tale. At the close of the first decade of independence, Zimbabwe had the Willowgate scandal. A scandal that sucked in Cabinet ministers who were behaving like car dealers, taking advantage of shortage of cars on the market. Two of the big names embroiled in the scandal are the now Foreign Affairs minister Frederick Shava and Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda. The lesson to the young and old is unmistakable — corruption pays. The 1990’s witnessed two major scandals — the abuse of War Victims Compensation Fund, and Civil Servants Housing Scheme. Many senior public officials were declared above 70% disability and given monetary compensation. The man at the centre was the late Chenjerai Hunzvi. He examined most of the beneficiaries and was rewarded with a ministerial post soon after the 2002 presidential election. In the 2000s, we witnessed the Reserve Bank Farm Mechanisation Programme where resettled farmers were given tractors and other farming implements in a purported loan scheme. By 2015, we were told the debt had been assumed by the State through the Reserve Bank Debt Assumption Act. In simpler terms, the State bought and gave public leaders and other politically-exposed persons capital equipment for free and the taxpayers will carry the can. In the last five years, Zimbabwe has dealt with the Dema Diesel Power plant and Command Agriculture scandals. These deals were concluded without going to tender. They were implemented without any feasibility studies and like the past scandals, the taxpayer will once again carry the burden while the politicians smile all the way to the bank. In all this darkness and during the women’s month — it is importa