Abstract:
The nexus of political and legal dynamics in Zimbabwe’s public sector generates a strain on the
corporate governance that emerges in that environment, thereby making the application of the
ZIMCODE in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) implausible. This perspective paper is a riposte to
a writing by Chavunduka and Sikwila (2015) titled “Corporate Governance in Zimbabwe: The
ZIMCODE and State Owned Enterprises Connection”, where the authors sought to examine the
implementation of the national corporate governance code by state-owned enterprises and
develop a nested model to be used by SOEs in implementing the code. The writer contends that
the ZIMCODE is not the right apparatus to produce responsible behaviour in Zimbabwe’s SOEs.
A qualitative approach is used. Document analysis is employed to gain insights into the
corporate governance trends and challenges in Zimbabwe’s state enterprises. The main
sources used were government reports, conference papers, published research, and
newspaper articles. The paper brings to attention factors such as cronyism, corruption, and
political interference, which make ZIMCODE incompatible with governance in Zimbabwe’s
SOEs. It concludes that the principles-based soft law approach to corporate governance is
incompatible with Zimbabwe’s public sector landscape and argues for a rules-based legislative
solution that will impose stringent regulatory oversight.
