By Cris Chinaka
HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s main rival on Monday
denounced his plans to nationalise foreign-owned firms as “looting and
plunder” by a greedy elite.
In a statement for Zimbabwe’s 31st independence anniversary, Prime Minister
Morgan Tsvangirai dismissed as “empty rhetoric” a drive by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF
party to force foreign companies to transfer majority shareholding to local
blacks.
Mugabe’s seizures of white-owned commercial farms about a decade ago under
the banner of correcting colonial injustices had ruined the economy and
benefited “avaricious politicians” over the last decade, Tsvangirai said.
“Now thirty years after independence, we are being told by
multi-millionaires and multiple farm owners that indigenisation will set us
free,” he said.
“By this, they are not referring to broad-based empowerment of the ordinary
man and woman, but the looting and plunder of national resources by a small,
parasitic elite,” he added.
Mugabe, 87 and in power since Zimbabwe’s since independence from Britain in
1980, signed an Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act in 2008, which
forces foreign-owned companies worth over $500,000 to achieve at least 51
percent black ownership within five years.
Mugabe defended the policy later in the day at an independence rally also
attended by Tsvangirai.
The president said a government notice giving foreign mining companies until
May 9 to submit their plans on the share transfer was part of a broad
economic empowerment programme.)
Mugabe also denounced political violence and avoided his usual attacks on
Tsvangirai in a reconciliatory speech.
Zimbabwe, Mugabe said, had stabilised politically after a power-sharing
government brokered by regional leaders in 2009 and could complete
constitutional reforms ahead of elections.
Mugabe has been pushing for an early poll this year before agreed democratic
reforms, accusing his opponents of wasting time on petty quarrels over state
appointments.
Analysts say an election without reforms, including a new constitution, a
free media and improved voter registration, will favour Mugabe and his
ZANU-PF party. MDC officials warned an early election could lead to a
bloodbath.
Although Mugabe called for national unity and peaceful political
co-existence, he made no direct reference to a spate of clashes between his
supporters and backers of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change or the
arrest of opposition officials.
Moses Mzila-Ndlovu, a minister from a small MDC faction led by Industry and
Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube, was detained at the weekend on charges of
addressing an illegal meeting and using hate speech.
