In Summary
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was officially inaugurated for his seventh term as president last Thursday.
Amid the pomp and fist-waving in Harare, Britain
threw a belated but predictable jab, calling for an “independent
investigation” into Zimbabwe’s election, a demand Mugabe ridiculed with
gusto. Britain’s carping about Mugabe’s victory had earlier on been
echoed by its quasi-colonial dependency, Australia.
Mercifully, Mugabe concentrated his barbs on
Britain rather than Australia, which he once dismissed as “a nation of
convicts who have no moral right to lecture anybody on rectitude”. About
Australia’s history, at least. Mugabe was cruelly right. The country
was founded as a penal colony for convicted British criminals.
Britain’s biggest fear of Mugabe is what he plans
to do. True to his pre-election word, the Zimbabwean leader has vowed to
intensify his “indigenisation” policy. The benchmark of this policy is
to transfer to locals the controlling stakes in the key sectors of
banking and mining. These historically have been driven by British
firms. Mining is particularly critical.
Together with South Africa and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe has underneath its soil a wealth of rare
minerals––chromium, platinum, uranium, diamonds, gold––which the West
would be loath to see fall into Chinese hands.
In the nasty clash ahead, Mugabe clearly holds the
strongest cards. Britain’s riposte that the royalties the mining
companies pay are enough will not cut any ice. Minerals are a finite
natural resource.
It is silly to insist that the country which is
lucky to have them should allow free reign to their extraction and
exploitation to private foreign firms as if such an investment was in,
say, mobile telephone technology or fast food chains. Mining is too
important for Zimbabwe to be left alone.
Certainly, Zimbabwe is not Botswana, or rather
Mugabe is not anywhere near like his mixed-race neighbour, Ian Khama. It
is instructive that this Botswana the West loves to praise so much for
its good governance blah blah blah (it is the world’s leading producer
of cut diamonds) is essentially governed by the De Beers company, an
Anglo-American concern that controls a global diamond cartel. The
Batswana are happy when they are thrown the handouts.
In itself, indigenisation is not a bad thing, much
as the West is shouting it will spell doom for the Zimbabwean economy
(it won’t). When I last read up about it, there were some very good
points that could be said about it.
According to the Zimbabwe government, local
employees of the multinational subsidiaries will take up 10 per cent of
the company shareholding. Another 10 per cent will be reserved for the
local community where a mine is situated.
The balance of 31 per cent ( to make the total of
51 per cent majority shareholding) will go to something called the
Indigenisation Fund which all Zimbabweans can buy into. Companies that
bring something entirely new which Zimbabwe doesn’t have––like advanced
technology–– will be allowed to retain 100 per cent shareholding.
The policy is, in fact, quite popular with rural
communities, as was the earlier land redistribution programme. It was
the shambolic implementation of the latter that was the problem.
In reality it is the urban and middle-class Zimbabweans who love
to import their goodies from South Africa and overseas who have done
well under the domination of their economy by multinational cartels. It
is they who criticise indigenisation because they feel the pinch of
Western sanctions.
Give it to Uncle Bob; he was clear-eyed enough to tell his countrymen not to expect the lifting of those sanctions.
source: The citizen
source: The citizen
