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No going back on mines indigenization, Mugabe

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe dashed hopes that the proposed mines indigenisation bill might not go ahead in the new parliament following elections next month.

Harare - 

President Robert Mugabe who has presided over Zimbabwe's eight year economic meltdown epitomised by an annual inflation rate of over 100,000 percent, has poured cold water on moves made by mining sector stakeholders in a bid to reverse the country's draconian mines indigenization legislation.  The 84 year old ruler said that the government would not relent nor go back on its plans to empower locals and that it will still go ahead and give them over 50 percent of shareholding in foreign mining companies.

The development comes hot on the heels of confirmations by Zimbabwe parliament sources who revealed in recent weeks that the government would have to go back to the drawing board to redraft the Mines and Mineral Amendment Bill.

Under the current format which has already been met with widespread scepticism and disdain, the law would make it mandatory for all mining companies to cede 51 percent shareholding stakes to local black Zimbabweans.

Welshman Ncube, chairman of Zimbabwe's parliamentary Legal Portfolio Committee recently said that the Bill had lapsed and would have to be redrafted but Mugabe's comments yesterday evening could have thrown cold water into any progress that Zimbabwe's mining players could have made to try and avert the loss in investments that would result should the law be maintained as it is.

"Our people must have more than 50 percent of what comes out of the earth,' Mugabe said in a televised interview to mark his 84th birthday yesterday.

He added that the need to empower local Zimbabweans in the mining sector had necessitated the need to grab stakes in foreign owned mining companies.

"That is why we have this law;" he reaffirmed.

He said that his government did not want income from the mining sector to belong to others.

Mugabe, who faces stiffer challenges in next month's harmonised Presidential, parliamentary and local government elections, expressed his disappointment that the mining sector in the country had failed to grow.

"We are disappointed that the mining sector has not really improved" despite the fact that "there have been new mines opened and new minerals discovered". Chamber of Mines president, Jack Murehwa, last week said even though the Bill had not been passed its mere presence continued to affect the mining sector and its prospects to attract investors.  He said mines were unable to plan unless they are clear about the fate of the Bill.

"For as long as the revision of mining laws is not completed, investment will most likely stay away from Zimbabwe," Murehwa said.  "Investors want to know the rules of the game before they risk their money. Investors are just like you and me. Would you invest a large sum of money in an environment where you do not know the rules of the game?"

"Some foreigners use our people, pay them as labourers, pay something to the treasury and then everything else is theirs" Mugabe said."