Conflicting messages hamper investment drive??

However 115 kilometres from where Mugabe was delivering his speech, South African farmer Louis Fick was watching his 4 000 pigs, 14 000 crocodiles and several hundreds of beef cattle starve to death in Chinhoyi, as he tried to fight off a senior Reserve Bank official trying to grab the farm and whose hired thugs have prevented workers from feeding the animals.

Fick is one of 70 white commercial farmers who, despite winning a SADC Tribunal ruling allowing them to keep their land, are being hounded by the regime to leave their farms.

Deputy Reserve Bank governor Edward Mashiringwana invaded the farm on the same weekend Mugabe was welcoming a European Union delegation at State House and asking the EU to remove targeted sanctions on members of his inner circle. It is not the first time Mashiringwana has attempted to grab the farm, having previously tried to do so in March 2008.

Addressing the same mining conference last Thursday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said the coalition government would implement rational mining royalties and taxes and deregulate mineral marketing, to attract as much as US$16 billion in investment by 2018.

But six days before his speech government used an extra-ordinary gazette to seize the assets of the Meikles Group, that owns the world famous Meikles Hotel among several other big companies.

The Africa Heritage Human Rights Forum (AHHRF) based in South Africa said its members were very disturbed by the continuous harassment of investors in Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwean government has continued to blame the western imposed sanctions for the collapse of the economy, and yet they are destroying the economy themselves by continuing to list as specified, privately owned companies up to this day, the group said in a press statement.

The AHHRF accused the state of interfering in corporate battles and more significantly tilting the bargaining and negotiating power of private parties.

Newsreel spoke to Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister, Elton Mangoma, and he decried the lack of consultation across the various ministries.

Commenting on the Meikles saga he said the decision to specify the companies was rash and done without consultation making his job difficult. He said he was still awaiting a full briefing on the matter before he could issue a substantive comment.

Turning to the disturbances on the farms, Mangoma said cabinet had tasked Lands Minister Herbert Murerwa to prepare a report on the matter and this should be finished around the last week of this month.

Mangoma who is also co-chair of the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee, said the group was touring affected farms to get a sense of what was happening. Asked why the visits were necessary when it was obvious what was happening on the farms, Mangoma said actual visits were always better than relying on reports.