HARARE - Zimbabwe's white farmers this week said they were consulting their lawyers on the implications of the new indigenisation rules announced by the government last week, describing the move as a "blatantly racist action" meant to further strip them of their constitutional rights.The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment (General) Regulations published by Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere will see Zimbabwe jail any foreign businesspeople who refuse to surrender majority shareholding oftheir companies to local partners. Under the regulations, existing firms with balance sheets worth US$500 000 or more have 45 days from March 1 to submit compliance proposals.
New foreign investors should meet an “empowerment quota” which the minister can decide. Businesses that contravene the law face prison for up to five years. The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said it had engaged its legal advisors for advice on the regulations. “We have expressed our extreme concern over the abuse of our rights under the Constitution of Zimbabwe through the correct channels and our legal advisors are currently examining the documents with the view of giving us an opinion and advice on how to deal with the matter,” a spokesman from the union said this week.
The regulations, which have already been shot down by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party, are seen to affect foreign-run agricultural estates already facing an onslaught by military officers and other supporters of President Robert Mugabe. Marauding gangs of so-called war veterans and Zanu (PF) youth militia have continued the illegal invasion of white-owned farms, including some protected under investment agreements signed with other countries.
The new regulations do not say where impoverished local Zimbabweans will get money to pay for stake in large mines and industries owned by foreigners and are seen as a potentially fatal blow to efforts to woo foreign investors to help rebuild the country’s economy shattered by 10 years of political turmoil and acute recession.
Tsvangirai, acutely aware of the damage publication of the regulations has done to his campaign to woo investors back to Zimbabwe, quickly moved last week to calm the business community.
The Prime Minister declared the new rules a nullity because they were “published without due process as detailed in the global political agreement (GPA) and the Constitution and they are therefore null and void”. But Tsvangirai’s words are likely to be little reassurance to business leaders who are only too aware of how Zanu (PF) hardliners, who include Kasukuwere, have brazenly ignored the GPA or power-sharing agreement to continue political violence and seizing white-owned private farms.
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