Among his plans, Kasukuwere wanted all individuals who don’t inform his department that they are majority shareholders of companies to be jailed for five years or be fined US$1000, or both. He also proposed that when a businessperson declares the investment they made, and his ministry evaluates and finds that they undervalued their assets by 10%, then they should also be imprisoned for five years. It has also been revealed that he wanted the laws to be applied in a discriminatory manner, for example, companies which are in a partnership should be sent to jail, but sole traders should not be.
However, his proposals were rejected by the Parliament Legal Committee (PLC) on the grounds that they were discriminatory and against the laws of the country.
On Tuesday, Chairman of the PLC and Mazowe Central MP, Shepherd Mushonga, said: “This is unnecessary heavy-handedness on the part of the Minister in the following respects – that the law is trying to create offences which are really absurd and the sentences are really abnormal; and we parliament representatives feel that that is not the objective of the law – threatening people, to create criminals out of non-criminals.”
Mushonga told SW Radio Africa that Kasukuwere has accepted that his plans were overboard and have been sent back to the drawing board.
“He has written to us a letter wherein he accepted that he has gone overboard and that he was going to remove all the items we have put on our adverse reports,” Mushonga explained.
Mushonga blamed Kasukewere’s overzealousness on a drive by ZANU PF to come up with what it perceives to be ‘populist policies’. He added the pursuit of such policies was akin to the devastating land invasions of the last decade.
“I think it’s more about (election) campaigns. You have talk of an election in this country and people tend to go overboard,” Mushonga explained.
ZANU PF has spear-headed the country’s controversial indigenisation law amidst much criticism. The law forces foreign-owned companies to cede more than half of their shareholding to locals, which analysts say is putting off much needed foreign investment to rescue Zimbabwe’s struggling economy.
Post published in: News