Mugabe Said to Prepare to Nationalize Mines, Banks 2008-12-22 17:58:58.195 GMT
By Brian Latham
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is preparing to take over key businesses in mining, banking and manufacturing as his international isolation deepens, two members of the ruling party’s politburo said.
The 84-year-old leader told supporters in the northeastern town of Bindura yesterday that he may form an “Economic Revolutionary Council” to overcome sanctions, the officials from the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party said. They declined to be identified because the discussions were mostly among the party’s leadership.
Such plans suggest that Mugabe doesn’t plan to bow to calls to step down as the economy collapses and cholera spreads.
Yesterday Jendayi Frazer, the top U.S. envoy for Africa, said that Mugabe has “lost it” and “credible power sharing” with him isn’t possible. Zimbabwe is in its tenth year of recession, with an annual inflation rate of more 230 million percent and an unemployment rate more than 80 percent.
The emergency measures would seek to curb inflation and lift productivity, which has slumped to less than 10 percent of manufacturing capacity, the officials said after attending the Zanu-PF’s annual congress. These would include nationalizing banks, mines and factories and could go as far as declaring a state of emergency, they said.
Impala, Rio Tinto
Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd., the world’s second-biggest platinum producer, and Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third- largest mining company, own assets in the country. Barclays Bank Plc and Standard Chartered Plc operate in Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwean government has already said it plans to force foreign companies to sell 51 percent of their assets to black Zimbabweans. It is yet to implement that decision.
Calls to the offices and mobile phones of Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba, Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and Information Minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, weren’t answered.
While Zimbabwe is not the subject of formal economic sanctions, the U.S. and the European Union have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Mugabe and his allies.
Mugabe has resisted a power-sharing agreement brokered by former South African President Thabo Mbeki in September after presidential run-off elections in June were boycotted by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Talks over enacting the deal have stalled because of his refusal to give up key ministries.
Calls from neighboring South Africa for Mugabe to quit are growing.
Mugabe’s neighbors should cut off supplies of commodities to force political change, said Mosioua Lekota, the leader of the South Africa’s Congress of the People party, known as Cope.
Cope was formed by dissidents from the ruling African National Congress after Mbeki was ousted as president. Lekota is a former ANC chairman and defense minister.
“It’s no good to mouth beautiful slogans, there must be implementation,” Lekota said in an interview in Johannesburg yesterday. “Simply refusing supplies of commodities” to Zimbabwe could spur political change. |
