Zimbabwe : Tsvangirai backs empowerment law

A newly confident Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, buoyed by recent support from regional leaders, surprised delegates to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town by declaring his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party was fully behind legislation allocating a major share of foreign enterprises to Zimbabweans.

“Everyone thought the indigenisation policy was dreamed up by [President Robert Mugabe’s] ZANU-PF on the back of land reform,” he told The Africa Report. “But it is also a policy of the MDC and of the government of national unity. We are determined to ensure the majority of the population participates in the economy. The details are open to discussion but not the framework.” 


Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai 

Tsvangirai said the law, passed in March and giving companies six months to allocate a majority stake to national stakeholders, was not an expropriation or nationalisation strategy. He said there could be negotiations around a “voluntary” minimum threshold, which in the case of the mining sector would be around 26%. “They will still invest,” he said.

Empowerment minister Saviour Kasukuwere confirmed that talks were in progress with top platinum producers ­Angloplat and Implats.


Tsvangirai said his aim was to make Zimbabwe a “$100bn economy”, growing at a rate of 10% over 20 years. But legitimacy had first to be restored by “free, fair and credible” elections, which would require a minimum timetable of eight months to approve a new constitution, draw up a new voters’ roll and agree proposals to monitor violence.


A regional summit of Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders in Zambia on 30 March backed Tsvangirai’s demand that national elections, which Mugabe wanted this year, be delayed until May-June 2012. 


In mid-May, Mugabe dismissed as “misplaced” concerns aired by South African mediators that his health problems could jeopardise progress on the path to constitutional reform.