Mugabe accuses foreign mining firms of sabotage

Mugabe accuses foreign mining firms of sabotage

THREAT: Mugabe says there is no risk of scaring investors

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By Torby Chimhashu

ZIMBABWE will press ahead with its threatened seizure of foreign-owned mining firms despite objections by the business community that the move will scare away investors from the troubled southern African country.

Addressing his ruling Zanu PF party supporters and candidates for the March 29 elections, President Robert Mugabe said he will seize mines to empower indigenous people.

“Mining has remained a place closed for us. Unless we are there as owners or shareholders of mining (firms), we continue to be cheated. We have very little gold. We have very little earnings from mining," Mugabe said to cheers.

The Zimbabwean leader said a new law which requires a 51% stake in all mining firms to be held by indigenous black Zimbabweans would be complemented by claiming more mines.

He accused the white-owned mining companies of smuggling precious minerals out of the country. As a result, he said, gold annual tonnage had fallen from 27 tonnes to 17 tonnes and expected it to further slide to 11 tonnes.

Mugabe said: “In a country rated as having gold resources and deposits in large quantities, it is a shame. We need to have an inspectorate that is effective. We must capacitate our people in that area. It is in these areas that we have people we don’t trust.

“It’s not just the blacks. The blacks are the workers. The whites are the ones doing the externalisation and sabotage of our economy. It’s important that our minerals become ours. We are getting practically little from precious minerals. There are those who say we will scare away investors but we are already losing."

However, Mugabe refused to blame his cronies for plundering the minerals despite audits carried by the intelligence services and the central bank which implicated Zanu PF big wigs in the looting of gold and diamonds.

Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi told Parliament in November 2007 during his budget presentation that Zimbabwe had lost minerals worth US$10 billion in the year as a result of smuggling.

Police last year arrested more that 7 000 people who were carrying out illegal gold activities during an operation set-up to flash out illegal dealers.

No major arrests have been made in connection with the plunder of minerals since the government carried out an audit.

Zanu PF's spokesman for Harare province William Nhara, now deceased, was arrested at the Harare International Airport last year when he attempted to help a Lebanese woman board a plane with diamonds.

Nothing has been heard of the case since Nhara died. A number of his colleagues where named in probes carried out after looting of diamonds occurred at the Chiadzwa and Marange deposits in the Manicaland province.
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