https://www.miningweekly.com

Whites still control our mines, says Mugabe

9th April 2015

By: Natalie Greve

Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

  

Font size: - +

PRETORIA (miningweekly.com) – Zimbabwe’s mining assets remain largely in the hands of foreign whites, despite various nationalisation-driven policy efforts to dismantle majority white ownership of assets in the country, President Robert Mugabe said on Thursday.

“All industrialisation [in South Africa and Zimbabwe] was done in the interest of the whites and all our mines [remain] controlled, not even by local whites, but by [those from] outside.

“The very people you fought against [stay] in control of the economy…[and] control us to this day. The black man is on his own,” he told the South Africa–Zimbabwe Business Forum, in Pretoria, on the last day of his two-day State tour to South Africa.

The elderly statesman said the country’s mining development agenda would remain focused on adding value to its raw mineral exports through intensified beneficiation efforts, but mines would first need to fall under the control of government.

“The agenda shall be a sustained agenda of adding value… but we must win the natural resources first and make them our own, so that [we are] producing from our own natural resources…hence the indigenisation plan.

“There has to be, at the base of beneficiation, ownership by the people,” Mugabe averred.

He added that independence was “only a half measure” in most African countries, as many did not control “a bit” of their natural resources.

Mining Weekly reported last year that the Zimbabwean embassy in South Africa said the “misunderstanding” of Zimbabwe’s indigenisation policy had seen foreign investors shy away from the country’s mining industry.

This after Mugabe in 2008 signed the Indigenisation and Economic Policy into law, in terms of which 51% of all foreign- and white-owned businesses needed to be ceded to indigenous Zimbabweans.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

Comments

Showroom

SABAT
SABAT

From batteries for boats and jet skis, to batteries for cars and quad bikes, SABAT Batteries has positioned itself as the lifestyle battery of...

VISIT SHOWROOM 
Booyco Electronics
Booyco Electronics

Booyco Electronics, South African pioneer of Proximity Detection Systems, offers safety solutions for underground and surface mining, quarrying,...

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Hyphen, Eva mine, ferrochrome price make headlines
Hyphen, Eva mine, ferrochrome price make headlines
27th March 2024
Resources Watch
Resources Watch
27th March 2024

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.103 0.138s - 88pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now