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(NEWZIMBABWE) AAG: Share quota 'good for investment'

AAG: Share quota 'good for investment'
by Lebo Nkatazo
11/02/2010 00:00:00

THE black empowerment lobby, the Affirmative Action Group, on Thursday backed government moves to implement a 2008 law which calls for companies to reserve 51 percent shareholding for “indigenous Zimbabweans”.

The AAG’s support for the Economic Empowerment (General) Regulations of 2010, which give effect to the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act 2008, came as the former opposition MDC labelled the plans “a new Zanu PF arena for looting and abuse”.

AAG president Supa Mandiwanzira said the law was “good for investment”, countering criticism of the regulations by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who called them “null and void”.

Mandiwanzira said: “A lot of investors have been sitting on the fence, not sure, thinking that the government will loot everything.

“Now the government, which Tsvangirai is part of, has laid down its cards on the table. The government is simply saying new companies should ensure that shareholding is in line with the law over the next five years, and asking already existing companies to give a plan of how they are going to ensure compliance.

“There are no parallels with the land reform programme because people are not being allocated companies here but being given an option to negotiate a price for shares.

“Some companies may not even be indigenised because people don’t have money to buy shares.”

In a direct attack on Tsvangirai, Mandiwanzira said the Prime Minister should go back to parliament if he wants the law changed.

“It doesn’t help for a whole Prime Minister to come out and describe one of his own country’s laws as null and void. You cannot void a law through media statements. If he wants the law changed, he should go back to parliament where it was passed,” Mandiwanzira said.

Tsvangirai has said he was not aware of the new regulations before they were published on Tuesday. The AAG says it finds his claims “stunning”.

Mandiwanzira said: “Tsvangirai chairs the Council of Ministers, and indeed one of his party’s members Thamsanqa Mahlangu is the Deputy Minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment. How could he not know a law existed to that effect, and that sooner or later the Ministry would have to enforce the will of parliament?”

In a statement issued Thursday, Tsvangirai’s MDC said the “provocative and anti-investment regulations” were “a deliberate attempt to undermine the country and its people”.

Bizarrely, the statement referred to the regulations as a “Zanu PF Bill”, although the law passed in March 1998 is already an Act of Parliament.

The MDC said: “Zanu PF simply wants to create a new arena for looting and abuse. The so-called ‘indigenous people’ who are set to benefit from this criminal Bill are not the ordinary man and woman, but the well-connected elite and the Zanu PF chefs.

“At a time when Zimbabwe desperately needs foreign direct investment, it is an affront to recovery efforts for the Ministry of Youth and Indigenisation to nocturnally and unilaterally gazette these anti-people and anti-Zimbabwe regulations.

“The MDC calls upon the inclusive government, in the national interest, to reverse all such destructive policies and withdraw the gazette.”

Major foreign investors in mining and banking are said to be alarmed by the new policy which forces them to cede control of their companies to mainly black Zimbabweans.

Labels: AAG, INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), SUPA MANDIWANZIRA

posted by MrK @ 6:29 PM