Mugabe wants 100% resource ownership

Mugabe wants 100% resource ownership
Published: 08 July 2013
Zanu-PF's thrust is to ensure Zimbabweans assume 100 percent control of the country's natural resources and bring about sustainable national development which is home grown, the party's First Secretary and President, Mugabe has said.

In his foreword to the party's 2013 election manifesto launched at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield in Harare on Friday, President Mugabe said although the empowerment laws stipulated that indigenous Zimbabweans should take control of 51percent shareholding of all foreign owned companies, it was Zanu-PF's wish that Zimbabweans take control of all sectors of the economy.

"The ways and the means in the manifesto are anchored on Zanu-PF's policy of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment, which seeks to enforce the transfer to local entities of at least 51 percent controlling equity in all existing foreign owned businesses.

"Over and above this, the policy is to empower indigenous entities to hold 100 percent of equity to start up or takeover strategic enterprises across the economy, especially in key sectors such as mining, tourism and agriculture," he said.

President Mugabe said the targeted equity threshold recognised Zimbabwe's total ownership of all its natural resources as an expression of the country's sovereignty.

"The policy will create dignified employment especially for the youth, distribute wealth amongst citizens more equitably, cause a general improvement in the quality of life of every Zimbabwean and bring about sustainable national development which is home grown," he said.

In response to widespread concerns and expectations that ordinary people should be primary beneficiaries of the policy of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment, the President said the next Zanu-PF Government would put in place robust measures to ensure an even more transparent, accountable, tangible and measurable implementation matrix in the national interest.

"It is, therefore, the national duty of each and every one of us — young and old to go out in our historic numbers to vote for Zanu-PF in the forthcoming elections.

"We must vote as Team Zanu-PF regardless of our divergent political affiliations because Zanu-PF is your party which can guarantee you a secure future as the country's liberators.

"Zanu-PF is the party of our collective national aspirations. As we campaign for our party and when and after we vote, each and everyone of us must draw inspiration from the eternal words bequeathed us by our beloved late Vice President John Landa Nkomo that "Peace begins with Me; Peace begins with You; Peace begins with all of us," he said.

President Mugabe said as the country go to polls on July 31, the people were supposed to remember that the country was won after a protracted liberation struggle where many gallant sons and daughters of this country lost their lives.

"It was this people's resort to bullets that won Zimbabweans the right to the ballot that everyone enjoys today as a legacy of our liberation struggle. That legacy permanently connects past, present and future generations of this nation with another.

"Accordingly, this  People's Manifesto is a solemn call from the fallen and living heroes of our liberation struggle, indeed from the wailing bones that lie in many places known and others yet to be discovered, for every Zimbabweans to patriotically cherish and jealously guard the gains of our heroic liberations struggle," he said.

He said it was against that backdrop that the essence of Zanu-PF's ideology was to economically empower the indigenous people of Zimbabwe by enabling them to fully own their God given natural resources and the means of production and unlock value from those resources.

"Through our deliberate socio-economic policies and achievements since our heroic independence, we have laid a firm foundation for the attainment of this strategic goal.

"Notably, our achievements have been blighted since 1999 by the twin evils of regime-change and the illegal economic sanctions. And the latest five years of the awkward GPA government have exerted the greatest toll on the people's aspirations," he said.

So far 59 community share ownership schemes have been launched countrywide that  have transformed lives of previously marginalised Zimbabweans in rural areas, while several employee share ownership schemes have also been launched in several companies countrywide. 
- herald

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