Minister Kasukuwere must know that we will not buy into phony empowerment projects from Zanu PF unless the party cleans its past acts of dis-empowerment
Youth Indigenisation Empowerment and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere has dominated media space on Zimbabwe during the first quarter of the year following the Gazetting of the controversial Empowerment regulations that require foreign owned entities worth $500 000.00 and above to surrender 51% of their investment for free takeover by indigenous or more appropriately Zanu PF networked Black Zimbabweans.
Despite the numerous and vociferous opposition to the potentially damaging manner in which the Minister proposes to expropriate majority ownership in foreign owned companies for free donation to the so called Indigenous people he has remained headstrong and at face value unwilling to accommodate wise Counsel on the potential Empowerment rules had for setting the economic turnaround objective backwards by a decade.
But we all know that the bad law that the Minister has crafted has got nothing to do with empowerment of the people the Minister says he intends to empower neither will it empower anyone as all the law will do is legalise pillaging and asset striping of foreign owned companies by the politically connected beneficiaries of free majority shareholding in the targeted companies.
We say this with so much conviction because we have lived long enough under Zanu PF misrule to know the party’s political treachery and be able to predict outcomes of each and every move the party makes with less than 1% margin of error in our predictions.
We have witnessed more than enough of Zanu PF pseudo empowerment initiatives that have spectacularly collapsed and fizzled into horrendous economic liabilities for the nation to trust the party in any matter that it spearheads as an empowerment initiative.
During the 2000 electioneering Kasukuwere and his Zanu PF party campaigned on the theme of empowerment and coined the infamous “The land is the economy and the economy is the land “slogan to whip support for empowerment through land expropriation via unplanned invasions of commercial farms.
The predominantly White owned commercial farmers were chased off farms they had lived and farmed on for decades and the Zanu PF supporters replaced them as the new farmers.
Agricultural productivity plummeted to abysmal levels and the country was transformed from a net exporter of agricultural produce to at best a net importer of national food requirements and at the worst a beggar for international food aid.
The new farmers were queuing with destitute at Government Social Services, International Donor Agencies, the Reserve Bank and the Grain Marketing Board for charity and or heavily subsidized handouts of not just food packs but also farm implements and cropping inputs like fuel, fertilizer and seed packs.
To date the same farmers who have been allocated and are occupying vast tracts of fertile agricultural lands are still whingeing about Finance Minister Hon Tendai Biti being the main obstacle in their way to accessing free government donations to enable them to farm the lands they have acquired.
How empowered are they if they are still unable to practice farming on freely acquired land? Do they have titled ownership of the lands they occupy and if not why not?
More importantly how have the fortuitous Zanu PF “farmers” moved forward the Black Empowerment Agenda that Kasukuwere is dogmatic about when the entire nation is now surviving on imported food while the farms they own lie forlorn and derelict?
The failed empowerment through land invasions has not given the Zanu PF leadership insight into what real empowerment is as they seem to have been encouraged or is it frustrated to redirect expropriation energies from the now valueless and derelict farms in the possession of party loyalists to foreign owned mines and companies.
They hope to realise better fortunes from these economic assets which will be managed by the minority foreign investors who on top of donating free ownership will have to endure the ridicule of earning the lesser of the company profits yet shoulder the major responsibility of financial resourcing of the companies to cover operational pre-requisites or face the real prospect of winding up as the new majority shareholders have neither the acumen nor the resources to shoulder 51% of the company operational requirements and liabilities.
Clearly the foreign investors are in a catch 22 position on their investments in Zimbabwe because if they decide to oblige with the Empowerment regulations and parcel out 51% of their investment they will still be burdened with the responsibility for organisation management and leadership as well as 100% of the working capitalisation of the companies or collapse as new partners are not being donated 51% of the liabilities but just the assets.
The irony of it all is that in 1996 Kasukuwere and his ruling Zanu PF party were given an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to Black Economic Empowerment when by far the largest and most profitable organisation in the country Old Mutual applied to demutualise.
The Zimbabwe Insurance Act [Chapter 24:07} section 15 reproduce here in full did not and still does not permit Mutual Societies to demutualise.
“15 Effect of registration and prohibition of registration as or conversion into a Company
(1) From the date of registration of a society in terms of this Part, such society shall be a body corporate by the name under which it is registered and shall, in its registered name, be capable of suing and being sued, acquiring property and disposing of it and, subject to its constitution and of this Act, of performing all such acts as bodies corporate may by law perform.
(2) Subject to section ninety-one, no society registered in terms of this Part shall register or be registered as a company in terms of the Companies Act [Chapter24:03].
(3) No society shall, after its registration in terms of this Part, convert itself into a company as defined in the Companies Act [Chapter 24:03].
Zanu PF with Minister Kasukuwere’s tacit consent not only issued Old Mutual with Cabinet Authority to demutualise and transfer the ownership of the Society from 98% of its ownership by Black policyholders to foreign ownership by Old Mutual PLC headquartered in London but also allowed it to be registered as a public company listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange using the term Mutual in its name despite the prohibition for the use of the term Mutual by Insurers and companies registered in terms of the Companies Act at section 20 0f the Insurance Act.
“20 Restriction of use of the word “mutual”
(1) No insurer, other than a society registered in terms of this Part, or an existing society awaiting the outcome of registration proceedings, including any review in terms of section seventy-one, shall operate under any name or title of which the word “mutual” is a part.
(2) An insurer who contravenes subsection (1)shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level six or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or to both such fine and such imprisonment.
Now the same Minister Kasukuwere expects us to take him seriously when he makes rules compelling the same Old Mutual PLC he allowed to buy us out of its shareholding using our accrued surpluses in its custody to donate back 51% of its equity to unspecified Black Zanu PF adherents.
If he was serious he would start by reversing the Executive order authorizing Old Mutual to demutualise as it was not only unlawful then but remains unlawful today as the Act of Parliament does not empower the Executive to make such decrees but Zanu PF used its majority in Parliament to condone the illegality by not challenging the Executive decree as they were supposed to.
Will 51% of Old Mutual today be restored to the policyholders that were bought out at its demutualization or other unspecified “Indigenous” Zimbabweans who have corruptly acquired wealth to buy the equity or are connected to Zanu PF to be able to gain preferential allotment without payment like what happened in the chaotic land reforms spearheaded by the party to the economic detriment of the country.
First Mutual followed suit and demutualised again with Zanu PF government approval in utter disregard of the law.
Who now owns First Mutual which was 100% indigenous owned as a Mutual Society and why is it still using Mutual in its name despite Section 20 of the Insurance Act prohibition?
Perhaps minister Kasukuwere has answers for these disempowerment initiatives of his party that will convince us that it now represents Black economic empowerment champions through transfer of ownership.
And while at it Minister Kasukuwere may as well address us on why foreign banks must donate 51% of their equity to us when no more than 5years back the Zanu PPF appointed Reserve Bank Governor wound up several Indigenous Banks, Asset Management Companies and Bureau De Changes and impounded their assets after haunting their owners into exile on charges that have never been successfully prosecuted in our courts.
It is myopic for Kasukuwere and Zanu PPF leadership to posture as champions of Black Economic Empowerment when all they are doing is project themselves as investment and economic scarecrows aware that after the next elections they will not be able to form a government and will not be answerable for the stunted economic growth the laws they are enacting will cause.
Zimbabwe needs leaders that act in the interest of its nationals well being and scaring away investors at a time when investor confidence was gaining momentum is not in anyone’s interest neither will it improve the political fortunes of the festering party that Zanu PF is today.
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