Indigenisation Minister Christopher Mushohwe yesterday insisted that there was no going back on the government’s indigenisation policy. Instead, he said his ministry is carrying out an audit to identify who has been empowered to make sure that it is not the same people, and if so why they are favoured. “In fact they (foreigners) are very lucky that they get 49 percent. In fact, 49 percent is the maximum and 51 percent is the minimum. So it’s not cast in concrete that it’s 49 percent, it can be one percent because it’s the maximum and 51 percent can be 99 percent because it’s the minimum. This tendency of threatening each other saying foreign direct investment won’t be available is not true. We are a sovereign State. We welcome FDI, we welcome foreigners to come into our country to invest on our terms. Whoever doubts that claiming that they are Zimbabwean, I want to see them. It has to be on our terms,” he was quoted by The Herald as saying. “So I requested my directors to give me a list of indigenous people who were empowered so that we see their names to avoid a situation where we keep empowering the same person who is said to have capital to buy shares from several companies. And we must get to a point where we will say why is the same person buying shares from every company and why are all the white businesspeople choosing the same person to partner them? You have the right to know who are those people who have been empowered who are said to be more than 1 000 whom we don’t know. In terms of this (national) Constitution, the Zanu-PF constitution and in terms of indigenisation and economic empowerment policies, it must be broad-based empowerment and broad-based does not talk about one person or a group of people. Who are they? Zimbabwe is bigger than one person or a group of people.” So far Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda and Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa have said the government will review the indigenisation policy.
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I’m sure reviewing the indigenisation policy is not necessarily reversing it as some people might want to think.