Kasukuwere hits back at Tsvangirai

ZIMBABWE will continue to implement broad-based economic empowerment programmes to uplift the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans, Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere has said.

He was responding to claims by MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai at the weekend that if his party was voted into power at the forthcoming elections they would reverse the indigenisation drive being spearheaded by Zanu-PF while most newly resettled farmers would be brought back to work in the industries.

"We can't build an economy that survives on peasants," said Mr Tsvangirai as he addressed party supporters at Zimbabwe Grounds on Sunday.

"Having everyone going into farming is not sustainable. We have to remove people from the farms to the industries than removing people from the industries to the farms because I don't see that working.

"In order to develop an economy, there is a need to have most people employed while a few who want to get into farming can go there.

"We can't talk of indigenisation without empowerment, indigenisation without empowering the broad majority is selfish and only meant for a few. I want to assure you we will review that indigenisation law so that we create an empowerment law for the majority of the people of Zimbabwe," Mr Tsvangirai said.
But Minister Kasukuwere said indigenisation could not be separated from empowerment.

"Zanu-PF will continue without even an apology to move forward the process of broad-based empowerment of the people.

"There is no way we can separate indigenisation from empowerment. We are empowering our people because a lot of resources are in the hands of a few foreigners.

"What the MDC-T is saying won't happen whether they like or not. We are making our own people leaders of our economy. What Tsvangirai said shows that the MDC-T is half-hearted, panicking and unable to articulate how they would want the people of Zimbabwe to be empowered," said Minister Kasukuwere.

He said several MDC-T senior officials were discouraging foreign owned companies from complying with the indigenisation and economic empowerment law to frustrate the process.

Despite, those spirited attempts, Minister Kasukuwere said his ministry would ensure that all sectors of the economy were indigenised.

"We are not going back with the exercise. In fact in the mining sector we are not going to pay for whatever stake we take back because we believe our major stake is in the resource.

"One cannot bring a caterpillar to mine a worthless ground with rats but they go after resources that have value. That is how we are creating the basis of uplifting our people.

"Some people from MDC-T have been dissuading foreign companies from complying with the law.

"Zanu-PF is born out of the struggle to emancipate the people of Zimbabwe hence our empowerment policies, while on the other hand, the MDC-T's genes are Western with no Zimbabwean interests at all.

"It is therefore not surprising that they are vowing to reverse a policy that seeks to empower locals. We know there are so many people who are worried about the success of this exercise for their own reasons that have nothing to do with the people," said Minister Kasukuwere.

MDC-T has been castigating the indigenisation drive claiming that it was meant for a few elite yet the drive has spawned 59 community share ownership schemes and several employee ownership trusts countrywide.

The land reform programme, which benefited over 300 000 black families from farms that were monopolised by about 4 000 white farmers, has been hailed as a success by African and Western scholars with several Western journalists recently giving thumbs up to the exercise.