President Robert Mugabe has threatened to nationalise one of the country’s largest companies, majority-owned by South Africa’s Anglo American Corporation.
In Zimbabwe’s Sunday Mail, Mugabe accused the multinational company of manipulating food shortages to sabotage the economy.
Mugabe’s comments came after allegations that the company, National Foods — the country’s most biggest food distributor — was hoarding salt, the latest shortage to hit the shattered economy.
National Foods is 34% owned by Anglo American.
”We will ask National Foods and Anglo American, which is owned by Nick Oppenheimer (the company’s chief executive), to tell the nation why they have been hoarding salt and causing shortages of basic commodities,” he said.
”We will not allow Anglo American to become the principal saboteurs of our economy.”
Anglo American would be asked whether it wanted to operate ”in partnership with the government and the people”, he was quoted as telling a meeting of his ruling Zanu-PF party’s main organs.
If they did not, he said, the government would be compelled to take over the enterprises and transfer them to local people.
”Our people will not hide salt to create shortages,” he said.
Mugabe in recent months has repeatedly threatened to take over large sections of the country’s private sector, as the next stage of his illegal seizure of white owned farms. He has said he would target mining and manufacturing companies.
No comment was available from National Foods.
The Sunday Mail reported that police had confiscated 22 tons of salt in a National Foods depot in the northern town of Hwange.
It quoted a police representative saying that officers stopped workers who were about to burn the salt, ”in a suspected act of economic sabotage and political mischief”.
The company was being charged with hoarding under the Control of Goods Act. – Sapa