Zimbabwe’s government on Monday threatened to close businesses defying its order to halve prices, accusing them of working to topple President Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe’s government last week ordered a 50% cut in the prices of basic goods and services after prices shot up by as much as 300% in a week, However, retailers have largely resisted the order while some products have disappeared from shop shelves.
The government — which has deployed a special unit to ensure compliance with the order — has arrested more than 20 business executives, including a senator belonging to the ruling party, for not implementing the price-cut.
Acting President Joseph Msika told a gathering at the burial of a former top military officer on Monday that shops and businesses not complying with the decree were ”sell-outs” working with outside forces to destabilise the economy and topple Mugabe.
”We will not brook any attempts to thwart our efforts to correct this undesirable state of affairs. Some unscrupulous manufacturers have remained defiant and are creating artificial shortages of goods,” Msika said.
Mugabe, in Ghana this week for a summit of the African Union (AU), is facing the worst economic crisis since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 with inflation at an annual 4 000% and dire shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange.
”We will not allow sell-outs, renegades and money mongers to interfere with our good way of life. You are warned to stop what you are doing … do not distort our prices. Stop it or we will force you to close shop, or we take over your factory,” Msika added.
Last Wednesday Mugabe threatened to seize and nationalise foreign companies, including mines, that have raised prices and cut output in what he says is a campaign to oust him from power.
Analysts say Mugabe’s tough response to the worsening economic situation was aimed at pacifying an increasingly restive population grappling with the world’s highest inflation rate, but could further hurt the economy.
A defiant Mugabe, 83 and in power since independence from Britain, blames Western sanctions for the economic crisis and has said he will seek re-election in 2008.
‘We must unite’
Meanwhile, Mugabe said on Sunday that Africa needed to get its act together and warned that no amount of external aid would lift it out of its quagmire.
”To tell you the truth, until and unless we put our act together, organise and start pulling our resources together, we will never ever prosper from any aid from any source outside Africa,” he told a rally on the fringes of the AU summit in Accra.
About a thousand placard and flag waving Ghananians, many sporting T-shirts with Mugabe’s portrait attended the rally at Kwameh Nkrumah Memorial Park in the Ghanian capital.
”We must unite, not just politically but economically,” he told a cheering crowd in the city hosting a twice yearly meeting of African heads of state.
The three day summit has been billed by some as an opportunity to forge a so-called United States of Africa.
”Although there is the umbrella of unity, but within this unity we are not united,” he said.
Punctuating his speech with a reference to Ghana’s revered architect of pan-Africanism, Mugabe said today’s Africa is lacking the vision Nkrumah outlined in 1963 when the predecessor body of the AU, the Organisation of African Union was formed.
”Nkrumah wanted the creation of a United States of Africa in 1963, but others said it was too early, and 44 years later, others are still saying we are not ready,” he said. – Reuters, Sapa-AFP