Zimpapers Logo

Harare Bureau—
Parliament must reverse the Essar deal because Zimbabwe does not stand to benefit anything from it, the Affirmative Action Group claimed on Thursday. Essar Holdings got 54 percent in Ziscosteel in a deal worth $750 million, with the government keeping 36 percent and 10 percent to be owned by minority investors.

But appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment yesterday, AGG representatives said President Mugabe should also evoke Presidential Temporary Powers to nullify some statutory boards that were inhibiting development in the country.

Zanu-PF MP for Gokwe-Nembudziya, Cde Justice Mayor Wadyajena chairs the committee.

AAG president, Chamu Chiwanza, implored legislators to influence the disbanding of some boards that were corrupt.

“We’ve boards in this country that are said to be running on the principle of the law which can’t be disbanded for example the tender board, which we believe is a non-existent tender board, which works to empower a chosen few,” said Chiwanza.

“They’ve called themselves tenderpreneurs and we’re calling upon this honourable House to ask President Mugabe to sign something so that this can be disbanded with immediate effect. There are cartels in this country, which are let to run at the expense of legitimate businesspeople who subscribe to the tax laws of this country.”

This prompted Cde Wadyajena to ask Chiwanza if he implied that the State Procurement Board (SPB) was corrupt, to which he responded affirmatively.

He said their investigations unearthed corruption in tender processes in most State parastatals and enterprises in cahoots with the SPB.

Chiwanza said the indigenisation and economic empowerment drive was being hampered by fronting as locals pretended to be owners of foreign-owned businesses.

“We know participants in the fuel industry who have fronted for investors, we know in the banking industry, in the mining industry half of them are fronting and this is a problem that we have,” he said.

He said the law must have a clause where locals declare their source of capital in accessing stakes in foreign-owned businesses.

“We are also concerned on the Essar deal, which the good Parliament has chosen to keep quiet about. And we felt that the then Minister (of Industry and Commerce) Welshman Ncube shot from the hip when he signed that deal and surely when we did an analysis as the AAG, we thought that was daylight robbery as far as us the indigenous Zimbabweans are concerned.

“We are lobbying this good portfolio to reverse the Essar deal with immediate effect if you do have the concerns of your people at heart because we can’t just give our ore away for such a long time just because they have paid debts and they have paid salaries to people that we owe,” said Chiwanza.

He said the AAG failed to stop foreigners from participating in reserved sectors of the economy because there was no political will.

As a result, he said some foreigners continued to operate in the fuel, transport and other sectors.

Some companies that were said to have been indigenised he said, had not complied with the law.

He rapped the Rent Board and the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board for failing to perform their mandate.

He said commercial rentals continued to skyrocket while foreigners who owned most properties demanded a goodwill deposit, which the majority of Zimbabwean business people could not afford.

AAG Masvingo representative, Memory Nyakuyima said government must ensure that it does not disempower workers at Tongaat Hulett when it redistributes cane plantations operated by the sugar producer.

She said Tongaat Hulett employed more than 13,000 villagers, whose livelihood was under threat if the redistribution exercise went ahead.

The Zanu-PF leadership in Masvingo in December resolved to acquire at least 29,000 hectares of sugar cane plantations under Tongaat Hulett to resettle some of the 10,000 citizens on the waiting list in the province.

Nyakuyima alleged that former Energy and Power Development Minister Dzikamai Mavhaire and former Zanu-PF Masvingo provincial chairperson, Callisto Gwanetsa, had a suspicious relationship with businessman Billy Rautenbach whom they facilitated that he gets land in Mwenezi for an ethanol project.