Mugabe Says Zimbabwe Should Seize U.K Companies, Boycott Their Products
President Robert Mugabe said Zimbabwe should move quickly to take over British companies operating in the southern African nation and called on people to boycott their products.
Mugabe was speaking at a rally to demand the European Union and U.S. lift sanctions against him and senior members of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party. Mugabe says the sanctions were responsible for a decade-long recession that ended last year.
“It is not enough to speak against sanctions,” Mugabe told the rally in the capital, Harare, today. “We can’t keep hosting more than 400 British firms here, including mines.” It is “now time to take measures against them.”
Barclays Plc and Standard Chartered Plc are among the British companies operating in Zimbabwe, alongside miners Anglo American Plc and Rio Tinto Plc. A new Indigenization and Empowerment Act, which has been approved by lawmakers, will compel foreign and white-owned businesses to cede 51 percent of their shares to black Zimbabweans.
“I have said the indigenization and empowerment process should start with those firms,” Mugabe said, referring to British companies. “We must take them over. We can also boycott their products.”
The U.K.’s Foreign Office described the move as “irresponsible,” and said in an e-mailed statement that it will “deter much needed foreign investment.” The comments were echoed by Prime Minister David Cameron.
“We have made clear to the Zimbabwean authorities on a number of occasions that they shouldn’t do anything to undermine investor confidence or Zimbabwe’s fragile economic recovery,” Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field said today. “The biggest losers would be the Zimbabwean people themselves.”
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has shared power with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change since Feb. 2009 after violence-marred elections failed to give either leader an outright victory.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nelson Gore Banya in Johannesburg at ngbanya@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gordon Bell at gbell16@bloomberg.net.
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