Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is set to take over 51% of all mines operating in the country, including foreign owned mines. The guidelines for mine ownership in Zimbabwe will be published on Friday and will take effect in a week’s time.
The Youth Empowerment and Indigenization Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said that a sovereign wealth fund would be formed to hold the 51% of the mines. Mines currently contribute to one third of the GDP. He said that the country aims to nationalize over half its mining resources sector with this move and will be able to keep more money in the country.
He said that in the mining sector specifically the nation has been getting a raw deal all this time with multi-national companies taking money out of the country. The main targets will be mining giants like Anglo Platinum Limited and Impala Platinum, the world's largest and second-largest platinum producers, and Rio Tinto, which runs a diamond mine in the country.
This will also end patterns of white control over the nations resources which were predominant during colonial rule by Great Britain. At that time blacks would not be allowed to own any means of production in the farming or industrial sectors. Mr Kasukuwere was also in the spotlight when he introduced regulations to force white and foreign owned businesses worth more than $500,000 to cede 51% of their shares to black Zimbabweans.
Zimbabwe's current economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed in varying degrees to the government's price controls and land confiscations, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and a drought affecting the entire region.