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Digging up the truth: The legal and political realities of the Zimplats saga
Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit
April 23, 2012

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Introduction

Mugabe's ZANU PF party has presented the "economic empowerment" of Zimbabweans as its key policy component and the main theme around which it intends to campaign for the next elections. Although the indigenisation of Zimbabwe's economy is ostensibly a programme of an inclusive government, comprising both ZANU PF and the erstwhile opposition MDC formations, the MDCs and ZANU PF are sharply divided on how this programme should be implemented in practice.

This division is an echo of a starker disjuncture between the actual legal framework establishing Zimbabwe's "indigenisation" policy and the framework which ZANU PF wishes to present and impose as being the legal regimen. ZANU PF's loss of its majority in parliament in 2008 and constitutional constraints prevent ZANU PF amending the legislation so as to align its desired legal regimen with the actual. It has thus, with remarkable success, instead sought to alter the perceptions of the actual legal regimen to accord with its policy objectives. This has been achieved through its absolute control over all electronic media in Zimbabwe and the state owned press in which all programmes and articles on the indigenisation of the economy are carefully managed; through its control of the Government Ministry tasked with the implementation of the programme; and through the complicity of the non-ZANU PF aligned media which seems to prefer the ZANU PF version of the legal regime as the more likely to sell copy. The result is that a succession of myths has come to be accepted as fact. Each myth has built upon the one preceding, so that addressing the last requires considerable unravelling.

The myths that this article addresses are as follows:

1. Zimbabwean law requires each "non-indigenous" company to dispose of 51% of "its" shares to black Zimbabweans; and

2. As part of this process, Zimbabwean law requires that all mining companies are obliged to ensure that 10% of this 51% comprises shares held by a Community Share Ownership Trust established and approved by Government for this purpose; and

3. Zimplats, after considerable pressure from Government has complied with these "legal" requirements.

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