(For other news from the Reuters Africa Investment Summit,
click here)
* Minister forces miners to turn over stakes to locals
* Says can’t have “islands of prosperity, seas of poverty”
* Touted as successor to 88-year-old Mugabe
By MacDonald Dzirutwe and David Dolan
HARARE/JOHANNESBURG, April 16 (Reuters) – Nicknamed “Tyson”,
Zimbabwe Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere doesn’t shrink
from a fight when it comes to taking on foreign companies that
own mineral rights in his country.
“Somebody has to get them to understand the message,” the
man who has forced global miners to give up majority stakes in
their Zimbabwe operations, told the Reuters Africa Investment
Summit in Johannesburg on Monday.
“You can’t continue with that old mentality of islands of
prosperity and seas of poverty, it just can’t work any more.
When we talk to these companies, we are not being malicious or
cruel, we are making them see the reality,” said Kasukuwere, who
takes his nickname from the U.S. heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson.
Critics accuse the former officer in Zimbabwe’s feared
Central Intelligence Organisation of acting outside the law in
forcing foreign companies to comply.
Continued…
