HARARE Feb 29 (Reuters) – A Zimbabwean minister
launched a verbal attack on Impala Platinum Chief
Executive David Brown, saying on Wednesday he was “sick and
tired” of the mining group’s failure to comply with local black
ownership laws.
“The problem with Brown is that he talks too much.
We are sick and tired of his delaying tactics,” Saviour
Kasukuwere, the minister in charge of Zimbabwe’s black
empowerment drive, told Reuters.
Implats is the biggest foreign investor in Zimbabwe’s mining
sector and has become the prime target of a government drive to
get all outside companies to hand over majority stakes in their
local operations to black Zimbabwean investors.
Brown has been seeking talks with Harare but told Reuters he
was still in South Africa, where he is dealing with a strike at
the company’s Rustenburg mine that has cost it 2 billion rand
($265 million) in lost output.
“We can only engage him if he comes here to implement the
law,” Kasukuwere, a member of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF
party, said.
This weekend, Harare gave Implats two weeks to surrender
29.5 percent of its Zimplats unit to a state-run fund
and threatened unspecified sanctions if it did not comply.
Kasukuwere has previously threatened to cancel the mining
licences of non-compliant firms.
($1 = 7.5305 South African rand)
(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Ed Stoddard and
David Holmes)
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