Mugabe threatens firms forced to close

President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday threatened to nationalise mines and manufacturing companies closing down for what he said were unclear reasons, the ‘Daily News’ reported. “Any closures will have to have the assent of government. The welfare of the workers will in every case be the decisive or determining factor. Government will not tolerate any closures,” he said.

Mugabe said most businesses were shutting down in sympathy with white commercial farmers whose properties were overrun by his supporters and later seized by the government for compulsory resettlement. According to a survey conducted by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), over 400 companies in the manufacturing sector folded last year because of the hostile economic environment. Critics of Mugabe said the move was a government attempt to gain support among urban workers, many of whom voted for the opposition in last year’s elections.

The sectors hardest hit were the motor trade with 171 shut-downs, steel manufacturers with 92, and 45 in the textile industry. The CZI said 10,000 workers were retrenched from about 750 companies last year with the clothing and textile industries accounting for the highest numbers of lay-offs. A spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said that businesses don’t close down because they hate the government of the day. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) president, Lovemore Matombo, said his organisation would resist the proposed take-overs. He said: “If Mugabe is going to take over the companies and give them to so-called indigenous business people at the expense of workers, then we will resist the move.