The Sunday Mail
Rangu Nyamurundira
One can understand John Robertson’s disgruntled rantings against indigenisation at whatever opportune platform he is afforded.
His tantrums arise from the pain of indigenous remedy to the historically privileged, discriminatory and exclusive foreign and non-indigenous capital from which Robertson and his kin have long suckled.
Robertson we can get, really, because he reacts naturally to a fading legacy of racial economic privilege.
His nature must be to rabidly attack any expression of indigenous aspirations, whether in the form of land reform or indigenisation and economic empowerment.
What baffles reason and must be of serious concern to our national interest is when indigenous Zimbabweans and so-called economists and industrialists suddenly think the enforcement of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act (Chapter 14:33) is sudden and shocking.
This is in spite of a whole eight years of the Act being known to investors and non-indigenous businesses.
So-called experts like VaCallisto Jokonya now want to tell us the enforcement of indigenisation is a sudden and emotional exercise by a Government that waited a whole five years to allow businesses to come forward and comply.
It is a very sober Government that now enforces its laws, Sir.
Then there is Chris Mugaga, the chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, who says that there must be negotiation, forgetting to take responsibility for ZNCC’s failure to advise its members to engage and negotiate compliance during the 2010-15 window period that the law allowed before it decided to enforce its contemptuously ignored provisions.
This is the same ZNCC which Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Patrick Zhuwao took time to meet with on four occasions over the past six months.
The minister explained the law and engaged ZNCC on compliance.
He went further to invite ZNCC and the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries to submit their views and recommendations on how best their members could comply.
ZNCC has not submitted such a paper, neither has CZI.
Mugaga now goes on national television to tell Zimbabweans that enforcement of indigenisation laws amounts to “kung fu economics”.
He acts shocked when the law must now be enforced, eight years into its existence, and even arrogantly insinuates to businesses not to comply as, in his opinion, Government does not have the capacity to enforce the law.
These so-called representatives of business and industry continue to collect membership fees and other donations; to do what, really?
Any member with business sense will see that they are being taken for a ride and misinformed by institutions pursing an activist agenda that has nothing to do with ensuring members comply with the law in an amicable manner.
The irony of these indigenous turncoats’ crusade against indigenisation is that they are oblivious to the reality on the ground, that non-indigenous businesses have been frantically submitting their plans.
The National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board has been inundated with businesses that have paid heed to the law.
The narrative of the past few days has gone on to allude that Government’s enforcement of the indigenisation law somehow undermines President Mugabe’s engagement with foreign investors as he recently did in Japan.
Do they insinuate that President Mugabe goes back on his principled position that stubbornness by businesses must end come 2016?
Something is wrong, seriously wrong here.
If we cannot see it as a people, then certainly this generation may well not deserve the coming total independence.
Let such a lost generation be purged in its self-imposed wilderness so that a new and more enlightened generation rises to claim our birthright zvisina nhetemwa.
What is more, grown men with all their so-called expertise secretly covet imminent benefits of indigenisation.
Like thieves in the night, they try to acquire such benefits, whispering complaints of how their private business aspirations are being hampered by the unfair advantage of non-indigenous business interests.
They are conflicted double agents.
On the one hand, they secretly express anger over a long-standing and racially-designed foreign economic advantage that continues to erode their aspirations at indigenous enterprise.
Conversly, the same “experts” still want to earn a quick buck and live in the here-and-now by earning consultancy fees and per-diems for speaking publicly in favour of their foreign bosses and clientele.
They will advocate foreign and non-indigenous capital to build their CVs.
One only needs to observe indigenous CEOs and managing directors who have been allowed to sit at boardroom tables as caretakers of non-indigenous capital.
For eight years, they have sat at those tables, telling the master that indigenisation will come to nothing.
What now when the law bares its teeth and comes to bite?
Their dilemma is whether to close or not to.
Shall they comply or opt to lose salaries and perks by advising against compliance?
To be indigenous or not to be indigenous?
That is the question.
I’m reminded of South Africa’s iconic anti-apartheid hero, Steve Biko, who said, “Being black is not a matter of pigmentation but a reflection of the mind.”
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and indigenisation and economic empowerment consultant. His views are his own, and do not reflect or represent the views of any institution with which he is associated.
