No “Indigenous Law”

Zimbabwe’s prime minister has rejected government legislation requiring all business operating out of the country to be 51 percent owned by blacks. “Morgan Tsvangirai, who sits in a power-sharing government, said on Wednesday that the law would not be implemented as it had not been approved by his cabinet. The so-called ‘Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment’ regulations set out a maximum jail sentence of five years for officials from companies that fail to cede majority control to black Zimbabweans. ‘I am in charge of all policy formation in cabinet and neither myself nor the cabinet were shown these regulations before they were gazetted,’ Tsvangirai said a statement. ‘They were published without due process as detailed in the constitution and are therefore null and void.’ The law was passed in 2008 when parliament was still dominated by supporters of Robert Mugabe, the president, but it had never been implemented. Although it is a year since the two rivals agreed to form a power-sharing government, political differences between Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mugabe’s Zanu-PF continue to affect the administration.”