Harare, March 03: Zimbabwe’s veteran President Robert Mugabe has called for people in South Africa to take over British companies and boycott their products.
Speaking at a public meeting, Mugabe asked the European Union and United States to remove the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe or face the consequences.
“It is not enough to speak against sanctions…We can’t keep hosting more than 400 British firms here, including mines,” he said. It is “now time to take measures against them.”
Under the new Indigenization and Empowerment Act, white-owned businesses have to sell 51 percent of their shares to Zimbabweans.
Barclays and Standard Charted Plc are of the British companies operating in Zimbabwe.
“I have said the indigenization and empowerment process should start with those [British] firms…We must take them over. We can also boycott their products,” Mugabe urged.
The British Foreign Office on the other hand described the remarks as “irresponsible”.
“We have made clear to the Zimbabwean authorities on a number of occasions that they shouldn’t do anything to undermine investor confidence or Zimbabwe’s fragile economic recovery,” Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field said.
“The biggest losers would be the Zimbabwean people themselves,” Field warned
—Agencies