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Africa Moyo Deputy News Editor
Zanu-PF is set to host a high stakes breakfast meeting in Harare this morning to solicit the views of various stakeholders ahead of the review of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy. The meeting is being organised by the party’s Department of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment headed by former Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Mike Bimha.

The breakfast meeting runs under the theme, “Aligning the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy with Vision 2030”.

Dr Bimha told The Herald yesterday that the party, which is supreme to Government, wanted to get perspectives of various groups of people, including the private sector, parastatals and small and medium enterprises, regards the proposed review of the empowerment policy.

“What we want is to come up with a policy as a party, but it will have a national outlook,” said Dr Bimha. “As you know, Government comes from the party, but Government should get input from the party.

“Government has the responsibility to make laws emanating from various policies, but that prerogative to make laws is not for the party, but as a party we need to consult as widely as possibly to come up with what we believe should be our Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment policy.

“But to do that we don’t only confine ourselves to the organs of the party; we can go to the Women’s League, we can go to the youth, we can go to war veterans and they tell us their ideas, but we believe we are talking of a policy that takes everybody on board, therefore, we need to consult as widely as possibly from Zimbabweans from all walks of life.”

Dr Bimha said the stakeholder consultations have been necessitated by the misconception that some people have about the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act.

He said many people associated the Act solely with the 51/49 percent shareholding structure in favour of locals.
Dr Bimha said when the Act was amended recently to allow foreigners to own 100 percent of their ventures in various sectors apart from platinum and diamond sectors, many people thought “the party or Government have done away with the Indigenisation Act, because to them, it was all about 51/49 and if you removed that, there was no more indigenisation”.

He explained that there are several forms of empowering people, running under different names in various jurisdictions.
“We have BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) in South Africa and others had Africanisation; there are various forms of approaching the subject,” said Dr Bimha.

“But we are saying we want to approach it when we get input from our own people. And this is just the beginning of an exercise of consulting.

“We are also consulting other stakeholders, but at this point in time, we want to be able to get as many of the private sector players as possible to contribute, the parastatals, SMEs; to get their views on how they want to see the policy on this important subject going forward.”