Mugabe threatens businesses with enforced price cuts

By Lance Guma
25 March 2008

A campaign rally in Hwange provided the setting for Robert Mugabe to continue his war of words about the business community in the country. Faced with a collapsed economy and rising anger amongst the population Mugabe desperately sought to blame supermarkets and manufacturers for the high prices in the shops. Speaking to a small crowd Mugabe said his government wanted prices reduced to their February 12 levels, when teachers and other civil servants were awarded pay increases. The economy remains a key issue in the election and Mugabe’s disastrous policies have put him at a great disadvantage. Tuesday’s warning to the business community appeared to be an attempt to salvage votes ahead of Saturday’s election.

The Zanu PF leader has sought to sell the impression that private companies are trying to force him out of power by increasing prices and stirring up resentment. ‘We are going to read the riot act to them. We are meeting with them in Harare. If they refuse we will also not co-operate. We are going to use the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act,’ Mugabe warned. Under that Act companies, mines and manufacturing firms are forced to reserve at least 51 per cent of shares for indigenous people. The law has been viewed as nothing more than a tool to reward Mugabe’s cronies.

Economic analysts warned that Mugabe’s threat to cut prices was the wrong prescription for the country’s economic problems. They blamed government’s ballooning domestic debt for driving up prices and say any enforced price cuts will actually fuel inflation. With no solutions to offer Mugabe has been going around the country dishing out computers to schools and farm implements at his campaign rallies. But Newsreel has it on good authority that the farm implements on trucks at Mugabe’s rallies are never given away, but are just driven to the next rally as a promotional tool.

This time around the election results could be very different indeed.