Peta Thornycroft Independent Foreign Service
ONE OF President Robert Mugabe’s cabinet ministers lost his temper with a group of potential foreign investors last week when one of them, from the House of Lords, asked who would succeed the “old man”, who celebrates his 91st birthday next week.
The investors were in Zimbabwe on a mission organised by British group, Invest Africa, aimed at boosting Zimbabwe’s struggling economy.
After the meeting at his office in Harare, local government minister Ignatius Chombo told the Zimbabwe state broadcaster: “We had some unpleasant disagreements when they wanted to refer to succession in our own country. So I told them who we vote for is our business and not theirs.”
But Lord Anthony St John of Bletso, who asked the succession question, insisted that any business looking to invest in the country needed information about its political future and clarity on the “indigenisation” policy, which insists black Zimbabweans own 51 percent of foreign companies.
“You must understand that if we are going to write cheques, we didn’t then want to be challenged,” Sir Anthony told Chombo.
“It is surprising to learn that Chombo went to the media about this closed-door meeting,” said Raya Hubbell, the chief operating officer of Invest Africa, which was established in 2013 by South African Rob Hersov and now operates in many other countries.
“Later on, Chombo changed his rhetoric after meeting an investor in disaster relief and social housing developments who has built tens of thousands of housing units in South America.
“Chombo was so impressed he left the meeting with our man and took him to show him a couple of potential sites for low cost housing.”
Hubbell said despite the row, the 22-strong delegation from 11 countries remained interested in Zimbabwean investment opportunities.
Another member of the group said they had a “relaxed” and frank meeting with recently appointed vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, the man several analysts said was most likely to succeed Mugabe.
“Mnangagwa was so different to Chombo. He spoke about succession and admitted that lessons had been learned about the way of enforcing indigenisation. We found him to be forward thinking and much more clear and honest then Chombo.”
Mugabe, regularly referred to in some Harare media and cartoons as the “old man”, regularly tells his supporters that Zimbabwe “will never be a colony again” and says the British have undemocratically tried to oust him from power since independence in 1980.
One member of a group of potential British investors who visited Zimbabwe in October has since returned, and established an agricultural company in Harare.