A ZANU PF official in Bulawayo has demanded the arrest of businesspeople who abandon their buildings and companies in the city, claiming they wanted to sabotage the indigenisation programme.
REPORT BY NQOBANI NDLOVU
Charles Chiponda, the Zanu PF provincial secretary for indigenisation, told journalists during a discussion at the Bulawayo Press Club on Wednesday night, that businesspeople were abandoning their businesses to embarrass President Robert Mugabe.
“Even the council has said that it is concerned about the buildings that are lying idle,” he said.
“The owners should be arrested for sabotaging the indigenisation programme. It’s all deliberate to ensure that there is no paper work to implement the indigenisation and empowerment programme.
“The owners of these buildings and companies that are lying idle should be arrested and sent to prison. In other countries like the UK, if you leave a building unoccupied and squatters move in, you are not allowed to remove them. That should happen here also.”
Recently, the Bulawayo council expressed concern over the vacant buildings and companies that are lying idle, saying the owners should be taken to task for abandoning them. Chiponda claimed that the indigenisation programme was a success so much that the South African government was even copying it.
“The South African ANC government is trying to copy the Zimbabwe type of indigenisation out of realisation that theirs is not working and not benefiting them,” he said.
Zanu PF youths have been urging the government to allow them to take over unoccupied buildings in Bulawayo.