Senior officials in Zanu (PF), the party led by the 85-year-old veteran politician, who faces growing international condemnation for his crackdowns on political opponents, white farmers and independent journalists, say he is furious that foreign governments had refused to give Tsvangirai assurances that they would lift sanctions that have hit hard the top brass in his party.
Mugabe got official feedback from Tsvangirai, who returned home Monday. Mugabe seemed seized with the matter at the 76th ordinary session of Zanu (PF) held in Harare last week Wednesday.
“I hope that the Prime Minister’s trip has given him an opportunity to call for the removal of the illegal sanctions which are stifling efforts by the inclusive governmnet to achieve its targets,” Mugabe said.
A leading member of the president’s Zanu (PF) party warned that Mugabe planned to retaliate for the intransigence of Western governments and alleged that the refusal was at Britain’s instigation – with other Western capitals taking a cue to maintain a ban on travel to European Union countries and America.
According to the Southern African Business Association, there are about 100 British companies in Zimbabwe, with a total investment of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Some of the big players, such as Barclays Bank, BP and Cadbury, are considered too vital to the economy to be nationalised. But scores of family businesses, many of them in tourism, could be confiscated and distributed among Mugabe’s party faithful, the sources said.
Mugabe told his lieutenants: “We must urgently revive the revolutionary spirit of the party.”
White British passport-holders in Zimbabwe would have to renounce their UK citizenship amid a continuing diplomatic stand-off over the evacuation of elderly Britons from Zimbabwe.
Aides of Mugabe say that the tacit refusal to lift sanctions means that those Britons who have failed to become Zimbabwean citizens will face repercussions. Many of the few remaining white farmers have already decided to comply with the measure.
But a prominent businessman in Harare said yesterday that many of the whites still in Zimbabwe were determined to hold onto their British passports.
“There will be serious repercussions for Britain’s refusal to lift these sanctions,” said the Zanu (PF) aligned businessman, who had been warned of Mugabe’s plans by ministers in the president’s inner circle.
“It’ll be tit for tat. People will simply have their right to live here taken away and they’ll lose their businesses.”
Asked how this would be achieved with an MDC party with a strong presence in Parliament, the official said “it will be a spontaneous uprising, like the agrarian revolution.” He boasted that the MDC was powerless to stop a Zanu (PF) scheme which had the full backing of the top brass in the security forces.
Mugabe and the generals were said to be “extremeley agitated” and angered over EU and America’s decision to remove lifting “smart sanctions” targeted at Mugabe and his closest associates, and refusing to unfreeze their bank accounts.
The refusal to grant development finance and confine aid only to debt relief measures and aid is said to have infuriated the president. Most businessmen were silent when the threat of confiscation surfaced last week.
Mugabe’s aides say the president believes that Tsvangirai used his international tour of Western capitals to consolidate his party’s position and fundraise through local non-governmental organisations, which Mugabe allegesis complicit with the the MDC in attempting to cause regime change.
Mugabe says the MDC was created by British and western corporate interests to break his grip on power, which will be tested by elections in two years time.
Tobias Musvetu, a war veteran and political commentator, said a plan to grab British business assets had existed since the early days of Mugabe’s guerilla offensive against the Rhodesian authorities.
“The idea was that we would seize power, take all the land from the white farmers and nationalise all white-owned businesses,” he said. “When Mugabe came to power a compromise deal was struck, with the British paying for land reform. “In Mugabe’s eyes, the whites have broken the agreement by encouraging both the farm workers and urban employees to support the MDC.”
