Zimbabwe Still Controlled By White Commercial Interests - Tendai Biti

CCC vice president Tendai Biti said that Zimbabwe’s mining, farming, manufacturing, banking, legal and auditing sectors are still controlled by white people and serve white commercial interests.

Biti, who is Harare East MP (CCC), made the remarks while contributing in Parliament on Thursday during the Defence, Home Affairs and Security Services Parliamentary Committee debate on war veterans’ welfare. He said:

Forty-four years after independence, much of that land is still intact and owned by white commercial interests.

Billy Rautenbach for instance, owns tonnes and tonnes of land in the Chipinge-Chisumbanje area.

Whilst we complained about the problem of white ownership of farms and multiple ownership of our farms by white farmers, right now the biggest challenge is multiple farm leasing by white interests in this country.

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This country is still owned, controlled and run by white commercial interests, whether it is in mining, farming, manufacturing, banking, legal and auditing sector, white commercial interests are still dominating in this country.

It is not yet Uhuru; there is unfinished business in the liberation struggle.

The former Finance Minister also urged the government to give war veterans title deeds of farms they acquired in the Land Reform Programme, saying the offer letters given to the ex-combatants were not enough. He said:

Many of the war veterans have nothing to show for that. We are giving them pensions in a volatile, non-stable currency.

Let us give our war veterans their pensions in a stable currency.

The government itself has recognized the volatility of the Zimbabwean dollar by levying everything in USD; passports, number plates, birth certificates, milk from Pick ‘n’ Pay, school fees and license in USD but war veterans’ salaries in RTGs isu tonyebera kuvada vanhu ava.

He said there should be a permanent representation of war veterans in the National Assembly through a quota system.

ZANU PF has often accused the opposition of being against the land reform programme and failing to appreciate the noble role played by war veterans in the liberation of the country from settler colonial rule.

More: Pindula News