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President Mugabe said this in an interview on ZTV programme TalkingBusiness on Thursday.
“Business always have fears, some of them are ill-placed. Actually, it is the sanctions that have undermined their capability, ability, and in the process capacity to undertake the production that the enterprises are meant to.
“They have had shortages, they have had equipment whi-ch has lacked spare parts and raw materials from outside they used to get which is in short supply.
“Over time, therefore, you have this depreciation or redu-ction in their capacity everywhere and, yes, we explain in political terms that it is as a result of the sanctions imposed by the West.
“But business would like to see it as a result of the conflict we had in 2008,” he said.
The President said differences in policies among the main political parties made it difficult to remain with an inclusive Government.
“What does business want us to do? Go on and on and on as we are? And for that matter they think we are united in spirit. No, we are physically united, conveniently, expediently united so we can put together an exercise or a process to see us to elections.
“You cannot have a Government of parties whose policies are in contradiction to each other. It is untenable completely untenable. You suppress your antagonisms, hostilities and if you can suppress them and actually kill them well, well and good . . .
“We belong to a party that has its own policies, the MDC has its own polices and these policies do not merge, do not gel.”
He said his party felt it would better implement its policies without the other formations.
“We must have elections in the normal situation where we do not have disturbances. Elections come once in five years.
“It will be remembered that our elections of 2008 were judged as having been preceded by violence, the voting itself was not violent, there were cases of violence but it was not overall violence as you get in other States.
“But this was played up so much that even our friends thought that we should re-do the exercise.
“In other words, organise yourselves, Sadc said, and do your elections again. So we are in the GPA to re-do our elections. We are on a vehicle that should lead us to elections.”
The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said the stability brought about by the inclusive Government could be short-lived given the differences among the parties.
“It can only last for a short time and sooner or later we will have people fighting each other in the inclusive Government where there are contradictory factors.
“I do not think business is right in its understanding and appreciation of our situation. I think they should realise that policies should be uniform and we do not have uniformity of policies,” he said. President Mugabe said Zimbabwe would survive despite the illegal Western sanctions.
“We will continue to move as Zimbabweans and try our best to get things going, which we have tried to do. They (the West) are hostile and they want regime change but we say Zimbabwe belongs to Zimbabweans and it is Zimbabweans who have the right to determine who shall be their ruler and the right to determine their future . . . not those from outside,” he said.
President Mugabe said WikiLeaks had exposed MDC-T for providing information on the nature and form of sanctions and this vindicated calls for an early election.
“The question arises, for how long do we go on side-by-side with people who are subversive elements to the nationhood of Zimbabwe?”
The President said the matter would be discussed at the appropriate time.
“We have not talked about them (the WikiLeaks revelations) but we will be talking about them in the future. We have our own fora, the (National) Security Council, and some of those things would be talked about in those fora,” he said.
President Mugabe said the indigenisation programme would be expedited this year.
“It is really at its initial stage and people should not expect that the preparatory stage will yield much.
“But this year we see gigantic steps being taken and we must see ourselves in positions of control, in positions of ownership of the whole economy; in the mining sector, in manufacturing and commerce.
“We should be the main players. Wherever we have enterprises, those enterprises should by and large be manned by Zimbabweans.
“It’s not that we should not have people from other nationalities or outside, no, we can have partners or joint ventures but they should never be seniors,” President Mugabe said.
He said non-indigenous people would only be considered for majority ownership in crucial industries where the country did not have expertise.
President Mugabe explained that the Ziscosteel deal was one such example.
“Zisco had a huge debt, I thought it was about US$500 million but they have told me it is beyond that, and this company (Essar) said it would take over that debt and it was that consideration that we said this company would get 54 percent,” he said.
Online Reporter