Mugabe forces white-owned businesses to give blacks control

Zimbabwe‘s President Robert Mugabe signed into law new regulations forcing foreign- and white-owned businesses to hand over 51% control of their operations to blacks, the official media reported today.

Cranking up his election campaign theme of “economic empowerment” in the impoverished former regional breadbasket, Mr Mugabe also unveiled tractors, buses, animal-drawn farm implements, power generators, motorcycles, petrol and some 3,000 cattle that are to be distributed to black farmers resettled on white-owned land seized by the government since 2000.