JOHANNESBURG –Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of former South African President Thabo Mbeki, has described Zimbabwe’s move to empower blacks by imposing an ownership quota as part of a get-rich-quick scheme for politicians.

Mbeki was criticising the indigenization and empowerment law which requires all foreign owned firms to transfer 51 percent equity to local Zimbabweans, starting from March 1.

Mbeki, a political commentator, entrepreneur and journalist, believes the affirmative action policies are nothing but a get-rich-quick scheme, which has nothing to do with uplifting the lives of the poor people.

“You can’t say Zimbabwe, which has been independent for 30 years, is all of a sudden having an indigenisation scheme,” said Mbeki.

“Where were they all these years? Why didn’t they build their own entrepreneurs and their own businesses if they were serious about local empowerment?”

He described the rallying call of empowering previously disadvantaged Zimbabweans as “absolute nonsense.” He said many African leaders were using empowerment laws to simply acquire assets for themselves and their families.

“It is a get rich quick scheme, an effort by rulers of Africa to acquire free assets from the people who work hard to acquire the assets, multinationals, foreigners many of whom are citizens of those countries,” said Mbeki.

His brother Thabo Mbeki introduced the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) in South Africa when he was president, in an attempt to bring equality between blacks and whites in the economy.

As part of a push to right the wrongs of apartheid and give blacks a stake of the economy, South Africa requires firms to meet quotas on black ownership, employment and procurement.

The government argues its policy offsets the racism of the past and stimulates the economy by creating a black middle class hungry for its own homes, cars and designer clothes.

But the cracks are beginning to show. Several black empowerment deals have collapsed as the global crisis has caused the value of shares used as collateral to fall, and critics argue the drive has enriched small black elite while doing nothing to boost South Africa’s economy.

This is the same with Zimbabwe which embarked on a land reform exercise in 2000 to redistribute land to landless black who were relegated to arid areas not for agricultural purposes.

The programme has largely been a failure, blighted by accusations that the best land was parcelled out to political elites with links to President Robert Mugabe, who are not using it for productive purposes.

On his part Mugabe, blames all Zimbabwe’s current problems on targeted sanctions imposed on him and officials.

By Staff reporter and agencies