A National Foods executive said the salt had not been put on the market because it had been imported from neighboring Botswana at the parallel exchange rate of 300 Zimbabwean dollars to the U.S. dollar. At that rate, nearly six times the government's fixed exchange rate, the company would take a huge loss if it sold the salt at the market price set by the government, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The company had been negotiating with government officials to find a compromise price for the salt.
In a speech to ruling party officials Friday, Mugabe attacked National Foods, which he described as "an Anglo American company of Nicky Oppenheimer," the chairman of the mining giant. "They have been hoarding salt. ... They want people on the streets against our government. What kind of mischief is this?" he said, according to the state-owned Sunday Mail. "We will take over their enterprises."***
A recently revised Mineral and Petroleum Development Bill will make black economic empowerment a compulsory requirement when granting mining and prospecting permits to private companies. ''Corporations in this country had an opportunity to institute affirmative action the right way, and it is fair to say they failed dismally,'' Danisa Baloyi, executive director of the National Black Business Caucus, recently told the Sowetan newspaper. ''Now they must be made to change.''
Detractors charge that black empowerment policies have been a useful tool for the ruling elite to appoint unskilled and inexperienced government cronies in the public and private sector, which they argue could potentially have dire consequences for the economy. Critics also insist that compulsory black empowerment has resulted in a brain drain, because white men in particular are leaving companies, often for opportunities overseas, when they realize that they stand little or no chance of being promoted.***