[miningmx.com] — “KASUKUWERE is young, smooth, and ambitious. He reportedly orchestrated violence in Mashonaland East in the 2008 elections.’ So reads a Wikileaks cable following a meeting in 2010 between Saviour “Tyson’ Kasukuwere, Zimbabwe’s Youth and Empowerment Minister, and Charles Ray, US ambassador to Zimbabwe.
Kasukuwere is the Zimbabwean politician who has turned the heat up on South African mining companies, Aquarius Platinum and Impala Platinum, insisting the companies file acceptable “indigenisation’ (empowerment) strategies or risk losing the right to mine in Zimbabwe.
They are sailing close to the wind, but the same could be said of Kasukuwere, who doesn’t seem to have the universal support of fellow ministers, including Tapiwa Mashakada, minister of economic planning who told Miningmx Kasukuwere’s threats to cancel the mining licences of Impala and Aquarius were unilateral decisions.
What’s interesting about Kasukuwere, however, is not the doppelganger he presents to South Africa’s own Enfant terrible, Julius Malema, but the way in which the two are different.
Kasukuwere’s hard-line stance aligns him with President Robert Mugabe while simultaneously providing hope he’s the vanguard of a new “middle way’ between Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Says one Wikileaks missive: “Realising that the future may not lie exclusively with Zanu-PF, he’s on a charm offensive, reaching out to both MDC factions and to Western diplomats,’ one cable reads. “He’s an important player given the political importance of youth and the economic importance of investment,’ it says.
But who really is Kasukuwere, where did he come from, and how did he rise through the ranks?
He originally hails from the Marondera district where his family was involved in the liberation war in the Seventies. He attended the University of Berlin before joining Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, where he served for up to nine years.
In 1995, he joined the president’s office before being elected to parliament in 2000.
He owns a trucking business but keeps these private interests separate from his political career. One Wikileaks cable describes him as “a thug’.
The controversial Jonathan Moyo, a Zanu-PF politburo member, said that as the youngest member of cabinet, Kasukuwere has brought fresh impetus to indigenisation, although since the strategy was as important as land reform, it was “self-propelling’.
“He [Kasukuwere] has been given a serious mandate, but the jury is still out on him,’ says Moyo. He adds, however, that Kasukuwere has already shown some skills “people didn’t think he had’. And further: “He’s truly in the category of so-called Young Turks. He’s just entering the door.’
Kasukuwere has certainly focused minds and, in his insistence on indigenisation, reflects what’s happening more widely, especially in Africa. Guinea, for instance, is the latest resource-rich country on the continent to legislate direct, uncompensated government ownership in minerals.
Other versions exist, or are due to, in Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia and, who knows, even South Africa.
Peter Leon, an attorney for Webber Wentzel, acknowledges that mineral rich countries have leverage over the private sector, at least in some cases. “But it only lasts while the commodity boom is underway. If there’s a global recession, that could go very pear-shaped,’ he says.
– The article first appeared in Finweek. If you want to subscribe to the digital format of Finweek visit www.zinio.com.
