Mugabe Wants Share of Zimbabwe Mining

Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, says he wants the government to have a stake in private mining projects in the country, including diamond mining. The internationally pariah leader promises, however, not to nationalize the enterprises.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mugabe said that because he wants the people of Zimbabwe to benefit from their own natural resources, he expects companies mining in Zimbabwe, such as Anglo-American, to cooperate.

“We just want to be partners. We are not doing anything unusual, and this is the practice in many countries,” he said in the interview conducted during the UN Summit last week.

While exploration activities have been limited in the harshly ruled state, there is mining activities in the African country, including coal, asbestos, gold, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium, tin and platinum group metals as well as diamonds, emeralds and semiprecious stones.

“What we intend to do is for the state to have a stake in the production of some of our minerals - gold, platinum, diamonds,” he said, adding that they are behind countries like Botswana and Namibia.

He has no plans to nationalize the industry, he told the news agency, even tough he had threatened to do so in the past.