“On top of that when I was in the opposition party, the MDC, we had roughly one of our members abducted every day for 17 years, 4 800 odd people. Many of them were never to be seen again. Over the last three years we have had five abductions, four of which we think were staged by civil society to try and get the attention from the media and they got the attention from the media and I think that the message is slowly coming through.
“I tell you, for example, there are 1 200 young white farmers back farming in Zimbabwe. These are the grandchildren of the farmers that were shut down by Mugabe during his fast-track land reform programme.
“On top of that we have a third generation of young industrialists who have come into their companies and they are making a huge impact here. Halsteds, Graham Halsted, Graham Richards in the Richards group, I could roll off a dozen companies, they are flying and they are doing extremely well.”
According to the Sunday Mail, big-ticket infrastructure projects that will be wrapped up this year include:
- Lake Gwayi-Shangani, which will permanently end Bulawayo’s water woes and create a greenbelt in surrounding communities;
- the Harare-Beitbridge highway;
- Hwange units 7 and 8, which will add 600MW to the grid;
- the Beitbridge Border Post modernisation project; and
- the expansion of Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.
The paper said there were also several multi-billion-dollar initiatives by the private sector such as:
- the US$1 billion steel plant in Manhize and
- new lithium projects — Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, Sabi Star Mine and Zulu Lithium.
It quoted Mines Minister Winston Chitando saying: “Projects which were underway and will be commissioned (this year) include the Arcadia Lithium Mine project, which will be commissioned in the first two months of 2023; Sabi Star Lithium Mine, which will be commissioned around June 2023; and the Bikita lithium expansion, which will be commissioned around August. We also have the Manhize steel project. These four projects on their own… will be a minimum of US$5,5 billion.”
But for now, Mnangagwa is keeping the nation guessing.
He had only about 176 000 twitter followers when he was elected for his first term in August 2018. He now has just over one million followers (1 011 607 at the time of writing).
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