What is the government motive for squeezing Zimplats for more claims?

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has gone to court to force world number two platinum miner Implats’ local unit to give up nearly 28 000 hectares of ground, triggering an inevitable sense of déjà vu after previous release of mineral claims left a trail of controversy and missed opportunities.

Under its ‘use it or lose it’ policy, government has recently moved to expropriate a combined 42 000 hectares from the country’s two largest ferrochrome producers – Zimbabwe Mining and Smelting Company and Zimbabwe Alloys, saying it needs to open the sector up to new players.

Implats subsidiary, Zimbabwe Platinum Mines (Zimplats), the country’s biggest mining business which gave up ground covering 51 million ounces (36 percent of its total resource) out of a total 141 million ounce resource in 2006, has this time objected to the government’s seizure of more claims, prompting Mugabe to approach the courts for an order authorising the acquisition of the land.

The state’s renewed feverish attempts to acquire the claims, after allowing a legally mandated two year window during which it could have processed the acquisition lapse, raise questions about its motives, especially as the Mugabe government faces increasing financial problems.

Government faces a widening budget deficit and has been struggling to pay its workers, triggering a strike by civil servants early this month.

Although in court papers Mugabe makes the case for the latest seizure plans, saying the acquired claims would “allow the immediate entry of new players into the platinum sector” in partnership with government, the last such claim seizure – a decade ago – is yet to deliver for  the public good.

Platinum claims covering 4 500 hectares, acquired from world number one producer Anglo American Platinum in 2006 and which allowed the government to source a controversial $100 million loan ahead of Zimbabwe’s bloody 2008 election, remain undeveloped.

The $100 million loan to government, made when there was an interregnum in Zimbabwe after an inconclusive March 2008 election in which Mugabe and his ZANU-PF lost the first round to Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC party, has been the subject of a US government probe.

This is after it emerged that the funds were sourced by Och-Ziff, one of the biggest publicly traded American hedge funds with nearly $50 billion assets under management, which had invested $150 million in Billy Rautenbach’s Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC) days earlier. The American probe sought to establish whether Och-Ziff knew its funds would end up in the Mugabe government’s hand, in contravention of US sanctions.

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