{"id":29226,"date":"2016-10-07T02:52:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T02:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/mugabe-zimbabwe-to-soften-controversial-foreign\/"},"modified":"2016-10-07T02:48:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T02:48:26","slug":"mugabe-zimbabwe-to-soften-controversial-foreign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/mugabe-zimbabwe-to-soften-controversial-foreign\/","title":{"rendered":"Mugabe: Zimbabwe to soften controversial foreign company law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has announced plans to water down a contentious law obliging foreign companies to hand over most of their shares to black Zimbabweans.}<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;indigenisation law&#8221; has been blamed for choking off investment.<\/p>\n<p>It has never been fully implemented and Mr Mugabe has previously said many sectors of the economy are exempt.<\/p>\n<p>But it has been widely criticised, including by the IMF, for contributing to the collapse of the economy.<\/p>\n<p>In March, Zimbabwe threatened to close all companies that failed to comply with the legislation, which was passed in 2008, before later saying banks would be exempt.<\/p>\n<p>The government says the aim of the law is to empower the majority black population who were disadvantaged by colonial rule.<\/p>\n<p>But critics say it has benefited Mr Mugabe&#8217;s allies.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the opening of parliament, Mr Mugabe also said the government would debate a bill on cybercrime.<\/p>\n<p>Political activists say this could be used against opposition supporters using social media as a way of circumventing security laws banning gatherings without police permission.<\/p>\n<p>There have been a number of protests against the government in recent months, largely because of the worsening economic situation.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-15541 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_91552974_mediaitem91552973.jpg\" alt=\"Mr Mugabe says the law offers redress for the colonial era\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has announced plans to water down a contentious law obliging foreign companies to hand over most of their shares to black Zimbabweans.} The &#8220;indigenisation law&#8221; has been blamed for choking off investment. It has never been fully implemented and Mr Mugabe has previously said many sectors of the economy are exempt. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29226"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29226"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}