The Parliament Portfolio Committee on Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment is demanding that ZANU PF businessman Billy Rautenbach’s Green Fuel project should be reversed because the way it was approved flouted the indigenisation laws and impoverished the community which was supposed to benefit from it.
The company in 2008 controversially acquired 5000 hectares of land and pushed away 1754 traditional families who were occupying it.
Since then there was an outcry by the deprived families who said they wanted compensation from the company for the displacements.
Macdom Investments, as it is known in the area was also accused of causing the death of the displaced villagers’ domestic animals with chemicals it uses to treat the sugar cane in the process of making ethanol.
These complaints forced the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Youth, Indigenization and Economic Empowerment to visit the area on a fact finding mission late last year where is found out that the villagers where living in abject poverty owing to the establishment of the project.
The Committee then compiled a report which it handed over to government this week asking the authorities to reverse the project saying it was not community oriented.
“The Committee appreciates that the ceding of 51% stake in foreign controlled entities is not an overnight fast-track task. However the ‘sustainable economic empowerment and social transformation’ of communities like Chisumbanje can be surely be done with immediate benchmark gains through more robust and evaluable social responsibility schemes like Community Share Ownership Trust,” reads part of the report.
“ It is high time government make a strong statement of intent and also review the shambolic way in which the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, especially its community empowerment objective is being implemented by entities like Green Fuel with whom it has Joint Ventures.
“It is sad to note that the state has not shown any urgency to bring to order the evident dis-empowered of the people of Chisumbanje, but has shown more concern to support the business side of the Ethanol Project.”