SW Radio Africa (London)
Violet Gonda
12 November 2009
column
Much Masunda, the Chairman of Old Mutual Zimbabwe, has said the insurance giant is an 'institutional investor' and does not influence the running of companies that the group has invested in. Masunda, who is also the Mayor of Harare, was reacting to calls by South African pressure groups for Old Mutual to publicly withdraw its stake in Zimpapers, saying it is wrong to invest in a company which promotes hate speech.
But the Chairman argued that the investment in Zimpapers goes back before independence, when the company was known as the Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company.
South African refugee rights group, People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP) and the labour movement COSATU, have called on the insurance giant to withdraw its stake in Zimbabwe Newspapers Ltd, or face a series of protest actions.
A petition sent to Julian Roberts, Old Mutual CEO said: "The newspapers operated by the state through Zimbabwe Newspapers Ltd. (including The Herald, The Sunday Mail, Kwayedza, The Sunday News, The Chronicle, and The Manica Post) are among Zanu PF's most vital tools for retaining its place as one of the most infamously corrupt and brutal governments of the last decade."
But Masunda told SW Radio Africa on Thursday that the company 'does not take into account political considerations when investing in a company and said when the group initially made the investment in Zimpapers, the politics in the country and within the company were not what they are now. He said if Old Mutual was ever going to exit it would be for reasons that are not necessarily connected with the politics of the country and company, but on the basis that 'we are no longer getting the returns we were expecting to get."
He said: "There must be close to 83 companies that are quoted on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, and you will find that Old Mutual is invested in close to 76 of these companies and in most cases our investments range from 15% to maybe 33% . In all these instances we don't seek representation, we are purely an institutional investor, investing on the basis of financial returns that we are going to get for our policyholders or pensioners, on whose behalf we manage the pensions."
But the rights protestors accuse big businesses, such as Old Mutual, of having absolutely no ethics and because of this they actively help repressive regimes to remain in place. They say that many companies today care about nothing but making money.
Companies like Zimpapers have, over the years, been used to spread dangerous hate speech and have been a very important part of the regime's repression, helping trample down any hope of freedom of expression.
PASSOP said Old Mutual was 'arming' Mugabe's propaganda machinery, which is the equivalent to 'loading bullets into the guns that kill oppositional voices in Zimbabwe."
Masunda responded by saying while he takes heed of ethical considerations, they are currently 'operating in a market that has severe restrictions and constraints' and threfore there is 'very little stock that is really worth investing.'
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