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- Rautenbach’s fast and furious ride to riches<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Zanu-PF’s Green Fuel dilemma<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Zim: The steep price of access to power<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Zanu-PF MP hits out at Rautenbach<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Rautenbach has already taken 9\u00a0400 hectares from local farmers, uprooting more than 1\u00a0700 households with an estimated 10\u00a0000 members. But he says he will need 45\u00a0000 hectares for cane production when the factory is at full capacity, suggesting that the land grab will continue.<\/p>\n
Government backing for the plant, which includes legislation giving Rautenbach a production monopoly, represents an ironic reversal of Zanu-PF\u2019s proclaimed land reform policy, which is supposedly intended to benefit small black farmers.<\/p>\n
Rautenbach\u2019s fast and furious rise to riches in South Africa and other African countries has frequently stirred controversy (see \u201cBilly Rautenbach\u2019s disingenuous and slippery story\u201d below). He is alleged to have profited from Zimbabwe\u2019s military adventure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998 and to have donated generously to Zanu-PF\u2019s election coffers. His close relationship with the ruling party saw him added to the list of individuals on the European Union\u2019s targeted sanctions against the Zimbabwean elite.<\/p>\n
He was sent questions this week, but did not respond.<\/p>\n
Mandatory blending
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\nRautenbach established the ethanol plant in the Chisumbanje district of Manicaland in 2009. It operated as the Green Fuel company after his Macdom Investments company partnered with the state-owned Agricultural Rural Development Authority (Arda).<\/p>\nIt ceased production in 2010 because of a low uptake of ethanol, but was reopened in 2013 with increased hand-holding from government in the form of a statutory monopoly and\u00a0 legislation prescribing a mandatory blending of all petrol<\/a> in Zimbabwe with 15% ethanol.<\/p>\n
President Robert Mugabe\u2019s government has kicked more than 6\u00a0300 white farmers off commercial farms since 2000. Foreign and white owned businesses are also required by law to cede a 51% shareholding to government and black people, ostensibly to redress colonial injustices.<\/p>\n
However, Rautenbach has ceded just 10% of Green Fuel to Arda. He even received assistance from the government in displacing people without compensation.<\/p>\n
Locals told amaBhungane that they watched helplessly as Green Fuel strayed beyond the 5\u00a0112 hectares it received from Arda and took their land, destroying their crops and ancestral graves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the company came into the area, we were happy and thought we were going to benefit. However, when they were taking over our fields, they destroyed our maize and cotton which was ready for harvesting and even destroyed graves of our relatives,\u201d alleged a villager, Vhondai Mashava, who made similar claims to a parliamentary committee that toured the area late last year.<\/p>\n
Putting the country ‘in jeopardy’
\n<\/strong>
\nAnother local resident, Claris Madhuku, concurred with Mashava, saying that \u201cthe land question in Zimbabwe has been clearly articulated by President Robert Gabriel Mugabe in a manner that makes it very difficult to allow an individual to put the whole country and the villagers of Chisumbanje in jeopardy\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cWe do not consider it fair to allow business interests to triumph over the sociocultural interest of the community. Political interference has been given too much licence to wreak havoc and willy-nilly disregard resolutions of Cabinet and national policy frameworks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Madhuku is also director of the Platform for Youth Development Trust, which has been lobbying the government to ensure people\u2019s rights are respected by big business.<\/p>\n
He has written to Parliament on behalf of the Chisumbanje community to complain that, \u201csince we are now approaching the rain season, with ploughing about to start in October, it would be much appreciated if the boundary dispute is formally clarified in line with your recommendations\u201d.<\/p>\n
The \u201cboundary\u201d referred to demarcates land owned by Arda from communal land.<\/p>\n
Compensation
\n<\/strong>
\nParliament\u2019s indigenisation and empowerment committee, chaired by Zanu-PF MP Mayor Justice Wadyajena, said in its report that \u201cmost of the villagers whose land was taken by the project have not been compensated up to this day, despite undertakings by Green Fuel to do so when the project was first established\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cThe committee recommends that Arda board chairperson Basil Nyabadza must clarify the issue of land ownership between Arda, Green Fuel and the community, and that the audit on land, buildings, livestock, crops, family sizes and business enterprises lost to make way for the project, be expedited to facilitate meaningful and realistic compensation before the 2015 farming season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The committee also raised concern about the company\u2019s noncompliance with the indigenisation law, saying that Rautenbach, \u201chas a contentious 90% stake and the government owns the remaining 10% through Arda\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was also noted that Green Fuel was granted an ethanol blending licence despite not fulfilling the 51% to 49% joint venture with government according to the spirit of Statutory Instrument 17 of 2013 on mandatory blending,\u201d the committee reported.<\/p>\n
The committee\u2019s report came after more than a year of investigations and fact-finding missions that included visits to the site of the factory, interviews with residents and the company.<\/p>\n
Harmful, acidic effluent
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\nIt also found Green Fuel failed to make good on its promises of environmentally friendly production. Villagers have complained of toxic substances being released into the area that affect water and livestock.<\/p>\n\u201cGreen Fuel is illegally discharging millions of litres daily of harmful and acidic effluent (vinasse) from its plant into the environment,\u201d it states.<\/p>\n
In an interview with amaBhungane this week, Arda\u2019s Nyabadza said Green Fuel has different priorities centred on maintaining production \u201cin order to make savings on the country\u2019s import bill\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSavings on our fuel imports is the priority at this hour. Of course we have to look at the shareholding issue as we go on, but for the time being, the main issue is to extract value,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nyabadza also defended Rautenbach\u2019s majority shareholding in Green Fuel, insisting that Zimbabwe \u201cclearly can\u2019t afford the luxury of picking and choosing [investors] now\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nation respects investment regardless of the source. We\u2019ve got Chinese investment here, Indian investment, Russian, American, British. We look at investment capital \u2013 we don\u2019t look at the colour of investment. In fact, we say we don\u2019t mind whether the cat is black or white. That\u2019s our approach in business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most expensive ethanol in Africa
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\nDespite the addition of ethanol, petrol in Zimbabwe, at US$1.44 a litre is among the most expensive in Africa \u2013 behind only Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\nAt the outset, Rautenbach also promised his project will generate 26 megawatts of electricity, saying this would be enough to meet Manicaland\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
AmaBhungane established from company officials that two megawatts are being generated, sufficient only for the plant\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n
During a media visit to the plant this year, a company official said that this was because the plant was not operating at full production.<\/p>\n
He also said the effluent from the plant was not harmful, and could be used to fertilise the cane fields.<\/p>\n
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made promised to call amaBhungane with a comment, but had not done so at the time of printing.<\/p>\n
From SA to the DRC: A man of many storms<\/h4>\n
The business activities of Muller Conrad Rautenbach \u2013 aka \u201cBilly\u201d \u2013\u00a0first sparked controversy in November 1999\u00a0<\/a>after South Africa\u2019s investigating directorate for Serious Economic Offences raided his Wheels of Africa group, which included Hyundai motor distributors.<\/p>\n
By January 2000 most of the group\u2019s companies were placed under liquidation, leaving debts of R1-billion in South Africa and R900-million in Botswana. Rautenbach reportedly skipped the country.In 2009, he eventually reached a settlement with the National Prosecuting Authority under which one of his companies paid a R40-million\u00a0fine, though he personally did not admit liability.<\/p>\n
Rautenbach also caught the attention of United Nations investigators over his operations in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, where he reportedly worked with senior Zimbabwean political and military officials.During Zimbabwe\u2019s incursion into the DRC to prop up former president Laurent Kabila, the Congolese government appointed him chairperson and managing director of state-owned mining company Gecamines.<\/p>\n
Rautenbach soon fell out with Kabila who removed him from his position, accusing him of looting the DRC\u2019s mineral resources.This followed an audit by Ernst & Young\u00a0 and a UN report\u00a0<\/a>which stated that \u201csome of Gecamines\u2019s best cobalt-producing areas were transferred to a joint venture between Mr Rautenbach\u2019s Ridgepoint Overseas Developments and the Central Mining Group, a Congolese company, controlled by Pierre-Victor Mpoyo, then minister of state\u201d.<\/p>\n
Rautenbach was deported from the DRC in 2007 after reportedly making $50-million from the sale of shares in the United Kingdom-registered company Camec, into which he had folded many of his Congolese and Zimbabwean mining interests.Camec was key to his ongoing relationship with the Zimbabwean government. Through its purchase of Lefevre, an opaque British Virgin Islands-registered company, he gained access to Zimbabwean platinum concessions wrested from Anglo Platinum by the government.<\/p>\n
In return, Camec granted Lefevre a $100-million loan \u201cto meet its obligations to the Zimbabwean government\u201d in April 2008.Robert Mugabe appears to have used the money in a violent campaign to stave off looming defeat in the presidential election.<\/p>\n
* Got a tip-off for us about this story? Email [email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
- Zanu-PF’s Green Fuel dilemma<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
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