Mugabe returns Zimbabwe to socialism

President Robert Mugabe says Zimbabwe is returning to a command economy.

President Robert Mugabe says Zimbabwe is returning to a command economy.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe

It means the country will abandon market-led economic policies.

Businesses who oppose the move should pack up and go, he says.

Mr Mugabe added that a price freeze on basic foods imposed last Friday will be strictly enforced.

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He added the government will seize firms that shut down, withhold their goods or engage in illegal profiteering.

"Let no one on this front expect mercy ... The state will take over any businesses that are closed.

"We will reorganise them with workers and at last that socialism we wanted can start again," Mr Mugabe told mourners at a state funeral at Heroes' Acre, a shrine for politicians and fallen guerrilla leaders outside Harare.

Zimbabwe dropped its socialist economic policies a decade after it gained independence in 1980 and embraced Western-style economic reforms known as the economic structural adjustment program, or ESAP.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has suffered an ever-worsening economic crisis, with out-of-control inflation and unemployment and a crushing shortage of hard currency.

Analysts say the crisis began with the country's expensive military involvement in the Congo war and worsened when ruling party militants began occupying white-owned commercial farms, which generate much of the hard currency in this agricultural-based economy.

PA