HARARE -- A black Zimbabwean farmer, who was harassed by British police in 2008 when they mistook him for a thief when they saw him harvesting his maize crop north of London, has landed huge supply contracts with some of the UK's biggest shops. (Pictured: David Mwanaka)
Former journalist David Mwanaka’s company, Mwanaka Fresh Foods, now supplies traditional African foods to prestigious supermarket chain Sainsbury’s and several other shops across the UK.
Mwanaka told The Zimbabwean on Sunday by e-mail that the much-publicised incident in which the British police pounced on him three times when they found him harvesting his maize crop was not necessarily a case of racism but a result of a misunderstanding because it was not usual to find black farmers in the UK. The real problem was that they were not expecting to see a black man working in a farm, Mwanaka said.
It is not something they had ever known to happen or they had ever heard of so their assumption was that I was stealing. It was not racism as such but misunderstanding,” added Mwanaka, who is only one of two registered black commercial farmers in the UK. The other is a West Indian raising pigs for pork.
Mwanaka Fresh Foods concentrates on supplying traditional African foods such as white maize mealie-meal and pumpkin leaves that are popular with Zimbabweans and other African migrants in Europe.
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