Food giant flouts sanctions to buy from Grace Mugabe

Multinational food company Nestl, said to be the biggest customer of Grace Mugabes dairy farm, is based in Switzerland, which means it does not have to comply with EU sanctions against trade with Mugabe and others involved in the oppressive regime. The country, though, says it has its own measures, including a ban on making funds available or putting them, directly or indirectly, at the disposition of Mugabe and his cronies. Nestl denies that it has violated Swiss law.

Robert Mugabe, The Daily Telegraph disclosed, has built a secret personal farming empire of at least five white-owned farms from which the owners were forced out during his regimes evictions of about 4,000 commercial farmers.

Mugabes government had declared no interest in the land when it was purchased by the previous owner. However, once the farmer had made the estate profitable, the

Mugabe family in direct contravention of his own policy of one family one farm set about grabbing the land. This was under the guise of the reform programme aimed at returning land to the landless blacks.

Since the takeover, Grace Mugabe has built a new house at the farm, remodelled the original farmhouse and constructed an office block. The dairy workers have complained that they are paid a pittance whilst Mugabes wife rakes in a fortune.

The dairy produces 6,500 litres of milk a day, but this is only about 35 per cent of its output under the previous owner, who produced 6.5 million litres a year more than any other dairy in Zimbabwe.

Her biggest customer, according to her staff and other industry insiders, is Nestl Zimbabwe, the local subsidiary of the Swiss company. The plant, in an industrial area in Msasa on the outskirts of the capital, manufactures powdered milk and cereals for the local market and for export to East African countries.

She uses an unmarked 100,000 tanker and trailer combination dedicated for her use to deliver milk three times a week to Nestls plant.

A spokesman for Nestl said: At the end of last year we found ourselves operating in a market where eight of our 16 contractual suppliers had gone out of business.

As a result, in early 2009 the company started purchasing milk on the open market from various suppliers on a strictly non-contractual basis. In certain instances, the milk available in the market would be from Gushungo Dairy Estate, he said.

Such milk would be bought on a cash on delivery basisNestl has no direct engagement whatsoever with this estate.

But when asked to clarify whether it was bought directly or through a third party, he said: We bought Gushungo Dairy Estates milk through Dorkin Dairies until that firm collapsed last February, then we bought the milk directly.

The companys Theo Mxakwe said the company had no choice.

By providing basic food products to Zimbabwean consumers, [we] aimed to meet the needs of the local population and the other alternative was to move out of the country. Had we decided to close down we would have triggered further food shortages and hundreds of job loses, said Mxakwe.

Critics have said that Nestl has simply chosen to ignore sanctions and make money at the expense of the Zimbabwean people.

Some are calling for a boycott of Nestl products.

Back in 1977, a boycott against the company began in the United States and spread throughout Europe. Those involved said the companys marketing of breast milk substitutes to less developed countries was leading to the death and suffering of babies, largely among the poor.