JOHANNESBURG Nestle Zimbabwe last week stopped buying milk from a farm owned by President Robert Mugabes wife, Grace, bowing to pressure from rights groups and the international media that had criticised the food giants business dealings with Mugabes family. Gushungo Dairy Estate — seized from its former white owners under Mugabes controversial land reform programme — was supplying between 10% and 15% of Nestl’s local milk supply and the company had said it had no option but to buy milk from the farm after half of its traditional suppliers went out of business.
But the Switzerland-based company was forced to make a U-turn after international media coverage of the milk purchases put the firm under the spotlight. Numerous organisations had also threatened to call on consumers to boycott Nestl products if the company did not stop buying milk from Gushungo Dairy Estate.
In a statement post on its website last Friday, Nestle said: “In light of the recent controversy surrounding our relationship with the Gushungo Dairy Estate, we believe that this announcement reflects our long-term commitment to Zimbabwe while acknowledging the specific circumstances around these events.”
American and European Union (EU) companies are banned from doing business with Mugabe and his inner circle or businesses linked to them under a raft of sanctions imposed by the Western countries on the Zimbabwean leader and his allies.
However Nestle is not bound by the sanctions regulations because it is registered in Switzerland which is not a member of the EU.
Reiterating a statement it issued last Monday, the company said it started buying milk from Gushungo due to the food and economic crisis in Zimbabwe that caused a collapse in the country’s dairy industry in the past few years.
The company said by the end of last year, it found itself operating in a market where eight of 16 contractual suppliers had gone out of business, forcing it to buy milk on the open market, with Gushungo Dairy Estate as one of its suppliers.
“In early 2009, Nestl was forced to purchase milk on the open market from a wide variety of suppliers on a non-contractual basis. This includes milk from the Gushungo Dairy Estate, which today accounts for between 10% and 15% of Nestl’s local milk supply,” the company said.
Mugabes farm seizure programme is blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into food shortages and causing gross human rights violations when white farmers and their black workers were driven out of their homes, assaulted, tortured and in some cases murdered by mobs of pro-Mugabe farm invaders.
Post published in: News