Nestle buckles in face of Grace Mugabe's wrath

When news of Grace Mugabe's activities emerged late last year, human rights activists protested with a campaign that called on consumers across southern Africa to boycott Nestle products.

Nestle faced a backlash in South Africa, its biggest market in Africa as outraged consumers wrote letters to the local Press voicing their anger at the company. They called for a boycott of the international milk conglomerate's  products.

South Africa has bore the biggest brunt of Zimbabwe's meltdown with more than three million Zimbabweans having poured into its borders over the last decade to escape political repression and starvation.

White South Africans, who are exasperated by Mugabe's wholesale evictions and seizures of properties belonging to at least 4,500 of their kith and kin, were particularly vocal against Nestle. They also have the most buying power on the continent.

Rights groups also accused Nestle of violating European Union sanctions imposed on Mugabe and his cronies over human rights abuses.

So loud was the noise made against Nestle that it announced in October that it had stopped buying milk from Mrs Mugabe's farm.

But two Zimbabwean cabinet ministers immediately threatened Nestle and ordered it to end its boycott of the Mugabes. Violent youth militias were subsequently deployed to the Nestle premises in Harare and wrecked havoc at the firm's compound. This forced Nestle to shut down its Zimbabwe operations completely just before Christmas saying it could no longer guarantee the safety of its managers and workers.

But in a sudden U- turn, Nestle reopened its Harare factory this week.

Nestlé spokeswoman Brinda Chiniah said Industry Minister Welshman Ncube provided the multinational with a written guarantee that the government will ensure staff security and prevent interference in Nestlé's activities.

Mr Ncube, has since criticised the Western media for "blowing the story out of proportion".

But UNFree Media has now established that Nestle only agreed to re-open its factory in Zimbabwe after it was also forced to agree to resume buying Mrs Mugabe's milk indirectly from a businessman with close links to the First Family.

Under the arrangement surreptitiously brokered by Minister Ncube, Mrs Mugabe will supply his milk to Nestle through the businessman (whose identity is known to UNFree Media). Nestle will issue payments to that businessman who is also a wealthy beneficiary of confiscated white farms but who does himself not own a dairy farm.

News of the latest deal has already enraged rights activists who are threatening to resume their anti-Nestle boycott campaign.

President Mugabe has justified his seizure of white farmers for redistribution to blacks under the pretext that he is correcting colonial era land imbalances which skewed land ownership in favour of whites. But the main beneficiaries of the seized farms have been himself, his cronies in his cabinet, the military and the police and not landless peasants.