Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- AfriForum, a South African civil rights organization, called for a worldwide boycott of Nestle SA products after the Swiss company said it buys milk from a farm belonging to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s family. Nestle, the world’s biggest food company, said on Sept. 28 that it purchases milk from the Mugabe family’s Gushungo Holdings Ltd. that account for as much as 15 percent of the company’s intake in the southern African country. Gushungo owns a property formerly known as Foyle Farm that was seized by the government as part of a program to transfer land from white commercial farmers to black citizens of the country.
Milk produced on the farm is “blood milk,” AfriForum said on its www.nestlebloodmilk.com Web site today. “You and peace- loving people across the globe are requested to boycott all Nestle products until such time as Nestle starts respecting human rights by refusing to do business with Mugabe and his cronies.”
Mugabe and his allies are the target of asset freezes and travel bans imposed by the U.S. and the European Union because of concern over violence and irregularities during elections in Zimbabwe over the past decade. The land-seizure program, which began in 2000, slashed exports, deepened a recession that lasted a decade and caused a famine.
Ravi Pillay, a spokesman for Nestle in Johannesburg, said in an e-mailed statement today that the company was “equally concerned” about the situation in Zimbabwe, which it described as “very complex.” Nestle will respond fully in “the coming days,” he said. Calls to Mugabe’s office in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, weren’t answered.
‘Blood Spilt’
The purchase of the milk from the Mugabe-owned farm is a “denial of the basic human rights of every Zimbabwean whose blood has been spilt, and is still being spilt at the hands of Mugabe’s brutal security forces and vigilante groups,” AfriForum said.
Under white rule, which spanned 90 years from 1890, Zimbabwe’s best farming land was allocated to white settlers, while black farmers were mainly confined to unfertile areas that further deteriorated when over-farmed.
AfriForum is a Pretoria-based affiliate of Solidarity, a South African labor union that has 130,000 members, Kallie Kriel, the chief executive officer of AfriForum, said in a phone interview today. The group works to uphold the South African constitution and protect the rights of minority communities in South Africa, he said.
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Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- AfriForum, a South African civil rights organization, called for a worldwide boycott of Nestle SA products after the Swiss company said it buys milk from a farm belonging to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s family.