Afriforum calls for boycott of Nestlé products

Afriforum is calling on consumers to boycott Nestlé products if it does not stop buying milk from a dairy farm belonging to Grace Mugabe, wife of President Robert Mugabe, the civil rights organisation said on Wednesday.

Afriforum spokesperson Kallie Kriel in a statement said it launched an international campaign calling on people to boycott Nestlé products if the country failed to stop buying the “blood milk” by October 7.

Kriel said Afriforum had created a website which includes photographs, video-clips and information about the “brutality with which the Mugabe regime represses the people of Zimbabwe”.

The website included a link which could be used to send messages of protest to the company’s offices in South Africa, Zimbabwe and its headquarters in Switzerland.

He said letters have been sent to Nestlé informing the company of the action being taken. Afriforum would be calling on other human rights organisations to put pressure on the multinational company.

He said the company owed the people of Zimbabwe an apology.

Nestlé spokesperson Ravi Pillay said the company had not received formal notification of the campaign and could not immediately comment further.

Grace Mugabe reportedly took over six of the country’s most valuable white-owned farms in 2002 and sells about a million litres of milk a year to Nestlé.

She and her husband, and other members of his administration, are the subject of European Union and United States sanctions as a result of their controversial 29-year rule over once-prosperous Zimbabwe.

Nestlé, the multinational food company which is the largest customer of the dairy farm, is not obliged to comply with those sanctions as its headquarters are in Switzerland.

Switzerland has its own set of measures, but Nestlé insists it has not broken Swiss law.—Sapa