By Tererai Karimakwenda of SW Radio Africa

05 August 2005

This week we reported how Monica Chinamasa, wife of the Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, accepted an award as the BAT Tobacco Grower of the Year last Friday night even though she stole the farm now known as Tsukumai in Headlands.

We contacted the Harare headquarters of BAT to find out why this multi-national corporation would give Mrs Chinamasa a reward for stealing and ruining the life of a farmer whose output was so vital to the country. Simukayi Mujanganja, the press officer for BAT Zimbabwe, said he had to consult other officials about our enquiry. We were not able to speak to him directly after that. He was in meetings all week and then we were informed he had gone on leave on Thursday.

David Betteridge, who handles press for BAT in London, said they support the award financially and also pay for the presentation night, but he said they have no input in the selection of the winner. This was all that Betteridge would say when questions were put to him.

The whole issue of the responsibilities of multinational companies operating in Zimbabwe needs to be looked at more seriously. The United States took a very important step this week by freezing the assets belonging to certain farms in Zimbabwe. This might force others to take responsibility for their actions.

It is important to let companies know what you think about their behaviour in Zimbabwe and ensure that all companies follow ethical procedures in their business dealings. If it concerns you that a global organisation is prepared to condone theft of land please phone BAT’s managing director in Harare, Paul Adams on (263-4) 754741/754730. Or call BAT managing director in London, Gary Fagan on (44) (0) 207-845-1000.

We’ve not been able to get hold of any email details for BAT London or Zimbabwe but we do have for BAT South Africa. What you need to do is go to their website which is www.batsa.com and then open Contact us – you’ll find a form that you can fill out and email directly to BAT South Africa.

HACOFCO bought coffee stolen by the Agricultural Rural Development Authority

The ruling party took Bennett's coffee crop and sold it to the Hamburg Coffee Company in Germany. Instead of rejecting this coffee as stolen goods the Hamburg Coffee Company went ahead and supported Mugabe by buying it. We have noticed that the Hamburg Coffee Company is linked to many other companies in different countries. For example, the American Coffee Company and the Pacific Coast Coffee Association in the US. Zvakwana asks you to get involved and send protests to these companies.
http://www.freeroybennett.com/articles/280105_stolenfarm.html


Background - Charleswood stock theft update - Violet Gonda 30/09/04

Chimanimani Member of Parliament and commercial farmer, Roy Bennett has lost hundreds of thousands of US dollars through stock theft at his Charleswood Estate. The Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) which invaded the estate together with the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and Zimbabwe Defence Industries, is still illegally removing and selling items and crops, despite 6 High court orders barring them from doing so.

Letter sent to TESCOS, received 12 December 2004

Dear Sir/Madam

Subject: TES17515X

I have just read, with incredulity, a communication written by one Sue
Shearer of your Team Tesco Customer Service about Tesco's sale of produce
from Zimbabwe.  The communication was re-printed on the Zimbabwe Justice
for Agriculture website on 9 November.

Correspondents had raised concerns about the actual origin of mange tout
sold in Tesco from Zimbabwe.  It was their suspicion that the mange-tout
was grown on land seized from its owners by the Mugabe regime.  If this
were to be the case then Tesco would, de facto, be subsidizing and
endorsing Mugabe's theft of land, his destruction of his country's economy
and his impoverishment of the Zimbabwean people.  The occupation of land by
Mugabe's thugs is not only contrary to universally accepted standards on
human rights but is, in most areas, even illegal under Mugabe's own twisted
laws.

Your Ms Shearer's reaction to this charge showed an astonishing lack of
insight and of sensitivity.  She wrote: 'we work with four suppliers who
are all involved with the government at the highest level.' I cannot
believe that there is another organization of the size of Tesco in Europe
or beyond that has actually boasted of its links to Mugabe's ZANU regime in
five years or more.  That line alone justifies an indefinite boycott of
Tesco by my extended family and by any decent, reasonable person.  Ms
Shearer goes on to say: 'If we ever decided to pull out, it would cause a
major deficit to the income of the area, causing it to revert to a Third
World State.' Over the past five years Mugabe's destructive and
self-serving policies have made Zimbabwe the most third-world of all third
world states characterized by merciless poverty, economic collapse and
agricultural decay.  Does Ms Shearer really not know this?  Furthermore the
main actor for this has been Mugabe's so-called 'Fast Track' land reform
program which, it seems, Tesco endorses.

Ms Shearer's communication then ventures even further into the surreal:
'our growers in Zimbabwe provide much-needed jobs for many people.we work
extensively with the ETI to ensure worker' welfare is maintained and
regular meetings are held to discuss the wider political situation.' It may
be that a small group of workers in Zimbabwe do benefit from Tesco's
patronage.  But they, sadly, must count for little against the millions
displaced and rendered jobless by Mugabe's Fast Track.  There can be no
defence in the employment of 500 or 1000 people if that employment is part
of a program responsible for immeasurably wider hardship.  As for the
regular meetings to discuss the wider political situation: are these
pastoral affairs ones within which workers can stand up and criticize the
ZANU PF government?  Of course they are not.  To wheel such a defense onto
the field is in appalling taste.

Subsequently a letter from one Jillian Burns, again of your customer
services staff, (reference TES17515X) was posted on the Justice for
Agriculture website on 10 November.  This was a more coherent letter and
did claim that Tesco had no further dealings with Kondozi Farm and did not
support illegal farm seizure.  It did concede that Tesco was 'working with'
growers who were 'working under constant threats.' This was an improvement
upon Sue Shearer's letter.  Indeed it seemed to directly contradict it and
I am forced to wonder which communications reflected Tesco's true position.
Do you now disassociate yourself from the Shearer letter?  Will you do so
publicly?

Whether you do or not, the Burns letter still does not go nearly far enough
and leaves considerable room for doubt.

There is but one statement that Tesco can make to resolve this matter and
it goes as follows:

'We are able to confirm that all Tesco products from Zimbabwe are produced
on land which is owned by the producer or upon which the owner has freely
and without pressure agreed that the crops might be produced.  Tesco
officers, visiting Zimbabwe, have visited the growers and have either:

Confirmed that they are in fact the registered owners of the land through
scrutiny of original title deeds or

Confirmed that those who the title deeds show to be the owners of the land
have given formal and legal agreement, obtained without any inappropriate
pressure of any kind, that the product may be produced on that land.

The properties upon which a Tesco product is grown are: X farm, Y farm, Z
farm.'

If you can do that, or something like it, then I would suggest you do so at
the earliest possible opportunity.  If you cannot I would be grateful for
an appropriate explanation.  Should I not receive such an explanation I
will write to your board of directors until such an explanation is
forthcoming.  Should such also prove unproductive then I will be obliged to
assume that your operations in Zimbabwe are essentially indefensible and
will seek, with others, to organize the maximum possible public exposure of
same.

Yours faithfully

John Hickson

taken from http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/dec15a_2004.html

Standard Chartered Bank arranges US$80 million offshore credit line for Zimbabwe regime

Zimbabwe and the bankers

Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders call it an $80m foreign loan. Standard Chartered Bank officials call it an “offshore line of credit”. It is a distinction with only a technical difference, for the effect is the same: SCB is helping to keep the regime of President Robert Mugabe afloat.

Not for the first time, a London-based bank is caught up in a battle for democracy in Africa. In the mid-80s a group of banks delivered a mortal blow to South Africa’s apartheid regime when they refused to roll over Pretoria’s debt. Not long after, Barclays caved in and pulled out of South Africa, prompted by a student-led boycott in the UK that had begun to dent its profits.

This time Standard Chartered Bank will be in the firing line as Zimbabwe’s exile opposition demand an end to SCB’s involvement in a country which has become synonymous with suffering.

As SCB appreciates better than most, doing business in Africa is seldom straightforward. Although SCB is today an Asia dominated outfit, headquartered in London, it should know the continent well. The bank has been operating in Africa for more than a hundred years, navigating the end of colonialism, countless coups, and dozens of collapsing currencies.

So there is a certain historical symmetry in the fact that Zimbabwe, the first country - after South Africa - in which they opened their doors, should today present the bank with what is probably the toughest decision it has ever faced on the continent.

Does Mervyn Davies, the CEO, pull out of Zimbabwe and risk reducing the prospect of being the link institution between the growing economic might of China and the resources of Africa?

Or stay in, hold his nose, and face the opprobrium of onlookers, while doing business with a regime that gets nastier by the week?

Any hope of continuing with a third option – staying in and hoping that no-one notices - disappeared this week with the news carried by China’s Xinhua news agency. SCB, it reported, has secured offshore lines of credit for Zimbabwe’s industries.

Now this is not in itself surprising. Banks make money by lending money.

But in Zimbabwe it means that SCB is helping to keep a government regarded as one of the worst in Africa afloat. “Securing lines offshore lines of credit” is a fancy way of saying that SCB’s Zimbabwe branch is continuing to borrow abroad, on behalf of local clients.

However, the very disclosure of the credit - $80m - was not welcome to the London HQ.

The figure is correct, a spokesman grudgingly acknowledged, but it should not have been revealed, for it is commercially sensitive.

To every other question put to the bank, there was no comment. What was the total credit in 2005? How did this compare with the preceding years? Did SCB London know about the credit? Did they help secure it? Did the Zimbabwe operation make a profit? (It is the most profitable in Zimbabwe, according to a leading Harare economist).

After 25 years in office, has Robert Mugabe's regime become so corrupt, and sleaze so endemic, that nearly every company in the country has to be complicit, if only to survive? Are overseas partners tainted by association?

Has the regime become so persistent in flouting the norms of democracy that to do business with it demeans the participant?

In short, Mr Davies and any other banker involved in Zimbabwe should be asking themselves: Has Robert Mugabe’s regime become uniquely odious, crossed the threshold of decency, and is now beyond the commercial pale?

While the above cannot be 'lifted', as it is shortly to appear online and probably form the basis of a major follow up in one of the UK quality dailies, I know you will appreciate having sight of it. Indeed, as part of efforts to keep up the pressure, you might wish to initiate your own enquiries through your contacts for comment and reaction from the bank, as well as from what I am sure will be a very concerned Zimbabwe diaspora.

After all, with most of the remaining businesses in Zimbabwe owned or in thrall to the regime, such a huge line of credit only helps to sustain an indefensible situation. Indeed, with the growing calls for an end to the madness in Zimbabwe from international and regional politicians, diplomats and the media, such action by a major international bank only helps extend the misery of the vast majority of Zimbabweans.

In the glare of irrefutable evidence of gross human rights' abuses as well as economic and political mayhem, it is high time that certain multi-nationals faced up to their corporate responsibility and cut off the regime's financial umbilical chord. With the vast majority of Zimbabweans living in abject poverty, it is also disingenuous for anyone to suggest that major 'lines of credit' will somehow benefit a cowed population.

Perhaps it is time for Standard Chartered's customers around the world to remind it forcefully that enough is enough. That unless they stop this financial support, they will move their account elsewhere. After all, when it was established that Barclays in the mid 80s were giving similar financial support to the apartheid regime, a public outcry forced Barclays to withdraw from South Africa. Customer pressure can be a forceful power for good.

It will certainly be interesting to see how much well-deserved flak will now be aimed at Standard Chartered's current behaviour which, despite any claim to the contrary, inevitably helps sustain Mugabe's evil regime. It's time to increase the pressure on those corporates who insist on continuing to give financial sustenance to the regime from their hermetically-sealed ivory towers in London and Sandton, without any thought for the impact in Zimbabwe itself.

A Standard Chartered spokesman in London is Sean Farrell on 020 7280 7163. I am sure South African recipients of this email will quickly come up with a bank spokesman in Johannesburg for a comment - and all will be able to secure comment from furious Zimbabweans.

See article on Times Online by Michael Holman click here