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Mugabe ally 'retaliates' against Nestle for cancelling Grace's milk
Zimbabwean authorities have hit back at Nestlé for cancelling its milk order from Grace Mugabe after an international outcry at the revelation that she was one of its regular suppliers.

By Sebastien Berger, Southern African Correspondent Published: 9:00AM BST 11 Oct 2009
The multinational food company bowed to pressure following The Sunday Telegraph's report that Nestlé Zimbabwe, the firm's Harare-based subsidiary, was buying up to a million litres of milk a year from Gushungo Dairy Estate - owned by the wife of Robert Mugabe, the country's 85-year-old president.
But last week it emerged that a senior government official warned the firm that its decision was seen as an extension of EU and American sanctions against members of Mr Mugabe's inner circle, which have infuriated his Zanu-PF party and which it blames for the country's descent into penury.

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Shortly afterwards the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe - headed by Gideon Gono, a close Mugabe ally - froze the company's accounts at two banks, according to reports in Harare.
Although the accounts were later freed for Nestlé to use again, the move - reported by the Zimbabwe Independent, one of the few newspapers in the country to stand out against the government - is being seen as a warning shot across the company's bows.
Matumwa Mawere, a Zimbabwean businessman who now lives in exile in South Africa after his companies were taken over by Zanu-PF in 2004, said it threatened the credibility of the power-sharing government with the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which is trying to restore investor confidence and attract foreign investment.
"If the report on Nestle's bank accounts is true, then it's a sad day for Zimbabwe," he said.
When The Sunday Telegraph first reported that Nestlé was Mrs Mugabe's biggest customer, the Swiss-based company insisted it was doing nothing wrong - despite the fact that under sanctions regimes for companies with headquarters in the EU and the US, the purchase from Mr Mugabe's spouse would have been illegal. The Swiss government ruled that the Nestlé subsidiary was not subject to the country's own sanctions against the Mugabe regime, and Nestlé had assured the authorities that no-one in Switzerland was involved.
The Herald, a state-controlled newspaper in Harare, praised the firm for defying its critics, accusing Western media organisations of "a co-ordinated effort to harass Nestlé into pulling out of Zimbabwe."
But after one Facebook group gathered 8,000 members in just a few days, and a civil rights group in South Africa declared that "Nestle milk is blood milk", the company backtracked.
Within days, Nestle announced that it would no longer buy milk from Mrs Mugabe or any other non-contractual suppliers, and would instead buy only from the Dairy Board of Zimbabwe - which, it said, was only now in a position to supply all the milk it needed. But it admitted that the controversy was a factor in the decision, which was taken in consultation with its Swiss headquarters.
Gideon Gono, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, told theZimbabwe Independent that the accounts were frozen temporarily while "two or so transaction which we thought were irregular" were investigated. These had now been explained and things were back to normal, he added.
Nonetheless there are fears that it was intended as a warning shot to the firm, which the sources said could be crippled if it could not access its bank accounts to pay its suppliers.
A spokesman for Nestle at its headquarters in Switzerland said: "No Nestle Zimbabwe bank accounts are currently frozen." He declined to comment on whether they had been previously frozen, or on discussions between company officials and the government.
No response was received from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to a request for comment.