Leave Nestle alone; says Zimbabwe expat

THE Nestlé Zimbabwe commercial dealings with Zimbabwe 's first family have attracted international rebuke after an outcry mainly from Zimbabwe 's human rights activists.

Let me state upfront that Robert Mugabe's leadership has brought untold suffering to the people of Zimbabwe and I will understand the drive to inconvenience or even cripple his corrupt commercial escapades.

However, I would to like remind some of the people who have resorted to intimidating large foreign investors such as Nestle Zimbabwe that there is need to exercise caution when dealing with foreign investor entities like Nestle.

It is not going to be an easy task to attract them back once a strategic decision has been taken by their boards to vacate certain investment destinations. The question upper most in their minds will be: Who will intimidate us next even if the MDC takes control of Zimbabwe?

Once the MDC takes power in Zimbabwe it is very clear that another movement will be formed whose sole purpose will be to dethrone the MDC leadership. The MDC itself has some serious internal conflicts with certain factions seeing Morgan Tsvangirai as an incapable but convenient leader for the moment.

In our efforts to disable the Mugabe regime it is important not loose sight of the reconstruction efforts that will be required in the near future.

Mugabe and his regime have disrupted business of those seen to be aligned to the change movement. Now the forces aligned to the MDC are calling for entities doing business with Mugabe to be ostracised.

This easy and justified but grossly negligent of long term vision of attracting foreign investment to assist in the economic re-development of Zimbabwe. Big problems require big people with big minds. 

Those involved in construction will tell you that professional demolition of engineering mega-structures require as much project work as putting them up if not more.

The English have long told us of the dangers of cutting your nose to spite your face. If the call is to boycott Nestle for doing business with Mugabe, then were is the difference with Mugabe harassing businesses associated with the change movement?

If the idea is remove Mugabe from office it is not going to happen simply because Nestle has stopped buying milk from his ill-gotten farms.

What is going to happen is that the people working on these farms (for poor pay) will loose the little they are earning. Hospitals and hunger stricken villagers will loose the little powdered milk they get and so on.

The root cause is Mugabe himself and not the resources he is illegally benefiting from. Why not nuclear bomb Zimbabwe so that he has got no country or people to preside over?

That way there will be no "President" Mugabe and we can all pull our shirts over our heads and jump up and down ululating with joy unconfined! It is a reckless approach.

People are shying away from the real challenge: get rid of Mugabe and go after his ill gotten gains. Nestle is buying milk for making profits and that is called capitalism.

The fact that the MDC is in bed with Mugabe (inclusive government) and they travel the world moralising about isolating Mugabe is pure hypocrisy! The MDC speaker of parliament has been staying in the five star Miekles hotel (The Zimbabwe Times) for the past six months.

Morgan Tsvangirai has a staff of "11 professionals" in his office earning US$7000 per month paid for by the World Bank. All MPs got free cars and an additional $US30 000 to import duty free luxury cars.

All this in a society ravaged by poverty of extreme proportions. It is sad that such moral double standards are accepted and tolerated by society.

Leave Nestle alone and go after the real problem. Zimbabwe is a sick society currently devoid of leadership worth of discourse.

To enjoy trivial pursuit while Mugabe appears on CNN in designer regalia is complacence of gigantic proportions.

The Movement for Democratic Change cannot go on crying victim: they made their bed and they must sleep in it. If they are not happy with the arrangement they walked into with their eyes wide open then they can still walk out hopefully after some tough lessons learnt.

My bet is that it will not happen as the trappings of power and luxury have ensured a fast Zanupfication of a lot who only yesterday we saw as genuine people focused liberators.

Paul Rumema Chimhosva is a Zimbabwean based in South Africa.