The Food of Hate
Sainsbury's supplied by Mugabe aide

20^th October 2002

Sainsbury's supermarkets have sold thousands of pounds worth of vegetables from a Zimbabwean farm seized from its white owner by the wife of Robert Mugabe's army chief. The company admitted that it bought large quantities of sugar-snap peas and mangetout from Jocelyn Chiwenga between June and September. Chiwenga is a senior figure in Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party. Her husband, Lieutenant-General Constantine Chiwenga, the commander of the Zimbabwean army, is on the trade sanctions lists of the European Union and Bank of England. British companies may not deal with him, but his wife is not affected by the sanctions. The vegetable business is in her name.

In April the couple occupied 600 acres of Shepherd Hall farm, 20 miles outside Harare, the capital. Witnesses said Jocelyn Chiwenga was with "several men carrying AK-47 rifles". Roger Staunton, the farm's owner for 20 years, told of his terror during the seizure. When Staunton, whose family farmed the land for more than 100 years, offered a handshake, Chiwenga allegedly said she had "no intention of shaking hands with a white pig." Staunton, who is now seriously ill in South Africa with a heart condition, claimed Chiwenga ordered a guard to "kill the white bastards". He cocked his weapon but did not fire. A month after the takeover Hortico, Sainsbury's Zimbabwean supplier, signed a deal worth more than £500,000 to buy Chiwenga's produce.

The company packed and labelled it as Sainsbury's own brand, with the supermarket's consent, before exporting it to Britain. Sainsbury's stopped buying the produce only last month, when Chiwenga was ordered by the Zimbabwean high court to stop selling the farm's crops because it had been illegally occupied. A spokesman for Sainsbury's said: "We had been reassured the farmer had been compensated. We are shocked to find this wasn't the case and confirm that we are no longer sourcing produce from this farm."

Last week Chiwenga, listed as "Grower 881" in Sainsbury's records, was happy to talk about British sales of her produce. She said: "There is so much money to make because a lot of what you buy at Sainsbury's is from Zimbabwe." Chiwenga said she had sold to Britain more than 23 tons of peas, grown on land she claimed had been neglected by Staunton. She admitted that she had made a verbal agreement to compensate him for some infrastructure and crops, but not for the land. She denied making any threats or racist comments. "I am sorry that the whites and the blacks are killing each other but we only have thick whites who do not want to share their land," she said.

Staunton said the Chiwengas gave him five days to leave and took over the entire farm and its assets - including buildings, trucks, irrigation equipment and a major rose and greenhouse project - worth £13m at official exchange rates. He claims she illegally sold his greenhouse vegetables and roses for about £1m. Staunton said the Chiwengas first said they would compensate him fully and pressured him to agree not to take them to court or go to the press. Staunton said that after the intimidation of the occupation, "I considered myself lucky to have been offered compensation." Later, however, he said the Chiwengas "told me they were not going to compensate me as I had made enough profits over the years". Staunton said he reported the seizure to Zimbabwe's vice-president, Joseph Msika, who is in charge of the regime's "land redistribution programme". When Chiwenga heard of this she told the farmer that Msika could not remove them. According to Staunton, she told him that "next time she would see me, I could be in a coffin".

After the takeover, Chiwenga agreed with Hortico, a respected firm with long links to British supermarkets, to sell her produce, along with that from other farms, to Britain. A senior Hortico source said: "The policy is to get as many farms into growing and export as soon as possible." Hortico, which claims to supply half the snap peas and mangetout sold by Sainsbury's, said that given the number of farms confiscated from whites, it was inevitable they would have to do business with some of them. The company said it would review its contract with Chiwenga at the end of this year.

Adam Nathan and David Leppard - The Sunday Times (UK)