Blood milk

What is the colour of milk these days?

Red maybe?

It is white of course, unless your supplies are flowing straight out of Grace Mugabe’s dairy farm, so says the rabid press and thousands of citizens of that cyberspace community known as Facebook.

Zimbabwe’s first lady has in recent weeks been the subject of her usual staple of uncomplimentary press reports following revelations that Nestlé Zimbabwe has been sourcing 15% of its milk supplies from her Gushungo Dairy Estate in the last eight months.

Zimbabwe, of course, is enjoying a much-needed respite from its trademark economic woes on the back of the formation of a government of national unity (GNU) and the implementation of STERP, an over-the-counter macro-economic aspirin administered on Tendai Biti’s watch, which so far has provided some dramatic relief in the general welfare of the country’s population. But all of that is now under siege in the wake of renewed calls for the reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar, the re-arrest of Roy Bennett and, of course, the recent partial withdrawal by the MDC from the GNU.

A return to the era of organised chaos will be a welcome boon for the grasping elite who, for close to a decade, have engaged themselves fully and unashamedly so in an unmitigated orgy of confiscation and plunder in the name of reversing colonial imbalances and levelling the proverbial playing field. So says the same rabid press. It seems to me that not everyone is too excited to see a sustained resurgence of Zimbabwe, at least not whilst her Gracious Highness and our Illustrious Uncle Bob are still in command.

For all intents and purposes, it still is unpalatable for some to speak of economic recovery when those who are alleged to have destroyed the country remain actively involved in its day-to-day management (or is it mismanagement, if you are a die-hard, see-no-good and do-no-good cynic). They say lending support to the GNU and the recovery process for the mere sake of Zim’s recovery flies in the face of any modern-day compensation system, wherein bad performers are not penalised but instead continue to reap handsome dividends despite their brazen acts of sabotage. But, of course, our governments are not capitalist corporations in the true sense. They are feudal fiefdoms, which for the most part are sustained by a repressive culture of fear and the shedding of innocent blood.

Speaking of blood, it is an open secret that a lot of what we buy and consume today, the world over, is tainted by the blood and sweat of exploited labour and, in many more regretful cases, by the deaths of millions of innocent lives. Therefore, I find it highly hypocritical of the chattering classes to single out Nestlé Zimbabwe for a strong round of boycott action.

If we are to really live up to the strictures of ethical consumerism, we must boycott all products made in the sweat shops of Asia — that, by the way, should encompass most brands of athletic shoes we wear to the gym. In addition to that, we must also boycott all American products — for which the boycott reasons are plenty and include millions of indigenous Red Indians who were massacred and dispossessed of their land en-masse, the same land which today supports America’s $100-billion farm export industry. While we are at it, let us not forget to embargo imports from the Australians who, in the 1800s, waged a campaign of genocide against the native Tasmanian Aboriginals in the so-called Black War. And finally, please let us not have any purchases of timber products that can be traced back to the endangered habitats of the Amazon, where thousands of Indians have paid with their lives to pave way for the exploitation of their beloved forests by heartless commercial crooks.

Until all the above boycotts are fully enforced, I will settle for copious amounts of Grace’s so-called blood milk with my favourite brand of American Kellogs every morning — a cereal staple produced from corn grown on land soaked in innocent Red Indian blood. I will continue this cereal splurge of mine every day, whilst wearing my Asian sweat-shop Adidas trainers, every now and then compulsively glancing at my Swiss-made chronometer (a wrist watch made in a country which, to this day, remains a safe haven for the ill-gotten gains of dictators from all over the world) to check the time and hopefully, my sanity.