"Swazi sugar corporation accused of illegal evictions"

The Swaziland Justice Forum has accused the Corporation of being complicit in the illegal eviction of sugar cane farmers and their families from what should have been by now their freehold land. The forum alleged that these evictions were largely motivated by King Mswati III of Swaziland’s desire to incorporate this land into his national trust and then lease it to the sugar corporation. Tibiyo Taka Ngwane, a wealth fund also held in trust by the king, owns 53,1% of the latter...

The chief legal officer of RCL Foods, Steven Heath, told Farmer’s Weekly that, as a minority shareholder in the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation, the company did not have management control of operations “but relies on information supplied and presentations made to the board”. “RCL Foods is not aware of any illegal or unprocedural evictions having taken place at the [insistance] of [the sugar corporation],” Heath said. “Accordingly, we deny that RCL Foods is involved in a corporate scandal or complicit in human rights violations.”