Malawi expels SA 'colonialists'

Blantyre - Malawi has expelled four South Africans working for international tobacco firms for price cutting and sabotaging the economy, President Bingu wa Mutharika said on Wednesday.

"They were sabotaging the economy and harming tobacco growers," Mutharika said in a strongly worded denunciation of the four, in a special live broadcast.

Calling the four "colonialists", Mutharika said he ordered the immigration department to revoke their work permits.

Stealing from the poor

The four were employed by international wholesalers which buy tobacco at auction.

"For a long time, they have been stealing from poor farmers. It's sabotage and an act of hostility to our country," Mutharika said.

"Anyone who sabotages the economy is an enemy of the people and does not deserve to be in this country," Mutharika added.

He said the four include chief executive Kelvin Stainton of Limbe Leaf, which is owned by Universal Leaf and Malawi's conglomerate Press Corporation, and Collins Armstrong of Alliance One.

The president raised the price of tobacco, the country's chief export crop, in March, setting the minimum price for a kilo of burley tobacco at $2.15 - from $2 last year - and throwing a lifeline to more than 300 000 peasant farmers who rely on the crop.

"To my dismay, the buyers chose to undermine the government...to depress the prices, to make fun of me."

'Green gold'

Mutharika, re-elected for a second term in May, says tobacco "brings in money that runs this country".

The president, who has often chided foreign buyers for offering low prices, urged police and immigration officials to "protect our people from continued unbridled exploitation".

Tobacco, popularly known here as the "green gold", is responsible for up to 70% of the poor country's foreign earnings.

The crop earned Malawi 470 million in 2008, from sales 194,000 tonnes.

The industry here employs about 500 000 people.