Six spaza shops: and that's change?

Six spaza shops: and that's change?

No party for BEE as Pick n Pay reaches 50

THIS week, Pick n Pay celebrated its 50th anniversary with the release of a stellar set of annual results. Notwithstanding the macroeconomic headwinds faced by its customer across the continent, the group was able to generate just under R80-billion of revenue and deliver 18% growth in headline earnings.

In the midst of this outstanding financial performance for its shareholders, it was difficult to find similar progress on transformation.  

The South African retail industry has for decades been criticized for its slow pace in transformation, especially at ownership level. The reality is that retail giants do not believe they need to have black shareholders. Their reasoning is simple; nothing compels them to. They do very little, if any, government business and besides, every South African whether in Sandton or Soweto is forced to buy from them because they are everywhere you look and, more often than not, offer great value to customers.

As the South African business community, we all operate in a country where almost 80% of the population are Africans.

Whether you are making pizza, building roads or selling cornflakes, the majority of your unskilled and semiskilled labour is going to be black.

On its own, hiring black people is not an achievement for transformation. It is an achievement for job creation. Transformation is something else. In our context, transformation is about getting black people to be effective participants in the mainstream economy.

In the words of Steve Biko, it's about blacks no longer "standing at the touchlines witnessing a gam they should be playing in".  

Six spaza shops. Fifty years later.

The fact that Pick n Pay can celebrate five decades since Raymond Ackerman bought three small stores in Cape Town and grew them to a multibillion-rand group with over 1500 stores across the continent is something we, as his countrymen, should never fail to honour and applaud.

Equally, the fact that Pick n Pay can only point to a handful of black owned franchisees and six spaza shops as its way of being part of the solution to economic transformation and chronic inequality cannot be acceptable.

South Africans expect much, much more!