Mailbox: A late awakening to business silence and unjust legislation

Key topics:

• Shoprite purchase sparks reflection on corporate silence in politics

• Criticism of business compliance with unjust laws and BEE hiring practices

• Pensioner vows to support local traders instead of “lily-livered” big corporates

By Allison Bell

This letter started out as a complaint to Shoprite Customer Services.

I had pondered how to record my disappointment in the quality of an item I purchased which broke on the first use.

I then thought; Why Bother?

I really want nothing from them.

I do not want my R99.99 back from them.

I do not want anything from them.

I listened to Herman Pretorious commentate on the Daily Friend show, that businessmen are there to make money. To make a profit. Businessmen are not there to get involved in politics.

My mind went back to the 1985 meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, led by Gavin Relly.

Two years later, Van Zyl Slabbert took a delegation to the Dakar Conference. This delegation included many top SA businessmen.

As Shoprite's business is booming, I see no such Lusaka or Dakar conferences on the horizon.

All I see is corporate compliance to unjust laws.

I know my grand nephews will never be employed by Shoprite Checkers or any other of the lily-livered businessmen in major corporations because of their pale-male appearances.

So while the corporations fail to engage in politics, and bow and scrape to corrupt politicians making unjust laws, I will take the only weapon I have, my wallet, and take my custom elsewhere.

I will support the local butcher and fishmonger, the dairy, the street vendor who sells fruit and veg, soap shops abound and coffee and tea suppliers are easily found online. Most appliances can be found sold as second hand items online too.

I may be a "Justalayabout" pensioner, but I am extremely concerned about the future as I would not like to see my family having to leave this great and wonderful country to go to one of the other ex commonwealth countries where free speech no longer exists and even less to the colonising countries like France and Britain.

As an aged person, I no longer vote for what I need, as the pensioners have been in power long enough.

I now vote for what my nieces and nephews will require to survive on the southern tip of Africa.

I just needed to get this off my chest.