‘Mr Supermarket’ spells out his success plan for SA

Despite the current economic meltdown, Pick n Pay founder and chairperson Raymond Ackerman – ‘Mr Supermarket’ in the minds of many – is supremely confident the country is winning and can only get better. As hundreds of desperate and disillusioned South Africans pound the telephone lines of government and emigration agencies for a swift ‘out’, Ackerman remains surprisingly bullish, urging South Africans to “stop this cynicism” and withstand the pull of emigration. “In 20 years’ time we will look back and say thank God we did not leave in 2008. We are in a far better place than we were in 1994.” Speaking at the Cape Times/ Safmarine Business Breakfast in the Mother City last week, Ackerman said every country had its problems. “The truly extraordinary thing about our present isn’t the array of problems confronting us, but how vastly far we have come since that day in 1994.” To his way of thinking, government should treat its citizens as a business would treat its customers – the more a business invests in its customers the greater the profit. Suggesting government alone cannot tackle the many problems facing South Africa, he says without a strong, confident and socially engaged private sector there can be no economic growth, none of the restorative innovation of which only the market is capable and no large-scale generation of employment. The challenge therefore facing all South Africa, in government or business, is to develop and enhance the levels of national confidence achievable in a number of ways: • Business must realise that social responsibility is not a fashionable burden to be borne with resigned fortitude, but an essential component of sustainable success. • Nothing is more dangerous to South Africa’s reputation in a nervous and jumpy global market-place than ill-considered talk of radical change to those macro economic policies that have brought the stability of the past decade. The challenge lies not in government allocating more resources but the efficient and cost-effective utilisation of what the country already has, says Ackerman. South Africa must do all in its power to discourage the flight of skills and experience.” While acutely aware South Africa is experiencing a period of “seve re stress”, Ackerman says his experience over a long lifetime has also persuaded him that such times are also periods of stimulating challenge and of opportunity for those with the courage to hope, work hard and think strategically.