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Anyone can open their first store in the DRC. Well, almost anyone. In fact, almost no one come to think of it. Except Shoprite. And you know what? They’re going to follow it up with a second, and not in the rarefied, sterile, air conditioned wastes of Kinshasa, either. Oh, no. They’re setting up shop in Luano City, a mall which has currently gone under construction on the outskirts (vultures, jungle giving way to shacks) of the southern mining hub of Lubumbashi (saloons, occasional pistol fire). Luano City, we are told, is an initiative of the quite delightfully-named international entrepreneur Preston Haskell, with whom we’ve occasionally played polo. Or did we make our escape with him from an exploding bunker, in a white Lamborghini, wearing a black satin Givenchy evening gown? We forget. Anyway. Luano City opens next October, and is 6,000m² big.

Comment: Powerful stuff from the Big Red One. And of course, from dear Preston. Dear, dear Preston…

Pick n Pay are pleased to announce – or rather, to hint broadly – that diluted headline earnings per share, which have of late become something the analysts like to call “the main South African profit measure” that strips out certain one-off items, anyway, them, are likely to be up 35% when the great reckoning comes for the first half of this financial year we have no choice but to call ’15. This is obviously good news for The Big Blue, whose recovery seems to be proceeding apace. But hold your horse just a minute there. Sales growth is predicted to come in at only around 7%, in line with what’s going on around the industry in response to the self-inflicted wounds which beset the South African economy. This lesser number suggests that much of PnP’s success comes from certain, shall we say, efficiencies which have been introduced to the business including scaling back dividends, reducing staff and dropping consultants. 

Comment: All very necessary, we are sure. And the punters seem to like it, with a 2.3% rise in the share price.

Sadly, Game will not be able to open a Foodco store in the CapeGate Shopping Centre in Brackenfell, after a High Court interdict was issued preventing the Men in Black from interfering with the contractual relationship between landlord’s Hyprop and fellow tenants Pick n Pay. An interim interdict application, you may remember, was lodged by Checkers after Hyprop advised it, but not Pick n Pay, of Game’s intention to go into food. That interdict was discharged in April by agreement between Masstores and Checkers, resulting in Pick n Pay lodging the application for this one. Member of the SA Retail Association have in the meantime asked the Competition Commission for clarity regarding the possibly anticompetitive nature of exclusivity clauses between the owners of malls and their tenants. 

Comment: Thorny. Still, it’s nice to see the big chaps having it out in court for a change.

Free ice cream. Cheapish anyway. Hair stylists on tap. A gymnasium, just metres from your desk. All of these indulgences and more are yours for the having if you happen to be one of the Golden Children of Unilever, SA’s top employer according to the annual Top Employers Institute survey. Unilever invests heavily in the wellbeing and happiness of its staff, a canny move at a time when global competition for talent is running fierce. All of the top employers provide their people with excellent employee conditions, nurture and develop talent throughout all levels of the organisation and strive to continuously optimise employment practices, according to the institute itself. Coca-Cola (8th), Kimberly-Clark (9th) and Clicks (joint 10th, with Sasol) joined Le Grand Bleu in flying the flag for this great industry we call home. 

Comment: Our chair has had a wobbly fifth wheel for these how many months now.

Judge Mahomed Navsa of the Supreme Court of Appeal has declared that there is no law preventing refugees and asylum seekers from getting licences to operate spaza shops in SA. His Hon. also mentioned that the police and the government should “guard against unwittingly fuelling xenophobia”. This after the evocatively named “Operation Hard Stick,” a police initiative, if that’s the word, to close down unlicensed retailers in Limpopo. Over 600 businesses were closed during the operation, including some which actually had licences. Moreover, aver some of the foreign shopkeepers affected, the same police shutting the businesses down had regularly extorted cash from them in the past. Refugees and asylum seekers said that the authorities had regularly prevented them from getting licenses on the spurious grounds that they were not entitled to such. 

Comment: Being a man after our own heart, the Judge drily observed that the whole sorry affair could “hardly be said to be a public relations coup.”

After a brief resurgence, consumer confidence has once again retreated into the woolly grey comfort of negative territory in the third quarter, harried thither by an array of forces which include (but are not restricted to) high food prices, slower growth in government spending, rising interest rates and below par growth in credit extension. The index has fallen to -1 from +4 in the second quarter. Surprisingly, however, the punters surveyed are now slightly more positively disposed vis-á-vis the appropriateness of the present time to buy durable goods, one of the three key measures of the survey. There’s also some buoyancy around the fact that the decline in consumer confidence failed to reach the truly gloomy levels of 2013 and early 2014. 

Comment: If that’s the good news, we shall take it.

And so the time comes to say goodbye to that other Mrs Doubtfire, Gill Marcus of the Reserve Bank, who steered the ship of finance with a firm and kindly hand through the Great Decession, raising the repo rate only when she absolutely had to and never complaining when we compared her to a fictitious transgender childcare professional.