“Whither Shoprite?” you ask, Byronically, your hand upon a globe or even a skull, your forehead high and your features noble. Easy on the drama there… Shoprite are fine: Group sales grew +7.4% for the six months through December, factoring in internal inflation, with SA supermarket sales up +7.8%. By the same measure, Group sales grew +3.3% in the same period last year. The star performer this time around was furniture, growing +10.8%, while the OK Franchise division led the charge in groceries. All in all, the analysts reckon, Shoprite continues to pick up market share from businesses which for the purposes of a compelling narrative must be called “the competition”, trading off its advanced supply chain operations and its aggressive focus on price and promotions to attract the lower LSMs.

Comment: As we may have remarked before: sell Steinhoff, buy Shoprite.

We haven’t heard from Clicks for a while, get Mr Kneale on the blower, there’s a good chap. Hello? What? You don’t say! Turns out Clicks, like Shoprite, is getting along just tickety-boo, ta very much, according to the big boss, with Group turnover up +11.3% to R11.1bn and Clicks sales an even more impressive +14.2%. Volume growth in the stores was up +4.8%. UPD also put in a blistering showing, with turnover up +11.6%. Over to you Mr Kneale: “While we are not anticipating any easing of the financial pressure on consumers, we remain confident in our ability to trade through these challenging market conditions, as demonstrated by our recent performance,” says SA’s most understated CEO.

Comment: All of this you may recall, against GDP growth that’s not exactly all that. South African retailers like Clicks are pulling off a small miracle under these conditions, and showing other sectors how it can be done.

The last in this spate of trading updates comes from the Men in Black. Massmart grew sales for the year to December just +2.7% to R93.7bn, with like-store sales down -0.8%. Masswarehouse, comprising Makro and The Fruit Spot, increased +3.9%, a brighter spot amid the gloom, with Massbuild up +2.4%, Masscash +0.4% and Massdiscounters down -2.8%. Do Massmart wring their hands? They do not: rather, they let it be known that the second half of the year was better than the first with improved comparable performances in both Massbuild and Masswarehouse, attributed to effective management of debt, working capital and expenses. Certain level-headed commentators have remarked that the business has shown some improvement in volumes but not yet in the bottom line – the former a good sign, the latter the result of a market in the midst of extreme price competition across categories.

Comment: Massmart is doing many of the right things to return to more robust growth – but in this economy, with this scale of business, this is no easy feat.

Adding muscle to the Pick n Pay management team this week is Pedro Da Silva, who joins the business as retail MD. It’s an important appointment for Pick n Pay, and an interesting one given the span of Da Silva’s career in such geographies as Portugal, Columbia and significantly, in Poland, where he was instrumental in the turnaround and ensuing success of the Biedronka business. Why interesting? Because Biedronka has been a retailer of interest for a few of our South African retailers recently, partly as a result of the success that Boxer has enjoyed with the adoption of some of Biedronka’s operating principles into the Boxer business.

Comment: Will we see a move to a more limited range, soft discounter positioning at Pick n Pay supermarkets, similar to that we have seen in Boxer’s next generation discount stores?

Illovo Sugar South Africa has a new Managing Director, Mamongae Mahlare, who comes to the business via roles ranging from engineering to general management at some of the big ones, including SABMiller, Tanzania Breweries, Unilever and Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, and across various African countries. She replaces outgoing MD Dave Howells, who is moving into a new role in the broader group. Mahlare has a chemical engineering degree from Wits and an MBA from Harvard, and is fully behind Illovo’s commitment to the transformation of agriculture and agribusiness across this great continent we call home. She joins Rebecca Katowa at Zambia Sugar as the Group’s second female MD.

Comment: A positive step and an impressive hire. Good work Illovo.

Rhodes Food, which has been on an acquisition tear for a couple of years now – has just signed a sales and distribution deal with Rooibos ice tea maker BOS Brands, whose goods it will be distributing to 10,000 outlets across Southern Africa. This will no doubt do wonders for BOS, which aims to double its market share in the wake of the deal – it currently holds around 12% of a R900m market. It’ll be good for Rhodes too, which is aiming to consolidate its position in the thirsty South African beverage market. And the third party which will be affected is Remgro, which has a significant interest in BOS as part of its not insubstantial food and beverages portfolio, which currently includes stakes in RCL and Distell.

Comment: Rooibos is a massive hit globally – almost a staple in places like the US, where it is to be found on most shelves alongside more traditional teas. But there is still, it seems, plenty of room to grow locally.

Investors globally are beginning to eye their watches and wonder whether it’s time for lunch. Some have even gone so far as to take a seat at the linen-cloaked table and tuck their napkins under, or indeed among, their chins. And what is that enticing aroma from the kitchen? Why, it’s a tender young emerging economy, fresh from the doldrums of malfeasance and stagnation, simmered with waterblommetjies in a pinotage jus, and served up by beaming chef Cyril! Word on the street is that investors globally believe that a South Africa on the right – even just a better – economic track could be the biggest story in emerging markets since Malaysia. Goldman Sachs have even revised their GDP growth estimate upward from 1.5% to 2.3% – still not enough to create jobs, but enough to bring the punters in – and that inflation could drop to 4.5% sometime soon, low enough to get those Boxter engines revving. And with Saturday’s shakeup at Eskom, it’s clear that the new broom means business.

Comment: Exciting times. Be good to see how an improvement in our status as an investment destination makes itself felt on the meaner streets of our Beloved Country.

A milestone on the human race’s relentless drive to replace itself was reached this week with the opening to the public of Amazon’s cashless Amazon Go store concept. The staffless abomination opened at HQ in Seattle, where human guinea pigs will doubtless flock to help Amazon test the concept while filling their coffers at the same time. How does it work, you ask? Blah blah app, blah sensors blah blah cameras and especially disruption.

OK so Walmart tells us that in order to get their like-store growth number up they had to go big into e-commerce. We. Can’t. Even. And Lidl have awoken to the fact that in order to expand in the United States they will need something called a “strategy”, which in the face of stiff competition is apparently going to be to expand more slowly. And in the UK Tesco have angered punters by reducing the value of vouchers awarded in their loyalty programme without warning – a decision they have now temporarily reversed. And that, team, is a wrap.