7 October 2025
This morning Shoprite, the largest retail food store in South Africa, abruptly cancelled a meeting with the UAH that it had proposed because it objected to the presence of Zwelinzima Vavi, the General Secretary of SAFTU, as part of a six-person delegation the UAH had mandated to attend the meeting.
The UAH regards this as a missed opportunity for Shoprite and an unwarranted attempt to limit the autonomy of the UAH to decide its own delegation.
It takes place on the eve of World Food Day, October 16th, as the UAH steps up its campaign to demand an end to profiteering from essential food, and fights for food prices that are affordable to all people in South Africa. This includes a petition addressed to Shoprite available here.
The high price of food is currently the largest barrier to access to sufficient food.
We call on Shoprite and all food retailers in South Africa to urgently reduce the price of essential food.
We call on government to regulate essential food prices, as it does with medicines and other products essential to life and well-being, and to prohibit immoral profiteering off food.
Below we provide background information to the meeting and its cancellation:
The UAH initially requested a meeting with Shoprite after Sanjeev Raghubir, the Chief Sustainability Officer at Shoprite, wrote to the UAH after our activities on World Hunger Day 2025 and the launch of a petition to call on Shoprite to lower food prices.
Shoprite declined our first request for a meeting.
However, September 26th, after a UAH-led march to Shoprite in Pimville, Soweto and the handing over of a memorandum they suggested a meeting: “to clarify the Group’s approach to improving food access and security and help us better understand Union Against Hunger’s goals.”
The UAH responded and accepted a meeting. On 6 October 2025 we sent a letter with names of the delegation who would represent the UAH. Our delegation represented a cross section of members active in UAH campaigns as well as areas of expertise in relation to access to food:.
- Mervyn Abrahams, Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group
- Alan Browde, founder SA Harvest (personal capacity)
- Mark Heywood, UAH co-founder
- Palesa Ramolefo, Amandla.mobi
- Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary SAFTU
- Dr Chantell Witten, (personal capacity)”
On 6 October, Adele Kruger Taljaard, Head, Corporate Communications, and one of the two people we were due to meet responded:
“We are keen to meet with the leadership of UAH, specifically on the topic of food insecurity and hunger. We hope to gain a better understanding of UAH’s goals and thinking on the issue.
Unfortunately, we are not authorised to meet with trade unions or politically active groups – that would stray into the area of industrial relations, which falls outside of our mandate.
I do hope you understand and trust we can have a productive meeting with UAH members who are directly involved with food activism.”
The UAH responded to this as below:
“The trade unions are a key constituency of the UAH. We are a coalition and SAFTU is part of our steering committee. They are very much involved in food activism.
You will note that our memorandum of 25 September to you also raised issues about salaries of staff and how this affects their ability to feed their families given the high cost of food. This is a concern to us.
Food and hunger is a political issue. However we are not politically affiliated with any political party.
I am requesting that you please reconsider your decision and inform me urgently what you decide.
We are committed to a constructive exchange, we are seeking solutions to a crisis, but I think it is up to us to decide our delegation.”
In response Adele Kruger Taljaard replied:
“SACCAWU is the trade union we recognise nationally and our business has established channels of engagement for union-related matters.
While we too are committed to a constructive exchange with UAH, we don’t want to compromise our long-standing relationships with important stakeholders. Meeting with key figures of other federations has the potential to harm relations.
Please advise whether you are prepared to continue with tomorrow’s meeting in the absence of SAFTU?
The UAH responded:
I note your decision to make the meeting contingent on our removing Zwelinzima Vavi from the UAH delegation.
I am consulting with UAH leaders and will revert by 9am tomorrow.
On 7th October we informed Shoprite that we could not accede to their demand that Vavi be excluded but that we would be available for the online meeting that morning. In response Kruger Taljaard cancelled the meeting:
A letter was also received from Andre van Aswegen, Executive Office of the CEO, stating:
“We regret to inform you that we will not be proceeding with the proposed meeting. As a matter of policy, Shoprite recognises SACCAWU as the official trade union within our retail operations and is therefore unable to engage with other trade union federations.
We remain committed to constructive dialogue and addressing food insecurity. Throughout the day, we will share factual information regarding our hunger relief programmes, which you are welcome to review and disclose publicly.”
In conclusion the UAH states as follows:
Shoprite executives placed the UAH in a position where either we bow to their demand that Zwelinzima Vavi not be included in the delegation, or they would cancel the meeting.
- The UAH is a broad-based coalition and no organisation, be it government or the private retail sector, can tell us who we include in bona fide meetings to discuss our constitutional rights to food;
- We do not call ourselves a Union for nothing. We embody principles of solidarity and aim to work across and include all sectors of society that will work to achieve the right to sufficient food.
- Shoprite invented spurious reasons to prevent Zwelinzima Vavi being part of the UAH delegation.
- Firstly, it was “we are not authorised to meet with trade unions.” When we pointed out that this is a UAH delegation, this changed to, “SACCAWU is the trade union we recognise nationally and our business has established channels of engagement for union-related matters.” This response is equally fallacious: again, the meeting was not a union meeting, nor a collective bargaining but an attempt to address socio-economic ills.
- The only interpretation that can be put on this is that Shoprite is seeking to exclude a sector of society from engaging on the issue of food prices; divide and rule.
- SACCAWU would have been welcome to participate in this meeting, or future meetings, as we are sure that they too would support demands for lower essential food prices and better wages for people who work at Shoprite. The UAH will reach out to SACCAWU and ask them to join the UAH.
- Taking Shoprite at its word, that “we welcome scrutiny and dialogue” the UAH will remain open and available for future meetings with Shoprite.
- In the meantime, UAH’s campaign for lower food prices, as set out in the Memorandum of 25th September will continue and be intensified, including with activities on and around World Food Day, October 16th.
The Demands we stated in the September 25th Memorandum, accepted and signed for by Shoprite, remain:
- Waive profits and lower prices on a basket of essential foods.
- Engage with experts and nutritionists to decide what foods are included in this basket.
- Raise the salaries of your lowest paid employees to an acceptable living wage.
Leave a Reply