15% of Shoprite’s voters have torpedoed the deal that would have seen the business buy out Christo Wiese’s high-voting deferred shares for R3.3bn, and convert them into ordinary shares. Not the result either the business or Oom Christo were looking for. He’s now stuck with 42.3% of the business instead of the 17.8% he would have held had the deal gone through. They, it appears, are stuck with him: he intends to maintain a “decidedly” active role in the business. It’s unlikely he’s just putting a brave face on things: he made it very clear that he was in no mood to negotiate. Analysts have expressed admiration for the mettle of the dissenting shareholders. “I think it’s heartening that institutional shareholders have at last found their voice and would not vote in favour of a transaction that was clearly not in their favour,” says Shane Watkins, respected chief investment officer at All Weather Capital, whom we knew as a young gadabout in a red Alfa 2000.

Comment: Act Three for Oom Christo then. Hopefully it will be as interesting as the first couple.

Hey this is worth a try: let’s get some real class on the board! Woolies have appointed as an independent non-executive director, Christopher Colfer, onetime CEO of Richemont’s Alfred Dunhill business. Colfer brings decades of experience in retail, cosmetics, skincare, clothing and e-commerce to the role. He is an Australian resident, who will also serve on the board of Country Road, and slum it with the worthies of David Jones to boot. In other – sadder – Woolies news, the business mourns this week the passing of Tom McLoughlin, who as packaging manager of Woolies got interested in a more sustainable approach to the food business, and went on to become one of the pioneers of the Good Business Journey, which itself has been massively influential in the greening of South African retail.

Comment: No one ever lives to measure the height of the tree they planted. But we honour them for planting it.

Over in blighted Blighty, Tesco have lost market share to the pernicious, euro-mongering German discounters Aldi and Lidl, dropping to 27.3% at the end of last month, from 27.7% a year ago, which is, to be fair, still a number not to be sneezed at. Still in Blighty, Sainsbury’s will, by September, have removed all of the plastic packaging from its bakery and fresh departments, substituting it for paper bags. Over in Trumpistan, meanwhile, Walmart are breathing a hefty sigh of relief on the news that their President has arbitrarily decided to declare victory in his manufactured tariff war in Mexico, allowing American consumers uninterrupted access to the cheap stuff that is apparently one of their self-evident rights. Walmart are also blowing right through the concept of last mile delivery by dispatching camera-toting minions not just to deliver groceries in selected trial cities, but to pack the fridges and pantries of trusting punters too.

Comment: Re the Sainsbury’s bags, well that’s all very well, but a drop in the ocean. It’s time that suppliers started investing more meaningfully in less voluminous and more recyclable packaging, or product solutions that dispense with it entirely where possible.

In the opaque and ongoing saga that is the Choppies reporting controversy, suspended CEO Ramachandran Ottapathu has announced with a rustling of papers and an indignant flounce that he intends to challenge his suspension in court. “This is simple character assassination which does not give me a chance to defend myself — I was suspended without notice and without a hearing,” he says. Choppies – in what is becoming something of a tradition – let it be known that it would clue us all as to what on earth is going on, in the fullness of time, just as they did with their still missing in action annual results. Mr. O. has in the meantime attempted to convene an unauthorised meeting of shareholders, presumably to state his case and mount an insurrection against the board.

Comment: Does any of this matter? Why yes. Choppies has close on 90 stores in the Beloved Country and represents a significant challenge to our larger independents and perhaps even some of our corporate retailers.

Big up to Pick n Pay, which has launched monthly People n Planet Beach Clean-Ups, which will see the retailer partner with local organisations across the country to drive public awareness for plastic waste and action for responsible disposal. And to Woolies, partnering with WILDLANDS in a trial that will upgrade two existing WILDLANDS recycling villages and open three additional recycling villages in popular KwaZulu-Natal shopping centres where there are Woolworths’ stores. WILDLANDS recycling villages, which are at the forefront of recycling and the recycling circular economy in South Africa, are part of a well-established WILDTRUST programme.

Comment: Yes, we’re in an awful mess, globally. But initiatives like these do their little bit to tidy things up, and they do a lot to conscientise the rest of us and change our consumer culture.

More confirmation, if any were needed, that our own great sector has not managed to avoid the travails of our present economic downturn: IMPERIAL Logistics has let it be known that it intends to write down the value of its consumer packaged goods unit by between R1bn and R1.4bn, as a result of declining volumes. It will achieve the cuts by dropping unprofitable contracts (you know who you are), consolidating operations and cutting costs – which means, no doubt, that an as yet unspecified number of South Africans will be out of work. And while the parlous state of the division reflects the state of the national fiscus, it’s nothing new: “I have been part of the group for many years,” says CEO Mohammed Akoojee with the bluntness of a man who has spent his career around big trucks, “and this has always been an underperforming business. It has never made a profit that matters.”

Comment: Logistics is the new frontier of sustainable profitability. It’s damn tricky to fix, but fix it we must.

Sugar and chicken, the two trickiest sectors in SA’s food industry, have created a perfect storm for the business once known as Rainbow, which issued a profit warning last week to the effect that earnings could be -20% down on last year come end-June. Beset by cheap imports in both, sales have also been hit by sugar’s declining popularity with more health-conscious consumers, and by the government’s tariffs on foods and drinks containing the stuff. Higher feed prices for chicken have also proven a drag. On the upside, RCL’s popular Simply Chicken viennas are back on the shelves after being ordered off in the midst of last year’s Listeriosis outbreak, in which they were not in fact implicated.

Comment: As we have often remarked in these pages, a great business and leadership team, at the nexus of various types of awful luck. Further divestment and diversification may be in order.

The dear old ZAR isn’t what it could be, crashing through R15 to the dollar on last week’s awful economic news. And Mr Magashule’s unhinged talk of printing more currency couldn’t have helped, either. Moody’s, in the meantime, the one ratings agency that still seems to have our back, has downgraded its expectations for GDP growth from 1.3% to 1% for this FY. On the (marginal) upside, though, retail trade sales for the month of April were up +2.4%, having grown just +0.2% year on year in March and +1.4% in Feb. They were lifted thither by textiles, clothing, footwear and “leather goods” (ooh) at +6.4%, by pharmaceuticals, medical goods and toiletries (+5.3%) and by the furniture mob (+4.6%). Our own great industry, represented in StatsSA’s arcane reckoning by “Food, beverages and tobacco in specialised stores” recorded flat growth of 0.0%.

Comment: Could do better, those retailers! Perhaps if you gave up the tobacco, and focused on the healthy stuff. Come on now.