PICK and PAY time.

ACCOUNTABILITY 101.
This is a quick letter to Mr Richard Brasher and aims to find out exactly where all the money is that was promised?

The day inevitably rolled around and we bade Mandela farewell. The hoopla machine unfortunately kicked into over drive with all and sundry “capitalising” on the sad event to make a buck and or statement.

Everyone from street vendors peddling T shirts emblazoned with Madiba’s face to radio stations who at the news of Nelson’s passing suspended their daily routine programming then apparently pressed “play” on the console and played a sickening pre organised “tribute”. It was nothing but “ambulance chasing”. Even the SABC followed suit.

Now when Sunday rolled around and the world was firmly planted in front of their televisions watching the funeral unfold, many supermarkets including Checkers, Woolworths etc had decided to close in respect to the icon.

Pick n Pay on the other hand made the announcement that their stores would be open for business and that the “profits” from all sales would be donated to charities and my guess is that the Nelson Mandela children’s fund would be the obvious beneficiary of Pick n Pay’s very forward thinking proactive good will gesture.

Furthermore there were in store adverts posted that stated that all staff working on the day would be doing so on a volunteer basis. This sudden announcement was made a few days before the funeral when certain groups accused Pick n Pay of preventing their staff from partaking in the solemn funeral. We all know down deep that it was simply politicking and attention seeking.

I seriously doubt that so many staff would turn out at work on a Sunday for mahala, as we all know that there is nothing for mahala! Considering too that it would be massively unfair and possibly illegal to get staff in and not pay them double time for Sunday as is the law in our country.

You were obviously, simply conducting damage control to get YCL et al off your backs. I do not think you would have enjoyed having Juju Malema AKA the Lord of the poo swinging by your head office and fling poo all over your lobby like the EFF did to Sanlam in Belville.

"YOUR LOVELY HEAD OFFICES SANS POO"

Okay so this brings me to the crux of my letter, dude where is the bucks you promised from the profits of sales on Mandela Sunday? I went to Pick n Pay on that Sunday and I can confirm that your Somerset mall store was chock a block and conducting brisk business. Surely there should be a good few million Rand sitting in the Mandela children’s fund account or some other account possibly less likely to be mismanaged by corrupt miscreants?

Ever since the announcement that Pick n Pay would donate profits from Mandela Sunday not one subsequent announcement has been made in the media about just how much was made and donated to the poor destitute kids!

What’s happening dudes? I truly wish that you are going to come clean and conduct an open books approach to just how much is being “donated”, or was it just a clever ruse to legitimise conducting business on that day to boost company profits?
Now I am not accusing the Pick n Pay group but I believe it is important that you disclose publically just how much and where the boodle is.

:UPDATE:

I took the liberty of mailing this little letter to Pick n Pay and also messaged it to their Face book page. This is the response I received in near record breaking time.

Pick n Pay

Hi Michael. We opened our stores on 15 December with a promise that profits for the day will be donated to charitable causes in honour of Nelson Mandela. We would like to thank our staff and customers for making this day so worthwhile and we will now calculate the profits that will be donated to charity and have this verified by our auditors as promised.

We will take the appropriate time to ensure that this is done properly and to review the many good causes that have contacted us in the last few days

Michael B da Silva

Keep in mind that I am neither accusing Pick n Pay nor lambasting the group. I am simply making sure that big promises are fulfilled.
We live in a country where corruption is rife and rampant at the top levels.

With the amount of stores country wide you have it would be safe to say that Pick n Pay owe charity well into the millions in profit. If your "auditors" come up with anything less than multi million rand donations from Mandela Sunday then we will all know that the group did the whole "Kim Kardashian thing".

You guys really don't need that type of press and I am sure you concur..

SHE AUCTIONS OFF HER CLOTHES TO BENEFIT THE VICTIMS OF THE PHILIPINES TYPHOON AND THEN KEEPS 90% OF THE PROCEEDS!

Michael B Da Silva.