Fitting tribute was paid to Pick n Pay former chairman, entrepreneur, innovator, business leader and social advocate Raymond Ackerman at a memorial service for his passing last week that was held at Clovelly Golf Course in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, yesterday morning.
It was held at the golf course that was founded by his father Gus, together with other business partners, in 1920, as Jewish people were not allowed at other golf courses in Cape Town at the time.
In 1976, at the behest of Ackerman, the government allowed the club to become the first non-segregated golf club in the country, allowing it finally to meet its founding principles of not debarring anybody on the basis of nationality and religion.
This reporter, who had interviewed Ackerman many times over the course of three decades, learnt yesterday that aside from his professional commitments and successes, his philanthropy, and being a devout family man and husband, Ackerman also never cancelled a round of golf, and such was his competitiveness that he never let the wind and rain interfere with the game.
Gareth Ackerman, Ackerman’s son and Pick n Pay’s chairman, reminded the hundreds of business associates, friends and family that gathered on the cold and windy golf course lawns yesterday that there are few anywhere in South Africa who have not heard of Pick n Pay, and have not heard of Raymond Ackerman.
He purchased four Cape Town stores from Jack Goldin in the 1960s and was chairman of Pick n Pay until he stepped down in 2010, effectively building a group that now employs more than 90 000 people.
His father Gus had founded Ackermans just after World War 1, but this was sold to the Greatermans group in 1940. Ackerman took a position at Greatermans head office in Johannesburg in the early 1950s, when food retailing supermarkets first began to appear in South Africa.
He had bought the four stores from Goldin using severance pay from Checkers, and a bank loan.
“In one of his three books, my father wrote about his relationship with his own father, Gus Ackerman, one of the founders of Clovelly Country Club where we have gathered today, and a pioneer of multi-store retailing in South Africa after WW1 with the Ackermans chain.
“Raymond described his father as a man of Victorian principles who constantly warned him that he was far too kind and too concerned about others to be successful.”
Gus couldn’t have been more mistaken.
Raymond knew his own heart, and his own mind well enough to chart his own course. I’m happy to say that the relationship Kathy, Suzanne, Jonathan and I had with our father was quite different, most certainly not Victorian. He was caring, interested and made special time and space for each of us.
“Kindness, a caring and a sincere interest in other people and global events were Dad’s defining qualities. These attributes he sought to cultivate in us,” said Gareth Ackerman.
“They were central in his family life, in business, and in his role in society as a whole. In this role, he was never afraid to challenge the government or to display leadership when his industry, his city and his country needed it.”
Gareth Ackerman said that everybody present at the memorial yesterday had their own story to tell of his father. He said the path that his father took was often not an easy one, but was always true to his father’s values and “he chose it deliberately and with courage.”
Indeed, one of the paths that Raymond Ackerman chose that would see him interviewed several times by this reporter decades ago, and set him against the government and many other business people at the time, were his attempts to try to get the apartheid – and later also the democratic governments – to deregulate fuel prices.
Ackerman believed retailers would be able to offer discounted fuel prices to consumers due to the greater competition, as the price remains tightly regulated to provide a consistent profit and tax to the oil companies and the government respectively.
Eventually, the government threatened to arrest him if he sold petrol at a discount.
Gareth Ackerman said yesterday: “A friend who knew Dad for decades told me last week that Raymond would ‘assault you with humanity and logic’ in his determination to do the right thing. He was so steadfast on the side of right, that it was very difficult to disagree with him, as several iterations of apartheid leaders discovered to their discomfort. He could never understand why people would not just do the right thing.
“Three profound values that Raymond is famous for, and that will forever remain in the company ethos. The value of the consumer is queen, business efficiency, and perhaps the value that he is best known for – doing good is good business. We honour these values, and promise Dad they will remain core in all we do,” Gareth Ackerman said.
He said the same credo was also at the heart of father’s four legacy giving back projects, which would benefit from donations received in his memory.
The Raymond Ackerman Academy for Entrepreneurial Development at the University of Johannesburg had supported more than 2 000 disadvantaged young people as they started small businesses.
The Raymond Ackerman Golf Academy provided after-school tutoring, life-skills training and golf coaching to high school students from Masipumelele and Ocean View, Cape Town. The Zama Dance School in Gugulethu offered dance classes and daily meals to 100 children every year; and Feed the Nation, which Pick n Pay launched during the pandemic, provided food for those in need and schoolchildren, with a focus on child-headed households.
“As you would imagine, he never lost his enthusiasm for sharing the values that drove him and the performance of the company. He joined board meetings right to the end and never lost interest in all things around him – family, national and world affairs – and naturally Pick n Pay,” said Gareth.
Among Raymond Ackerman’s own words that were spoken during an interview last year and which were broadcast again yesterday at the memorial: “We have so much to be thankful for in this country ...”
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