Cape Town - The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is planning to ambush Woolworths’s AGM on Monday by bombarding the company with questions about its trade links with Israel.
A group of activists belonging to the National Coalition for Palestine and the BDS movement have bought shares in Woolworths Holdings Limited and may attend the company’s AGM at its headquarters in Longmarket Street.
Several shareholders with investments of over R1 million each also donated their proxies to the activists to ensure that they would not be locked out of discussions.
At a press briefing held in Spin Street on Sunday, Muhammed Desai, from the BDS movement, said the lobby group had served the company with two Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) applications after it refused to reveal its Israeli sources and its supply chain information.
“We have served these applications. The company has not even responded to these applications, stating again that it does not need to respond to either shareholders or to activists. This falls into full contradiction of the company’s so-called aim of being a transparent company and transparent co-operation. This is one of the things that we will be raising at the AGM,” he said.
The BDS group submitted 30 questions to be raised at the AGM.
Some of the issues the group has asked to be discussed include the company’s annual financial statements and reports by its external auditors over the past 18 months.
They want the reports and statements made available to shareholders to promote “transparency”.
The activists also intend to ask the company if they seriously considered the effect of buying from an “apartheid state” like Israel compared to sourcing the same produce locally or alternative sources internationally.
Desai said the BDS group met last year with the company and explained to them that the #BoycottWoolworths campaign would be used to “galvanise public support”.
“We are going to use the campaign to get into people’s lunchroom discussions, into their braais and supper tables. Whether they support the Woolworths campaign or not, people are discussing the BDS campaign,” he said.
Desai claimed that senior marketing people in the company brought over American singer Pharrell Williams to “counter” the BDS campaign. “He comes down, the majority of media, the majority of social media is talking about the Pharrell protest.”
He said that every two years the world witnesses brutality in Gaza.
“We saw last year, over 550 children being killed in a period of six weeks. That is one child every two hours in less than two months, that were wiped off the planet. The year before that, we saw over 2 000 Palestinians being killed. In 2006, we also had 2 400 Palestinians being killed.
“The question now, as it was in the 1980s for those who supported the apartheid struggle, is how do we stop the next bomb from being dropped or stop the next kid from being killed?”
A Woolworths spokesman said: “The BDS protest should not impact the running of the Woolworths Holdings Limited AGM. We have already put in place necessary security measures to ensure the effective running of the AGM.”
Cape Argus