From Pick n Pay trolley porters to premier and CEO
Two of the four men, Popo Molefe and Isaac Motaung, that Simon Moropa hired outside the gate of Darras Centre rose to Premier and CEO respectively.
When Rosina Duduzile Moropa’s late husband, Simon, was once assigned by Pick N Pay tycoon Raymond Ackerman to hire four trolley porters at the gate, little did he know there was a premier and a CEO in waiting among those hired.
Two of those hired as trolley porters at the Darras Centre in Kensington in 1972 were former North West Premier Popo Molefe and the late first black CEO of Pick N Pay stores, Isaac Motaung. Her husband Simon died on January 21, 2016.
“You can imagine, coming from trolley porters to become Premier of the North West province and the other guy to the first black CEO of the company, what strides they both made,” remarked Moropa during an interview with Alex News from her Phase 2 home in Alexandra.
She said after the appointment of Motaung as CEO, all the stores then were run by black female and male managers, a move Moropa said irked the apartheid authorities and earned Ackerman severe tongue lashes but they never attempted to order its reversal.
Before her retirement in 2003, Moropa said Ackerman nominated her as a Woman of Worth and gave her a trophy that she still cherishes up to today and it’s kept on her room divider in the living room for all to see. She still has a functional watch that she received on her retirement which she wore to the interview.
Upon her retirement, Ackerman formed a pensioners group known as ‘The Young Ones’ and every month they were required to come to the office and he made sure there was transport for them.
That was stopped by Gareth when he took over the day-to-day running of the shops in 2010. “When we asked for an explanation, he simply told us he was a man of his own and not his father,” Moropa said.
Every month, Moropa said, Ackerman would take her retirees together with orphaned children from Alexandra on trips to the beaches in Durban and Cape Town and the Cradle of Humankind.
Moropa recalled that Fourways Crossing employees had a sit-in protest for six days in 1986 and Ackerman made sure they were fed breakfast, lunch and dinner and he told everybody who cared to listen that he did not want his employees going hungry.
“When I heard from the Morning Live Show on SABC that Raymond Ackerman had died, I fell on my bed and cried endlessly like a little baby for this man who pampered us so much when we were his simple employees. Who can do all this, not even your own blood and flesh,” Moropa concluded.
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