Cape Union Mart is one of a number of companies being boycotted for their complicity of genocide in Gaza, Palestine. [Picture: Guzzle]
Cape Union Mart stores will soon be the focus of attention in the local boycott campaign against businesses funding the genocide unfolding in Palestine. The pro-Palestine movement will demonstrate outside their stores this weekend after unsuccessful attempts to engage the company’s head.
Speaking in an interview on Salaamedia, chairperson of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) Martin Jensen named Cape Union Mart’s executive chairman, Philip Krawitz, as a prominent Zionist in South Africa.
“It’s clear that Philip Krawitz supports genocide, since he’s got very little to say about it. In 2015, we also know that he received a special award from the Israeli regime … for the largest amount of funds per capita contributed to the Israeli apartheid regime.”
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Boycott campaign against Cape Union Mart
The PSC’s decision to picket outside Cape Union Mart branches in Cape Town came after unfruitful attempts to engage Krawitz on his position, said Jensen. He claimed Krawitz was “hostile” to a letter written by the PSC.
“He simply refused. In fact, his response was quite hostile towards us. We clearly decided that Philip Krawitz and his company must be made a target of the boycott, because we need our communities to make them feel the pinch of their perverse views of the world,” said Jensen.
The call to boycott the chain was not limited to Cape Union Mart, but included several names related to the company.
“We’re calling on the public to boycott Cape Union Mart and related stores like Old Khaki, Poetry and K-Way. We’re saying that we must not support these shops.”
Jensen emphasised that “Philip Krawitz and the rest of the Zionists in South Africa need to be taught an important political lesson, a lesson about what humanity means.”
He encouraged the public to picket outside Cape Union Mart stores at 11 AM on Saturday, 09 December 2023. It was important, he said, because this was a “just cause for the Palestinians but [also] for the whole of humanity”.
Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA), has urged a targeted boycott against several prominent companies with Palestinian blood on their hands. Those include Clover, ZZ2 tomatos, McDonald’s, Puma, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and SodaStream.
