An African Shopkeeper: Memoirs of David Susman

2004
Fernwood Press
Limited to 250 copies.
Text by David Susman, edited by Leni Martin

David Susman (1925-2010) was a highly respected businessman and philanthropist in South Africa, but was also always involved with business in Zambia which meant a great deal to him, as did central Africa as a whole. He was born in 1925, in Livingstone, where he spent much of his childhood. His university studies took him to South Africa, to the University of the Witwatersrand, to read for a degree in commerce, but this was interrupted by military service in Italy in the Second World War and as an officer of distinction in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. The next year, in England in 1949, he became a trainee manager at the British retail chain, Marks & Spencer, and married Ann Laski the niece of the Chairman, SirSimon Mar ks. Back in South Africa in 1952, he became a general manager at Woolworths, the South African retail chain that had been co-founded by his uncle Elie. Managing director there by 1956, he later served as Chairman until 1993 presiding over the rapid expansion of the business and responsible for the transmission of the ethics and methods of Marks & Spencer to the Woolworth’s chain, as well as to his family’s Zambian businesses including Susman Brothers & Wulfsohn.

A staunch opponent of apartheid, David Susman insisted that his employees be appointed on merit, and not colour, and refused to have racially separate amenities for his staff. As a noted philanthropist, he gave generously both to general and to Jewish causes, and one of these is the Gateway Museum which he conceived and which he substantially endowed.

210mm x 290mm x 31mm

R1,000