Walmart keeping its South African expansion plans quiet

[mylesillidge]

Walmart rollout loses steam in South Africa

Massmart has been quiet about its plans to expand its Walmart footprint in South Africa, as its footprint has remained unchanged at three locations across the country.

In February 2026, a Game employee told MyBroadband that 21 Game stores were earmarked for closure and that Massmart was considering rebranding some of them as Walmart stores.

 

[Tantus]

A long story to say "no news"

 

[Bad Ballie]

Makes sense, they will roll out to more affluent areas, but opening store countrywide in a country where incomes are disproportionately lower is not going to work. Retailers make money from two things, basic essentials and disposable incomes. In this country only the upper 1-5% have a real disposable income, even the middle class lives hand to mouth now days.

 

[oros]

I thought as much..... Would be interesting to know why the slow down.....

 

[FiestaST]

CT when?

 

[EmmanuelGoldstein]

I also want to know when I can be a Walmartian... and go to their store in my torn shorts, filthy sleeveless shirt and crocs

 

[Mike Angelo]

Wonder when they will realize that very few people go to a mall to buy groceries. Local shopping centres would make more sense.

 

[object]

Checkers and Shoprite are opening new stores every few days it seems.

3 new checkers opened near me.

 

[Justanotherguybythesea]

Makes sense, they will roll out to more affluent areas, but opening store countrywide in a country where incomes are disproportionately lower is not going to work. Retailers make money from two things, basic essentials and disposable incomes. In this country only the upper 1-5% have a real disposable income, even the middle class lives hand to mouth now days.

Will also say that the stores they have they are getting rid of all the experienced staff, which are the ones that know things, and very few of the staff that were there when they took over are still around, most are gone. plus almost all the work is now outsourced, with almost all stocking being done by external companies, using temp labour, which means every 3 months a full turnover, as they will never be full time, and will only ever be 90 day employees.

If you go into Makro you will see yellow lines along the walkways, and employees are expected to stand there when not actively helping any customer, so they can be seen on camera, and then they will probably be the first to vanish off if they are there for some random time, figured out my some nameless AI, and quietly canned.

if you look closely all staff are now external, either "contracted" or outsourced, so that they can save on not paying for things like pension, medical, UIF, as those now are on the employee, who is getting even less than full time pay.

 

[Johand]

Makes sense, they will roll out to more affluent areas, but opening store countrywide in a country where incomes are disproportionately lower is not going to work. Retailers make money from two things, basic essentials and disposable incomes. In this country only the upper 1-5% have a real disposable income, even the middle class lives hand to mouth now days.

I don't know - scale is the name of the game with retail. Allows better negotiation and prices from suppliers. Overhead shared between more stores.

The lack of progress is bad news. They need to open like a 100 stores a year minimum or they are a non-entity. Even at 100 stores a year it will take 15 years to reach current PnP scale, and about 30 years to reach Checkers/Shop rite scale.

This smells to me like Walmart is not all in on the strategy. Not that they will offer anything unique.

I would like Costco to enter our market... But not sure we are ready for them.