Core initially opened this debate in the public by placing newspaper ads about Grey imports. The reason grey importing started was because their pricing was so high in South Africa that others saw a market in competing with them.
There are a lot of important points to be raised:
1. Core are not only the sole importers of legal Apple products for South Africa, they compete in the wholesale and retail markets too.
2. By operating their own retail outlets they are competing with their own customers, and can discount them out of the market. This is anti competitive!
3. They charge outrageous prices yet do not even offer the full warranty similar to what Apple does in the rest of the world.
4. The Core Group is controlled by the
Ichikowitz Group. This is very powerful family in South Africa - but what amazes me is that Apple USA would want to be associated with a group like this.
Is this really the type of companies Apple wants to be aligned with..?
Some more info on the group.......
---------------------------------------------------------------------
http://iluvsa.blogspot.com/2009/03/z...sidential.html
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The high flying ANC comrades
The arms dealer who flies Zuma
The arms dealer who flies Zuma, Ivor Ichikowitz, the arms and oil broker who laid on his company jet to ferry Nelson Mandela to a Jacob Zuma election rally in Transkei, has made a career from turning political connections into profit.
Last December Ichikowitz flew Zuma in the luxuriously converted Boeing 727 to Lebanon and Kazakhstan for what the Mail & Guardian understands were African National Congress (ANC) fundraising and business meetings.
Ichikowitz confirmed he provided that flight gratis, but said he went along to test recent upgrades to the jet and did not attend the meetings.
At its commercial charter rate, $14 000 an hour, a return trip to Kazakhstan would have cost upwards of R5-million.
An M&G probe of Ichikowitz’s relations with the ANC and prominent Zuma backers indicates a man who has made it his business to get close to key power-brokers.
They include:
Mathews Phosa, who shared a number of company directorships with Ichikowitz before his elevation to ANC treasurer;
Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of the former president, who opened doors for Ichikowitz into Africa;
Sandi Majali, former Thabo Mbeki acolyte and business frontman for the ANC and Kgalema Motlanthe in ill-fated oil trades with Saddam Hussein;
Robert Gumede, owner of IT company GijimaAST and a prominent Zuma backer;
Pik Botha, former National Party politician and long-time friend of the Ichikowitz family, who provided an entrée to African leaders including former
Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Ichikowitz (42) made a fortune selling surplus South African armoured vehicles into Africa and the Middle East, and seems to have manoeuvred his way into Zuma’s inner circle.
He was prominent among public donors to the ANC at a Zuma fundraiser organised by Gumede in October last year, pledging R6-million. He told the M&G the business community should "transparently and voluntarily provide both the financial and skills resources political parties need to participate in the democratic process".
He denies direct or indirect business dealings with any political party. But his best-known entanglement with ANC funding occurred via his association with Majali and his Imvume group.
Ichikowitz, who also represents controversial commodities trader Glencore, partnered Majali in his 2001 bid to supply Iraqi crude to South Africa under the controversial oil-for-food programme allowing limited trade with Saddam’s Iraq.
In 2005 the M&G revealed Majali, with official ANC backing, intended setting up an oil trading operation intended to benefit the ANC and Saddam’s Ba’ath party. Ichikowitz was also Majali’s partner in a contract to supply PetroSA condensate for its Mossel Bay refinery.
The M&G exposed how Majali diverted R11-million of state oil money to the ANC before the 2004 election, but Oilgate also strained relations between the partners as Majali's actions created a cash-flow crisis for Ichikowitz's company. Ichikowitz told the M&G he was unaware of the link between Majali's company and the ANC and is no longer in business with Majali.
Moeletsi Mbeki, a key strategist for the Congress of the People, now appears to distance himself from close association with Ichikowitz. He said they were now in only one business together, a cattle feedlot enterprise.
Company records show a number of past African joint ventures, including the agency for Mahindra vehicle sales in South Africa. Ichikowitz said they had been friends "for many years" and went into business together about six years ago.
He said he had been friends with Gumede since about 1989 "and [we] worked together in our family business before he started his own businesses". "We have no active business together and remain family friends." Phosa once served on the boards of several companies with Ichikowitz, notably Vuka Fleet Management and Vuka Municipal Services, joint ventures between Phosa’s Vuka group and TFM, the truck body manufacturer hived off from the armoured vehicle company now owned by BAE-Systems.
Ichikowitz said Phosa had been "a family friend since his return from exile in the 1990s ... I have no interest in Mathews's businesses, nor he in mine." Ichikowitz may have slipped easily from the Mbeki era into the post-Polokwane ANC, but he has also taken advantage of family political connections stretching back to apartheid.
A source close to the family said former apartheid foreign minister Pik Botha was introduced to the Ichikowitzes by the late John Pearce, then the Johannesburg council’s security head. Pearce, embedded in the apartheid security establishment, was fired in 1991 following revelations about military intelligence dirty-tricks operations.
Botha, whom Ichikowitz describes as "a long-standing friend", has been an informal adviser to Ichikowitz and was also said to have promoted Ichikowitz’s other main business: selling reconditioned surplus South African military equipment into Africa and the Middle East. Here too, Ichikowitz appears to have benefited from his ANC associations, with a defence department investigation into his trading activities suppressed before it could produce results.
Businessman reveals he funded Mandela flight
The head of an international defence and aerospace company paid for the controversial flight that ferried Nelson Mandela to a recent election rally to share the stage with Jacob Zuma.
Ivor Ichikowitz, the executive chairman of the Paramount Group, which operates the aircraft used for the trip, confirmed bankrolling the flight — at a cost of about R360000, excluding landing fees.
He said the request was made by the ANC’s treasurer-general, Mathews Phosa.
Mandela was flown from Lanseria International airport to Mthatha airport two weeks ago, unleashing a furore over whether the ANC had jeopardised his health and disregarded his strict travel protocol.
“I am a proud supporter of the ANC. I have made support and assistance to the ANC available, in kind and in cash, over the past couple of months,” said Ichikowitz. “Dr Phosa asked if we would make an aircraft available for this particular flight.
I chose to make the Super 27-200 available, knowing full well that it would be for Madiba.” Ichikowitz was drawn into the Iraqi Oil for Food controversy several years ago, via his links to international commodity trader Glencore and its association with another ANC benefactor, Sandi Majali.
“For political parties to function effectively, they need to be well-funded. I believe the ANC needs to be properly funded and funded transparently.
I am not ashamed of making it public,” said Ichikowitz, who pledged R6-million to the ANC election war chest last year.
The Paramount Group supplies equipment, armoured vehicles and aircraft to governments for peacekeeping, security, defence and policing.
It has previously done business with Armscor. Ichikowitz said his core business interests were with foreign, not local, entities.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Apologies for posting this again, but feel it is in the public interest that Core get exposed for who they really are!!
of the problem! Asking from the 'reasonable man' (as I see it; IANAL but it feels like I'm invoking that correctly) standpoint: why on earth would CAB attempt to make a business out of hawking materially or legally defective product? I mean let's say I buy something from CAB: upon opening the box to my new toy can immediately SEE that it's new - or, as inferred by ol' 'donky (oh dear, now THAT makes for an unfortunate image!) - used or damaged. There's simply no financial incentive for CAB to sell me something defective: it costs them to do so; and the same principle holds true for them not selling me stolen kit. So, 'donky, move along from this one will ya? You just come off, well, looking like an ass. 
