Using CSR to influence positive perceptions of the Chinese by South Africans: Hit or Miss

“My grandfather came to South Africa in 1898. My father, born in China in 1910, he came to South Africa just about the time Japan attacked China and its persistent actions eventually sparked World War II. My father came because he had gotten a job here though; in 1938,” says Walter Wai Pon, a Chinese-South African septuagenarian.

Pon, who is the Retail Director of Sui Hing Hong, Direct Importers & Wholesalers, a company established in 1943, was born in South Africa in the year 1940, before the apartheid era. Preceding apartheid, some Chinese people in Johannesburg had made places like Soweto home. They lived amongst black South Africans, trading and running successful businesses in Soweto. Today, some black South Africans look back at this era as a happy time, a time wherein Chinese people were family and were viewed in positive light.