Billionaire Christo Wiese says white monopoly capital slogan is meaningless

Billionaire Christo Wiese said that the term ‘white monopoly capital’ is meaningless and nothing more than a politicised slogan.

He shared his views on the topic during a discussion at the 2026 Biznews Conference at the Champagne Sports Resort in the Drakensberg.

Wiese is South African business royalty. He built Pepkor and Shoprite and created a business empire which few can match.

Although he studied law and worked at the Cape Bar as a lawyer, he left the legal profession to join a company his dad invested in, Pep.

After a few years, he acquired a controlling interest in Pep Stores and pioneered discount consumer retail in South Africa.

His biggest success was his role in transforming Shoprite Holdings, which Pep Stores acquired in 1979 for a small amount.

Wiese, with Whitey Basson as chief executive, turned the small retail chain into Africa’s largest supermarket operator.

He served as chairman of both Shoprite, which owns Checkers, OK Bazaars, and Usave, and Pepkor, the parent company of Pep Stores, for decades.

His business interests also include stakes in investment holding company Brait, which owns Virgin Active, Invicta Holdings, and the Lourensford Wine Estate.

Despite losing a large portion of his fortune due to the Steinhoff collapse, he rebuilt his business empire.

Wiese is still one of the richest South Africans, with an estimated net worth of approximately R31 billion.

He is optimistic about the country and said that 95% of his wealth remains in South Africa. He has no plans to change that.

Christo Wiese and white monopoly capital

During the question-and-answer session, Wiese was asked what his views were on the slogan “white monopoly capital”.

The term entered mainstream discourse during the later stages of Jacob Zuma’s presidency under contentious circumstances.

Allies of Zuma and the controversial Gupta family used White Monopoly Capital as a central campaign slogan.

They argued that calls for Zuma’s resignation and investigations into state capture were attempts by white corporate elites to block radical economic transformation.

The main target of this campaign was the ultra-wealthy white businessmen, like Johann Rupert, Whitey Basson, Koos Bekker, and Christo Wiese.

Commenting on the slogan at the Biznews Conference, Wiese said he does not know what ‘white monopoly capital’ means.

“I don’t know what it means. I know that this was a political or politicised slogan. However, nobody has ever been able to explain it to me,” he said.

“I studied economics at university, and I understood a monopoly to mean that you control a particular market.”

However, in the case of wealthy white South Africans, they do not control any market or have a monopoly over anything.

He also joked about the term “Stellenbosch Mafia,” saying he knows most of the people in that supposed group, but they are not monopolists.