Calls to boycott Dis-Chem are intensifying after major shareholder Mark Saltzman attacked journalist Redi Tlhabi over Gaza on social media.
Calls to boycott pharmacy giant Dis-Chem are intensifying after majority shareholder Mark Saltzman publicly attacked journalist Redi Tlhabi over Gaza, turning a social media exchange into a wider argument about corporate identity, philanthropy, political speech and public accountability.
The exchange began after Tlhabi responded to a Haaretz article examining the reputational damage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has inflicted on Israel globally. Tlhabi argued that the damage was not limited to Netanyahu.
“For many of us, it is not Netanyahu’s,” she wrote. “It is Israel’s supporters — those with whom we shared lives, ideas and hopes.”
Saltzman responded aggressively, accusing Tlhabi of spreading misinformation and expressing hatred towards Jewish people. The backlash escalated after he referenced financial support linked to his family and the Dis-Chem Foundation while attacking her online.
Speaking to the Mail & Guardian, Tlhabi said Saltzman’s response reinforced the point that she had originally been making.
“The irony is that his untruthful claim was an unsolicited response to my comment on a Haaretz article, which asserts that Netanyahu has done damage to Israel’s brand,” she said.
“I argued that it is not just Netanyahu but supporters of Israel all over the world. Their conduct, bullying, threats, lies, denials have all done damage to Israel and whatever ideology underpins it.
“Mark responded aggressively and every word he used proved my point. The lie was so on script. That’s the irony for me.”
The public reaction to Saltzman’s comments has unfolded against the backdrop of the genocide in Gaza, where Gaza health authorities say more than 72 000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 and much of the enclave has been destroyed.
In September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
In South Africa, the issue carries particular political and historical weight. Many people read Gaza through the country’s own history of apartheid, racial oppression and international solidarity.
Public anger has also been sharpened by South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and by growing international condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
For many South Africans following the exchange online, the issue quickly moved beyond a personal confrontation on X. It became a wider public argument about whether philanthropy, corporate influence and financial power were being invoked to discipline outspoken criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Tlhabi said the episode exposed what she described as a deeper inability among some supporters of Israel to recognise the moral autonomy of those speaking out against the devastation in Gaza.
“This moment reveals clearly the extent to which Zionism struggles to recognise the agency and moral autonomy of others,” she said.
“There is an insistence that those who speak critically must somehow be controlled, bought, silenced or discredited because the possibility that people may arrive at their positions through conscience, history, politics or lived experience is almost inconceivable within that framework.”
Tlhabi rejected what she described as the implication that political conscience could be shaped through patronage.
“Our voices are not manufactured by benefactors,” she said. “I grew up in a township, yes, but I was surrounded by moral voices — from my parents to my teachers and neighbours. We may have had little compared with what Mark Saltzman has but many of us come from a long and rich tradition of intellectual, political and moral struggle.”
She said Saltzman’s remarks revealed a “transactional instinct” underlying some forms of philanthropy and solidarity.
“It also reveals a transactional instinct — that good causes are supported but in return we must yield our sense of right and wrong.”
Tlhabi sharpened the confrontation further by accusing Saltzman of reproducing one of the very stereotypes supporters of Israel frequently condemn.
“It is also striking that, in attempting to discredit me, Mark Saltzman resorted to one of the oldest and most recognisable anti-Semitic tropes: money as an instrument of hidden influence and control,” she said.
“To invoke financial patronage — that I took money from his mom and foundation — cements precisely the kind of dangerous stereotype many people like him claim to oppose.”
As screenshots of the exchange spread online, older posts attributed to Saltzman resurfaced, including posts expressing strong support for Netanyahu and another in which he insulted Tlhabi directly. Saltzman’s X account later appeared to have been deactivated or closed.
The SA BDS Coalition has warned that the controversy could escalate into broader organised action against Dis-Chem. Roshan Dadoo, of the coalition, accused Saltzman of exposing what she described as “the agenda behind South African Zionist philanthropism”.
“Redi Tlhabi stands on the right side of history,” Dadoo said. “She has refused to be silent in the face of genocide, speaking out in support of the Palestinian people. This resonates with the majority of South Africans given our history of fighting against a white supremacist, settler-colonial apartheid regime.”
Dadoo argued that Saltzman’s references to philanthropy transformed the controversy into a larger political issue. “He has made it clear that his family’s funding for ‘good causes’ in South Africa comes with strings attached,” she said.
Jewish anti-Zionist voices have also entered the debate publicly, complicating attempts to frame the backlash simply as anti-Semitism or online outrage. South African Jewish anti-Zionist activist Megan Choritz argued that the significance of the controversy lay not only in Saltzman’s remarks but in the confidence with which they were made publicly.
“What’s important here is not the rubbish he spewed but the fact that he felt comfortable enough to do it,” she wrote online. “And that is our problem, as anti-Zionists, particularly those of us who are Jewish. We need to make Zionists a whole lot less comfortable. Boycott, expose, challenge.”
Social commentator Donovan Williams said the response reflected growing distrust of elite institutions and influential figures perceived to be insulated from accountability.
Williams argued that Tlhabi resonated because many South Africans viewed her as an independent moral and political voice willing to speak openly on Palestine, inequality and global injustice outside formal political structures.
“She basically smacked Saltzman from a very dizzy height,” Williams said.
Williams said the backlash exposed deeper questions about the shape and reach of South Africa’s Palestine solidarity movement.
While support for Palestinians remains emotionally and politically powerful across large sections of society, he argued that organised boycott activism has not yet fully translated into a broad-based consumer movement rooted across communities and mass political structures.
Dis-Chem attempted to contain the fallout in a statement to the Mail & Guardian on Tuesday, saying it “unequivocally rejects and distances itself from the comments and sentiments expressed” during the exchanges between Tlhabi and Saltzman.
The company said Saltzman, although a shareholder, “is not a board member nor an employee of Dis-Chem and has no authority to represent the company in any way”.
Dis-Chem described itself as “a proudly public South African company without any political
affiliations and with an apolitical and non-partisan stance on South African or global political affairs”.
The retailer also defended the integrity of the Dis-Chem Foundation, saying it had “historically and consistently supported and contributed to non-aligned causes and initiatives” and that “any inference of impropriety is false”.
But critics argue that the company’s insistence on neutrality sits uneasily alongside a controversy in which one of its most prominent shareholders publicly invoked family-linked philanthropy while attacking a prominent pro-Palestinian public figure.
For Dis-Chem, the immediate risk is not only reputational. It is whether a dispute that began on X hardens into a consumer boycott in a country where Palestine remains a powerful moral and political issue and where corporate neutrality is increasingly tested by the public conduct of those associated with brand power.
“The difference between them and me,” Tlhabi said, “is that I don’t think contributing to our South Africa must be transactional and conditional on their bending to my will.”