Shoe doesn’t fit if you feel the pinch

There is so much that is wrong about the alleged cynical manipulation of poor school children who, effectively, surrendered their legal rights to their own images in exchange for a pair of shoes.

Standard Bank has confirmed it gave 146 pairs of shoes to primary school pupils in a rural area of Mpumalanga.

Investigating

It is investigating, it says, whether the parents of those pupils in school were asked to sign a legal agreement on their behalf – because they were all minors – in exchange for the “gift”.

Copies of the alleged agreement, posted on social media, show that the children would have lost rights to those images of themselves taken in connection with the handover … across any media platform and in any marketing campaign, for ever.

South African Guild of Actors chair and renowned actor Jack Devnarain – who has been a staunch campaigner on copyright issues – said the bank was “dangling a carrot in front of them and their parents who are very hard-pressed financially in an economic climate where people are struggling to find work, where people don’t have money to buy school shoes”.

 If that is the case, then it is reprehensible and we eagerly await the outcome of the bank’s own probe.

Social investment

However, the incident also highlights the often neocolonial way in which companies cynically use the concept of “corporate social investment” – supposedly returning money to the community which supports them – as a way of burnishing their image and getting tax breaks … rather than out of any genuine desire to make a difference.

Most companies ignore the simple reality that the best way to be a responsible corporate citizen and do the best you can for your consumers is by not overcharging them in the first place. But that’s often not how capitalism works where everyone – and everything – can be bought.

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