The South African Woolworths business consists of luxury goods, being fashion, home and beauty stores, many of which incorporate a premium food retail offering.

Founded by Max Sonnenberg, Woolworths first opened its doors on 30 October 1931 in Plein Street, Cape Town, in the dining room of the recently closed-down Royal Hotel.

Lewis was a director of Australasian Chain Stores, ACS, a London shipping and finance house formed to service a rapidly expanding Australian business founded by W.T.

Lewis proposed to Sonnenberg that ACS could add to 'Father' Christmas's order sheet and send a scaled-down quantity of every succeeding item in Australia to South Africa.

Two years later, a South African court ruled that sufficient goodwill had been established to refuse an injunction brought against the use of the name by the American retailer.

However, Woolworths was unable to take the Country Road private due to Solomon Lew refusing to sell his 11.67 % stake in the company.

[8] In 2016, the company launched its GBJ goals to 2020, including embedding the programme into the Group's Australian businesses, which now account for over forty per cent of turnover.

[9][10] The WHL Group GBJ 2020 commitments include: contributing over R3.5 billion across the Group to communities over the next 5 years; saving 500 billion litres of water over 5 years; ensuring the company halves its energy impact by 2020 and achieves 100% clean energy by 2030; driving responsible sourcing of all key commodities by 2020; and affirming that every private-label product sold has at least one sustainability attribute by 2020.

In July 2015, Woolworths announced the maturity of its Black Economic Empowerment Employee Share Ownership Scheme (BEEESOS).

Woolworths was the first retailer to launch an empowerment scheme with BEEESOS shares allocated to previously disadvantaged employees based on both length of service and seniority.

The business's strong performance over the past eight years has created R2.4 billion for the participants, who have also enjoyed dividends of R332 million during the scheme's life.

[23] The accusations followed after claims that the retailer's advertising on their career site said its jobs are only open to "African, Coloured and Indian" candidates.

[26] In October 2013, rumours of plagiarism surfaced when Euodia Roets, a South African artist, accused Woolworths of using her designs that were kept as samples after contract negotiations failed.

When pressed on the matter, the official Woolworths South Africa Twitter account opined that "We've checked with our lawyer; Wikipedia does not own the content.

The baby carrier scandal broke out after Shannon McLaughlin of Ubuntu Baba wrote a blog post about it that then became a popular issue on social media.