Farewell, Pretoria

摘要

When pepsi returned to post-apartheid South Africa, it arrived with pop diva Whitney Houston. In late 1994, Pepsi cosponsored her charity tour. But the bigger news, which PepsiCo gleefully trumpeted, was that Houston was a new ally in its global cola wars with Coca-Cola; she had invested in a new venture to reintroduce Pepsi to South Africa. Pepsi had withdrawn from South Africa in 1985 in protest of its racist policies, to the delight of African-Americans and antiapartheid activists. With Houston in its camp, Pepsi was now casting itself as "the choice of the new generation of South Africans." But it wasn't. Last month Pepsi—tens of millions of dollars in the hole after being crushed by Coke—abandoned the market again.