South Africans vandalise H&M stores in protest

The fallout from the racist H&M ad that featured a black boy wearing a hoodie with the words ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ continues, with South Africans going beyond Twitter outrage and actually vandalsing H&M stores in Gauteng, the Western Cape and Limpopo.

The protests were championed by South Africa’s radical political movement, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), whose leader, Julius Malema, said the party’s priority is to fight racism and white monopoly capital, at all costs.

‘‘We came here saying we are going to burn the shop but they said no the message is clear, but if this happens again there will be fire,’‘ Moshe Mphahlele of the EFF.

EFF supporters at H&M WATCH the trashing… pic.twitter.com/Kw0xUaG4Cb

— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) January 13, 2018

Protesters were dispersed by the Police who have since issued a statement saying they are going through H&M’s CCTV footage to identify those responsible for the vandalism.

While H&M issued an apology for printing the ad and offending many people across the world, and pulled down the ad from its website in addition to withdrawing the product offering from the market, EFF says ‘this is not enough’.

H&M has since since temporarily closed their stores in South Africa ‘out of concern for the safety of their employees’.

pic.twitter.com/QXwUExiyiG

— H&M (@hm) January 13, 2018