What are the intercultural concerns
Some of South Africa's biggest retailers will no longer sell TRESemmé hair products, following
protests over an advert that denigrated black hair. Pictures of African hair were labelled "frizzy
and dull", "dry and damaged" in an online advert for TRESemmé products featured by
pharmacy chain Clicks.
White hair, meanwhile, was labelled "normal" and "fine and flat". Shoprite, Woolworths and
Pick N Pay all say they have removed TRESemmé products from their shelves, as has Clicks.
Earlier this week, a senior executive at Clicks resigned and a number of employees were
suspended. The BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says critics found the advert particularly
insensitive because of the historic issues around African hair in South Africa. Under whiteminority rule, the state used the so-called "pencil test" to decide who was black or mixed-race -
depending on how easily the pencil moved through the hair. Many Clicks stores were forced to
close on Monday following protests led by opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF),
who called the hair advert "racist" and "dehumanising".
One shop sustained minor damage after being firebombed, police said. Following a meeting
between the EFF, Clicks and TRESemmé's parent company Unilever on Thursday, the party said
Unilever would remove all TRESemmé products from South African stores for a period of 10
days and donate at least 10,000 sanitary pads to informal settlements in the country. Earlier
this week the chief executive of Clicks, Vikesh Ramsunder, also apologised, adding that an audit
of all promotional material would be "urgently implemented" as well as diversity and inclusivity
training. "The implications of this are that black identity exists as inferior to the identity of
white people. It is an assertion that white standards of beauty are to be aspired to and features
of black represent damage, decay and abnormality," the EFF said in a statement earlier this
week.
What are the intercultural concerns
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