H&M stores in South Africa trashed by protesters

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Protesters angered by a “racist” H&M advertisement ransacked several of the Swedish fashion group’s South African stores at the weekend.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) protesters targeted six H&M stores in Gauteng, where the economic hub Johannesburg is, tearing down displays and throwing clothes around, police said.

In one instance, officers fired rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, the police added.

H&M last week issued an apology for the widely criticised ad, which featured a black child modelling a sweatshirt with the slogan “coolest monkey in the jungle”, and said it had removed it from all its marketing.

But Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, spokesman for the ultra-left EFF, said that was too little, too late.
“The time of apologies for racism are over; there must be consequences to anti-black racism, period!” Ndlozi wrote on Twitter, posting pictures of a vandalised H&M store and video footage of chanting EFF supporters.

H&M South Africa did not respond to a request for comment, but its local website carried an apology for the advertisement.
“Our position is simple, we have got this wrong and we are deeply sorry,” the apology read.

Police were monitoring the protests, but had made no arrests so far.

Protests over perceived corporate wrongdoing have a history of turning violent in South Africa, where some drivers for ride-hailing service Uber had vehicles torched over the past year by regular taxi operators.