A militant youth group loyal to Zimbabwe's president is calling for a boycott of Nando's, whose latest advertisement depicts the ageing, authoritarian president as "the last dictator standing", state radio has reported.
The radio quoted the head of the group calling for Nando's to withdraw the President Robert Mugabe ad or face punitive action.
Jimu Kunaka, head of a group known as Chipangano, said Nando's risked action including a boycott. Chipangano is a "brotherhood" of Mugabe loyalists.
The commercial, which went viral on YouTube, shows Mugabe dining alone at Christmas, his empty table set for departed dictators, including Muammar Gaddafi.
To the soundtrack of Mary Hopkin's hit song Those Were the Days, My Friend, the commercial shows an actor playing Mugabe reminiscing about his times with former dictators. It portrays him and Gaddafi engaging in a water-pistol fight, with Gaddafi wielding a golden AK-47 water pistol.
The head of Nando's Zimbabwe franchise said it was not told of the South African television and press campaign, and is independent of the South African operation.
Musekiwa Kumbula, corporate affairs director at Innscor Africa, holders of the Nando's franchise in Zimbabwe, said Nando's "strongly feels the advertisement is insensitive and in poor taste".
It is an offence under Zimbabwe law to insult Mugabe or undermine the authority of his office.
Business tycoon Ray Kaukonde, a major shareholder in Innscor and a former provincial governor in Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, said it was "in total disregard of African values", state radio reported yesterday.
Harare officials for DStv said the ad cannot be filtered out of programmes received by Zimbabwean subscribers.
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