The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) will hold a follow-up meeting with clothing retailer H&M to discuss its plans to address its advert of a black child in a hoodie with the slogan “coolest monkey in the jungle”.
The advert sparked protests in January this year during which Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) members trashed H&M stores.
The SAHRC said in a statement at the time that in a South African context “words such as ‘baboon’ and ‘monkey’ were not neutral terms” and were used to demean black people’s humanity and position certain races as superior to others. H&M said it was aware its apology was insufficient to address the hurt the advert had caused.
“We made a terrible mistake and we would like South Africans to understand that it will never happen again‚” H&M representative Rob Hekkers said.