Clicks to offer scholarships to five orphaned black children for the “racist” ad

Health and beauty giant, Clicks will offer five scholarships to black females who were orphaned by HIV/ Aids, donate sanitary towels and hand sanitisers to communities of the EFF's choosing.

Unilever, which supplies TRESemmé products in South Africa and created the advert, will also make sanitary towels donations and sanitiers.

This was the agreement that the EFF reached with Clicks and Unilever. The party met with the two companies at its Johannesburg headquarters on Thursday and agreed to call off its protests at Clicks stores.

The EFF embarked on a nationwide protest over an advert posted on the website of Clicks which described black women's hair as “frizzy and dull” and “dry and damaged”, while a white woman's hair was described as “fine and flat” and “normal”.

In a joint statement, issued after a meeting between the EFF and Clicks, they said they had reached an agreement on:

• Clicks expresses its remorse to all South Africans, black women in particular, for the racist TRESemmé SA advert published on its website;
• Clicks withdraw all TRESemmé SA products from all its stores and replace them with locally produced products;
• Clicks will donate a minimum of 50,000 sanitary towels, 50,000 sanitisers and masks to rural and informal settlements identified by the EFF;
• Clicks will award a scholarship to five students to pursue pharmaceutical qualifications in the 2021 academic year. All five must be black, rural, African female and orphaned by HIV/Aids; and
• The EFF will work with law enforcement to ensure that agent provocateurs involved in the vandalism of Clicks stores are brought to book.

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“We have agreed to hold further discussions on transformation with Clicks relating to procurement, empowerment, employment equity, localisation and diversification of supplier base.

“The EFF calls off all protest action at all Clicks stores with immediate effect.”

Earlier, the EFF and Unilever had announced that TRESemmé products, which were removed from shelves by large retailers such as Shoprite Checkers, Pick n Pay and Clicks, that the products can be put back on shelves in 10 days' time.

The EFF and Unilever agreed the company would, just like Clicks apologise for the advert. Unilever would also remove its products from all retail stores for 10 days “as a demonstration of its remorse for the offensive and racist image”.

It will also donate 10,000 sanitary towels and sanitisers to informal settlements of EFF's choosing.

Among the list of demands from the EFF to Unilever was that it supply the names of their employees who were behind the advert.

But Unilever told the EFF it could not give in to this demand.

“We could not find each other on the publishing of the names of the people responsible for the racist image,” the joint statement from the two parties said.

“Moreover, the director involved in the campaign has since left the company and the country,” the statement read.

The company would take action against the remaining employees.  

The EFF protests disrupted operations at several Clicks stores around the country result in a number of stores being damaged.

Clicks had to obtain a court interdict to bar EFF protesters from intimidating its staff and customers and also from damaging its property. It suspended operations at all its outlets on Wednesday. — DispatchLIVE