Retailer forced to withdraw offensive mugs
A PICK n Pay franchise in Observatory has been forced to stop selling mugs emblazoned with the words “The Maid” and “The Gardener” after social media users complained they were offensive and disrespectful.
Twitter user @toni_verna was the first person to tweet a picture of the mugs, saying she had seen the mugs at the branch and that she found them “problematic”. Many social media users said they could not believe that 24 years after apartheid, some employers would maintain a racist stance and buy workers their own utensils rather than sharing with them. On Facebook, Khanda Vilakazi wrote that it was a way to discriminate in terms of social status and on the basis of race.
“During the apartheid years, especially the 1980s, when a black maid or black gardener was hired by a white master, in most families, they were not allowed to use their employers’ utensils. Instead, such employers would go to such stores, as Pick n Pay and others, to buy utensils, especially for
In selling these products, our franchisee was operating outside our rules on our permitted range of products
their employees. So whoever designed the print must have been used to perpetuating such divisions,” he wrote.
Pick n Pay spokesperson Janine Caradonna apologised for the incident.
“We asked the franchisee to remove them immediately, which he did. In selling these products, our franchisee was operating outside our rules on our permitted range of products. We have made it clear to him and all our franchisees that this is not acceptable. We expect all Pick n Pay franchisees to uphold our values of respect for others and inclusiveness,” Caradonna said.
Cape Times’s sister newspaper The Star spoke to the head of media at the Institute of Race Relations, Michael Morris, who said the fact that Pick n Pay instructed a franchisee to remove the offending mugs from its shelves, following the criticism on social media, highlighted the importance of South Africans overcoming false and demeaning assumptions inherited from apartheid.
Morris said products which played into demeaning stereotypes reinforced the idea that South Africans’ interests are divisible by race or class, something which the institute’s research has repeatedly debunked.