I was afraid that I might never see another Nando's chicken wrap. All because the ANC Young Geriatrics' League had a sense-of-humour failure over that cheeky TV advert featuring a puppet named Julius.
It was, they said, "disgusting". No, not the food, but the ad. Strange, I thought Julius "Little Julie" Malema was a puppet, manipulated by his elders (but not betters) to say the things that they would rather not have to their discredit.
Threatened the youff louts: "If Nando's does not withdraw the adverts, the ANCYL will mobilise the people of South Africa to take militant action against Nando's and anything associated with Nando's." So Nando's raised a craven white wing in surrender, dipped its collective beaks, and cried: A indigestion continua! (Then fluttered back to drop another naughty surprise on Little Julie's head.)
Rock on Nando's
South Africa's proud tradition of public protest came perilously close this last week to taking a detour into the ridiculous. The same movement that once marched for civil rights and justice in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre was poised to be deployed to the streets in order to picket a fried chicken franchise, thanks to the country's most obnoxious politician.
In the court of new president Jacob Zuma, the ANC youth league leader Julius Malema, below, is very definitely the jester. But he's not a fool who can take a joke.
The Nando's fast food chain decided to use Malema's increasingly outrageous public persona for an opportunistic laugh. The ad features a puppet figure named "Julius" telling a television presenter about the amazing change that is coming to the country. It turns out that the change that the Malema puppet is talking about is change from a 50 rand note on an order of fried chicken.
A modest joke but it was enough to get an incensed Malema demanding the ad be pulled or he would use the might of Africa's grandest liberation movement to protest outside Nando's restaurants in a "militant action". It was "racist", screamed the injured party. An accusation he has made against practically everyone running against the ANC.
Sadly the Portuguese-based restaurant chain chickened out and pulled the spot, but only after airing a variant in which the features and voice of the puppet were disguised in the style of a crime reconstruction while a message flashed up that this was being done to "protect innocent parties"
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