‘Right-wing’ boycott is costing Spur restaurants millions: report
Spur restaurant owners are reportedly losing tens of millions of rands to a right-wing boycott campaign, after a viral video showing a white man confronting a black woman at a Spur steakhouse in Johannesburg went viral on social media, according to a report by The Daily Maverick.
On Facebook, a “Boycott/Boikot Spur” page was established on the same day that footage of the incident went viral.
The key motivation behind the page appears to be anger at how Spur and the media depicted the incident and is calling for Spur to ban both the black and white families depicted in the video.
The Daily Maverick notes it is not clear who exactly was behind the Facebook page, but credit for the idea of a Spur boycott has been claimed by the Front Nasionaal – the right-wing political party formed before the 2014 elections which failed to win a single parliamentary seat.
According to the report, the boycott has not “brought Spur to its knees” financially, but instead those hardest hit by the boycott appear to be franchise owners in predominantly white, Afrikaans areas.
On Human Rights Day this year (21 March 2017), Lebohang Mabuya posted a video of an altercation she was involved inside a Spur restaurant at The Glen. The video subsequently went viral as South Africans debated who was at fault for the incident and the racial implications of the fight.
In April 2017, Spur subsequently issued an apology for the incident and accepted responsibility for how poorly it handled the incident.
“Our response fell short of our own high standards. We should have done better. We expect it from ourselves to do better and we believe that the South African public deserve better, said Spur CEO Pierre van Tonder.
“It was an intensive period of self-reflection for everyone at Spur and with the wisdom of hindsight, we have decided to embark on a course of action to address the shortcomings in our response.”
“We have already embarked on a national programme to increase the child-minder to child ratio in our Play Canyons during busy periods. We have also launched a formal re-education drive that will refresh and enhance the procedures and skills of our minders,” said van Tonder.
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