Glenlivet ad sparks South Africa liberation backlash

A Glenlivet whisky advertisement invoking South Africa's 1956 anti-apartheid women's march has drawn backlash from families of women linked to the historic protest, who accused the brand of turning liberation history into a marketing prop.

The campaign, released last month, featured an actress looking at portraits of five South African liberation figures, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. It linked Sophia Williams-De Bruyn, who was 18 at the time of the march, to the whisky's 18-year maturation.

The families said in a joint statement that their relatives' courage, suffering and sacrifice had been “commercially exploited”. They also criticised the use of alcohol to market the legacy, saying it was insensitive given alcohol's painful history in Black South African communities under colonialism and apartheid.

Williams-De Bruyn, now 88, said she had not authorised the use of her image or legacy.

Glenlivet, owned by French wine and spirits group Pernod Ricard, deleted the advertisement from its social media, apologised and said it was investigating how the post was conceptualised. The families said removal of the ad did not erase the damage and called on Pernod Ricard's global leadership to engage with them directly.

On August 9, 1956, about 20,000 women marched to the seat of government in Pretoria to protest pass laws that barred Black people from white areas and delivered a petition bearing thousands of signatures. The march became one of the largest protests up to that time against apartheid, which ended with South Africa's first all-race election in 1994.