EFF To Meet With H&M Right After Trashing Pretoria and Johannesburg Shops

Militant South African political party EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) will meet with H&M management to discuss the racist "Coolest Monkey In The Jungle" ad, HuffPost South Africa reports.

This comes after the party vandalized H&M shops in both Pretoria and Johannesburg over the weekend. Protests were also held in Cape Town. H&M has since closed all its shops in the country, issuing a statement on Twitter:

"We are aware of the recent events in several of our South African stores. Out of concern for the safety of our employees and customers, we have temporarily closed all stores in the area. We strongly believe that racism and bias in any shape or form, deliberate or accidental, are simply unacceptable.

We stress that our store staff had nothing to do with our poor judgment of producing the children's hoodie and the image."

South Africans were divided in their reactions to the Pretoria and Johannesburg incidents. Some felt vandalism wasn't the answer, while others felt the EFF acted accordingly.

The party's commander in chief, Julius Malema says they won't apologize for their actions.

"No one should make jokes about the dignity of black people and be left unattended to," he was quoted as saying by eNCA. "We make no apology about what the fighters did today against H&M. All over South Africa, H&M stores are closed because they called our children baboons. So we are teaching them a lesson, if they don't know what a monkey is, then today they know what it is. We are not going to allow anyone to use the colour skin to humiliate us and to exclude us. We are black, we are proud, we are black and we are beautiful."