1956 Women’s March families reject Glenlivet’s apology, demand direct meeting with Pernod Ricard

”In a joint statement issued on Wednesday, the families of Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, Sophia Williams-De Bruyn and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (alongside the Lilian Ngoyi Foundation and the Sophie and Henry De Bruyn Legacy Foundation) said they were responding “with profound sadness and disappointment” to a campaign that used “the history, images and sacred legacy of the women of the 1956 Women’s March, and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s voice to market and sell whisky.

The families of the women whose images and legacy were used in The Glenlivet’s now-deleted Women’s Month campaign have spoken out for the first time, rejecting the brand’s apology as inadequate and calling the ad “unauthorised corporate appropriation of a national heritage.

The statement was equally pointed about the use of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s voice in the ad, which it called “the campaign’s calculated effort to link the youth of the marchers to aged commercial products,” saying it was “profoundly disrespectful” to repurpose her voice “as an atmospheric device to sell alcohol.