Pharrell Williams Hit by BDS Protest in Cape Town
Image by Getty Images
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside of a concert in Cape Town by American pop star Pharrell Williams.
Reports put the number of protesters in front of Monday night’s concert at the GrandWest casino at between 500 and 2,000. Organizers from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had predicted that 16,000 protesters would attend, according to the South African Eye Witness News, or EWN.
Pro-Palestine protesters have been agitating against the American pop star since he concluded a promotional deal with major national retailer Woolworths, over the retailer’s trade ties with Israel. Woolworths denies sourcing produce from the West Bank or other disputed territories. The company is not related to the U.S. chain F. W. Woolworth Company.
Concert organizers had filed a lawsuit against the local BDS branch to limit the number of protesters, but withdrew the legal action days before the concert.
Members of the African National Congress, which in recent weeks has threatened Jewish students who visit Israel and has called for a ban on dual citizenship to prevent its citizens from serving in the Israeli military, also joined the protest, according to EWN.
Williams is scheduled to perform in Johannesburg on Thursday.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
