cape Town - The owners of Charly’s Bakery in Cape Town have unreservedly apologised for a batch of biscuits decorated with Oscar Pistorius memes and which was slammed online as insensitive.
“Not sure if these are in good taste, but they sure taste good. Our #OscarMedia Meme cookies,” tweeted the bakery hours after Judge Dunstan Mlambo ruled that parts of the Paralympian’s murder trial could be broadcast.
Pistorius shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on February 14 last year.
The response to the bakery’s move was instant as tweeters hit out with responses ranging from “Are you kidding me” to simply “WTF”.
Just 24 minutes, later the company tweeted: “We seriously got it wrong with the #OscarMedia Meme cookies & we are hanging our collective heads in shame. #WeAlwaysRememberReeva.”
The response to the apology was equally hard-hitting.
“Take your hashtags and insincere apology and come up with something better. Disgusting,” said one.
Another wrote: “You should be ashamed of yourselves & I’d expect more than a lame apology & hashtag to make amends. Perhaps a large donation?”
Jacqui Biess, who co-owns the bakery with her daughters, said no disrespect had been intended.
“These memes were not created by us. They existed on the internet. They were never intended for sale. We created them to stimulate debate. The phrasing was not good. We messed up horribly, we owned that mistake.”
She said the Pistorius story had “horrified” them as they were strong supporters of women’s rights organisations.
“We didn’t intend any disrespect to the Steenkamp family and the level of violence in this country. We are 100 percent sorry. This is all about women’s rights and we feel he is not being held accountable.
“Our intention was really sincere and not to offend in any way.”
Charly’s has gained a strong following in recent years for its cakes and brightly-decorated goodies, even leading to a television show, Charly’s Cake Angels.
Biess said Charly’s was known for responding “to top events by putting those events on our cupcakes”.
She said they had baked cupcakes iced with the words “Stop rape” last year.
Cape Times