Eritrean-American actress Tiffany Haddish drew the ire of Zimbabweans after she posted a controversial TikTok video of a visit she took to a supermarket in the Southern African nation. But she subsequently addressed the criticism by claiming that she had rather intended to address the notion of Africa being incessantly engulfed in war, BBC reported.
Haddish is said to have recorded the viral video while she was walking along the aisles of a supermarket in the capital Harare. But Zimbabweans on social media took issue with what she said in the video.
“Look at this grocery store. It’s humungous, in Africa,” Haddish, 44, is heard saying in the video as she tours the establishment. Her behavior in the video was, however, perceived to be offensive by some Zimbabweans.
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“How ignorant could she be? Did she think that Africans shop from rocks? She needs to travel more and unclog her sadly colonized view of the world. Yikes,” a user posted on X. “They think we’re chasing lions and zebras,” another user said.
The Girls Trip star later took to X to respond to the backlash, stating that she did not intend to be offensive. She said her aim was rather to rubbish the negative perceptions about the way of life in Africa.
“I am an American a Black one at that and Told for years that people are starving in Africa, showed pictures of babies with flies on them,” she wrote.
“Told crazy stories of how they kill each other and there is war everyday there. I asked my black friends to go with me and they were scared. We got here and I have been eyes full of tears finding out the truth,” she added. “The media be lying. I thought I would share cause I know people in the USA that believe Africans don’t have anything.”
Other social media users, however, stated that they understood the message Haddish was trying to send in the video. “Thanks [Tiffany Haddish] there are some Zimbabweans like us who understand very much where you are coming from with this,” a user wrote, per Independent.
“Especially Zimbabwe is portrayed as a country that is in the 50s and 60s. Just like they do on Russia and North Korea. Like any other country, we have our problems but we are a country that has fought bullying and attempts to turn us into a vassal state.”
