Anele Mdoda has led the way on boycotting Virgin Active after the gym franchise softened its stance on a man who was caught masturbating in their Stellenbosch branch.
It was an incident which rocked the nation just last month (May 2019). A teenager was caught on video fondling his private parts in a gym while a woman was exercising next to him. It appears as if the unnamed man was aroused by the woman's movements (not an excuse at all!) and he somehow saw it fit to play with himself off there and then.
As soon as the video went viral, the nation reacted with outrage. We wanted to see the gym and authorities take action against the gentleman for what was clearly inappropriate conduct for a public space. And for a brief period they did.
Virgin Active SA laid sexual assault charges against the young adult, and it looked as if he would be facing up to them in court this month until inexplicably, they dropped the case. Here's the reason they cited for doing so:
‘’We took immediate action when we were presented with the video, identifying and banning the member for life.
What he did was wrong, however, we are of the opinion that psychological help may be more appropriate than criminal sanction. We have an undertaking from his lawyer and family that he is receiving counselling and will continue with this course of therapy.”
Um. Okay.
Needless to say, many South Africans were not impressed by their action (or lack thereof) including Anele Mdoda who called the gym company out last week for pulling out (excuse the pun) of the case.
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And when they STILL failed to take action, Anele decided to take action against them when she said on Twitter that she would be cancelling her membership:
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Unfortunately, instead of standing strongly by her side, people began to body-shame the Queen of Morning Radio, using her plus-sized status to make jokes about her quitting the gym. She took them in her stride, pointing out the bigger issue at hand:
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In the end, she had the last laugh, reminding us that even if we made fun of her weight, she was still drop-dead gorgeous.
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Do you think Anele made the right decision by cancelling her membership and boycotting Virgin Active?
