Last night the Nelson Mandela bridge in Jozi hosted the second annual CEO SleepOut, with in excess of R30 million raised during the course of the evening.
That doesn’t mean the event hasn’t come under serious fire, the industry leaders who ‘roughed it’ for a good cause the target of criticism across social media.
The number one accusation is that of ‘poverty porn’, and we’ll start with the Daily Vox outlining a little more on that front:
[The CEO’s] had fires, free WiFi, a pop-up shop, catered food, branded tin mugs, presumably as souvenirs of their experience, and so on and so forth. There was even a “reflection” bench. (No, I don’t know either.) A public road over a bridge will be closed for several days, the bridge was specially cleaned, and there were lights and cameras and action.
Over on social media, there’s a barrage of negativity towards the event, by people like me, who find the event crass, insensitive, and frankly narcissistic. There’s a blithe, arrogant kind of mockery in glamourising poverty with designer shacks and gourmet soup so you can pat yourself on the back in the boardroom or at golf.
So, about those branded mugs:
The Daily Vox do go on to applaud the initiative for the vast sum of money raised, but argue that surely we can come up with a better method than this (some options HERE).
Some more pics courtesy of MyBroadband:
Anyway let’s head to Twitter and gauge the vibe there with the help of IOL:
And, as Twitter loves to do, the hashtag morphed into a piss-take:
Rumour has it that next year the event will be hosted on Robben Island – how about a bidding war for the honour of spending the night in Madiba’s old cell?
The money raised is a sign of a job well done, but the deeply ironic nature of such an event isn’t going to sit well with many.
Unfortunately our CEO Seth couldn’t make it last night, he was too busy ferrying baby ducklings across the road during peak traffic in Camps Bay.
He didn’t take any pictures and share it on social media though, does it still count?
[sources:dailyvox&iol&mybroadband]
