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- The Advertising Regulatory Board said a billboard, with the words 'Fear Fokol', must be taken down or appropriately amended.
- The advert is for armoured cars. The advertiser said the term is not offensive in a South African context.
- The ad regulator said it was not appropriate for children to be exposed to the term.
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The Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) said a billboard advertising an armoured vehicle manufacturing company, depicting the words "Fear Fokol", must be taken down or amended as it violated the advertising code.
The billboard was placed on the busy N3 Highway, at the Van Buuren off-ramp in Johannesburg, where the complainants said children were likely to view it.
The complainants said the word "fokol" was considered crude and offensive - and it was not appropriate for the words to appear on a billboard.
Armoured Mobility builds, sells and rents out armoured vehicles in South Africa.
The advertiser, iCar Technologies, said the advertisement was not meant to offend anyone, but the words were used as an innovative and attention-grabbing approach to convey a powerful message.
iCar Technologies argued that the term "fokol" was not a swear word and that it was not a demeaning word in the South African context.
The company said the term had been used by politicians and media outlets on many occasions.
In addition to this, the advertiser alleged that "fokol" had become a colloquial way of saying "nothing".
The ARB did not see things this way.
It said that the term "fokol" must reasonably be considered as the Afrikaans equivalent of the the term "f**k-all".
"To put it bluntly, the communication is, and can only be, "fear f**k-all', albeit with the Afrikaans spelling," said the ARB in its ruling.
In deciding whether this term should be allowed on a billboard, the ARB said the important question was whether the term was likely to be potentially harmful to children or encourage them to believe that using the term was acceptable. This was because there was a reasonable expectation that children would be exposed to the billboard, given its location.
While some families might be of the view that the term was acceptable for children to see and use, the ARB said it was not likely to be a universal view.
It said the message on the billboard communicated to children that the word "fokol" could be used as a synonym for "nothing" in ordinary conversations.
Because of this, the ARB said the advertisement created an inaccurate impression that using the term "fokol" was acceptable when, in most communities, it was not acceptable.
