In the townships, billboards glamourise alcohol as a marker of success, style and independence, and it\u2019s no accident who the adverts are speaking to \u2014 young, black and aspirational people.<\/p>\n
Across South Africa, teens to 35-year-old black people are being sold an identity that is tied to the bottle because they are a profitable market.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a tactic with deep roots. During apartheid, the infamous \u201cdop system\u201d saw black and coloured farmworkers in the Cape winelands paid in alcohol, fuelling generational cycles of dependence. Apartheid leaders used \u201cliquor freedom\u201d to dampen political opposition and generate revenues for the bantustans \u2014 and the alcohol industry cashed in on the ride.<\/p>\n
Today, the method has changed but the motive has not. Big Liquor continues to extract value from the most vulnerable, not by force, but by fantasy. The fantasy of glamour, success, and \u201cblack excellence\u201d \u2014 bottled and branded.<\/p>\n
In this country, heavy drinking is linked to more than 62 000 deaths each year<\/a>. It fuels violence, drains public resources and shortens life expectancy. Children and teenagers are affected, with early consumption causing changes to their brain development, affecting their memory and ability to learn. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption for adolescents and early binge-drinking in the teen years has serious long-term health consequences. Yet about 30% of teen boys and 20% of teen girls<\/a> binge-drink.<\/p>\n But make no mistake: this crisis has been engineered. It is not simply the outcome of personal choices, it is the product of a calculated marketing system that targets youth where they live, learn and scroll.<\/p>\n Alcohol brands concentrate their adverts in black townships, on the walls of bottle stores that sit just metres from schools. Liquor outlets in close proximity to schools draw young people away<\/a> from the classroom. A study in Mpumalanga found that people were of the view that underage drinking was a result of advertising<\/a>, among other factors.<\/p>\n On TV, alcohol commercials flood programmes popular with black youth, portraying drinking as essential to being cool, respected or successful. A SSoul City Institute study<\/a> documented how beer ads led township boys to believe that drinking would lead to success, as if alcohol were a shortcut to status.<\/p>\n These messages are further amplified by social media, where alcohol brands work with influencers, many of them young, black people, to push products at parties and music events. To teenagers, these posts don\u2019t look like adverts. They look like an aspirational life. And that\u2019s exactly the point.<\/p>\n Add to that celebrity endorsements and sponsorships, and excessive advertising at sports engagements, and the message is relentless: drinking is what the glamorous, accomplished and confident do. Especially if they look like you.<\/p>\n The industry is strategic even in its segmentation.Sweet, pink, \u201cflirty\u201d ciders are marketed to girls<\/a>, sometimes as young as 14<\/a>, under the guise of \u201cladies\u2019 night\u201d freebies. Meanwhile, boys are courted through sports sponsorships and \u201cmacho\u201d branding. In both cases, the aim is the same: hook them young, build brand loyalty and normalise alcohol in every corner of youth culture.<\/p>\n This is not just a South African story. It\u2019s a global playbook.<\/p>\n In the United States, black and Hispanic neighbourhoods have historically been flooded with alcohol and cigarette billboards, while white suburbs remained untouched. Cognac brands such as Hennessy targeted African-American consumers so aggressively in the 1980s that more than half their sales <\/a>came from this group alone.<\/p>\n In Kenya, authorities ordered the removal of alcohol billboards<\/a> near schools after children as young as seven were found to be drinking. In response to youth exposure, the government also proposed a 15% tax on all alcohol advertising to discourage brands from blanketing residential areas in marketing.<\/p>\nTactics of targeting<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Bigger than South Africa<\/strong><\/h2>\n