Alcohol adverts see young black people only as a market

Teenagers to 35-year-olds are being sold a fantasy in a bottle - one of glamour and black excellence

- Kashifa Ancer

In the townships, billboards glamourise alcohol as a marker of success, style and independence, and it's no accident who the adverts are speaking to — young, black and aspirational people.

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.

It's a tactic with deep roots. During apartheid, the infamous “dop system” saw black and coloured farmworkers in the Cape winelands paid in alcohol, fuelling generational cycles of dependence. Apartheid leaders used “liquor freedom” to dampen political opposition and generate revenues for the bantustans — and the alcohol industry cashed in on the ride.

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 “black excellence” bottled and branded.

In this country, heavy drinking is linked to more than 62 000 deaths each year. 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 binge-drink.

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.

Tactics of targeting