Mail & Guardian – 11 July 2025 – Kashifa Ancer , the campaign manager for Rethink Your Drink, alcohol harm reduction campaign by the Murray Trust.
Underage drinking; a tavern in Diepsloot. Young people are being lured into consumption by manufacturers and marketiers
Mail & Guardian, 11 July 2025
Teenagers to 35-year-olds are being sold a fantasy in a bottle -one of glamour and black excellence.
Un 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.
Accross South Africa, teens to 35-year-old black people are being sold an identity thst is ties to the bottle because they are a profit 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 op dependance. 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 is changed but the motive has not. Liquor continues to extract valy from the most vulnerable, not by force, but but by fantasy of glamour, succeess, and “black excellence” – bottled and branded.
In this country heavy drinkers 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 consumptions causing changes to theur brain developmentm affecting the memory and ability to learn. There is no safe level of alcohol comsumption for adolescents and early binge drinking in the teen years ha serious long-term consequences. Yet about 30% of teen boys and 20% of teen girls binge-drink.
But make no mistake: this crisis has been engineered. It’s 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
Alcohol brands concentrate their adverts in black townships, on the walls of bottle stores that sit just meters from schools. Liquor outlets in close proximity to schools draw young people away from the classroom. A study in Mpumalanga found that people were of the view that underage drinking was a result of advertising, among other factors.
On TV, alcohol commercials flood programmes ppopular with black youth, portraying drinking as essential to being cool, respected or succesfull. A Soul City Instiute study documented how beer ads led township boys believe that drinking would lead to success, as if alcohol were shortcut to status.
These messages are further amplified by social media, where alcoholbrands work with influencers, many of them young, black people, to push poducts at parties and music events. To teenagers, these posts don’t like adverts. They look like an aspirational life. And that’s exactly the point.
Add to that celebrity endorsements and sponsorships, and excessive advertising at sports engagements, and the message is relentless: drinking is what glamarous, accomplished and confident do. Especially if they look like you.
The industry is strategic even in its segmentation. Sweet, pink, “flirty” ciders are marketed to girls, sometimes as young as 14, under the guise of “ladies’ night” freebees. Meanwhile, boys are courted through sports sponsorship and “macho” branding. In both cases, the aim is the same: hook them young, build brand loyalty and normalise alcohol in every corner of youth culture.
Bigger that South Africa
This is not just a South African story. It’s a global playbook. In the United States, black and Hispanic neighbourhoods have historically been flooted with alcohol and cigarette billboards, while white suburbs remained untouched. Cognac brands such as Hennessy targeted African-american consumers so agressively in the 1980s that more than half their sales came from this group alone.
In Kenya, authorities ordered the removal of alcohol billboards near schools after children as young as seven were found to be drinking. In response to youth exposure, the govenment also proposed a 15% tax on all alcohol advertising to discourage brands from blanketing residential areas in marketing.
And yet in South Africa, where the health burden of alcohol is among the highest in the world, from murders and road fatalities to genderbased violence and foetal alcohol spectrum disorders, Big Liquor remains largely unchecked. Why? Because this is the most fertile ground. A young, growing population. High inequality. Weak regulation. And a long history of exploiting people for profit.
We cannot continue to let an industry that profits from trauma define the futures of our youth. We cannot allow “black excellence” to be sold to us through bottles, billboards and branded content.
There is no single fix, but there is a clear path forward.
Yes, the draft Liquor Amendment Bill, languishing in the department of trade, industry and competition since 2016, should be passed. It proposes raising the drinking age from 18 to 21, banning ads that target minors and preventing liquor outlets from trading within 500 metres of schools. But the real work is deeper and longer-term.
We nee to reclaim the public and digital spaces where young people gather. We must elevate music, mentorship, sport and storytelling that doesn’t rely on alcohol to be compelling. We must support youth initiatives tha build real confidence.
Above all, we must challenge the idea that alcohol is part of becoming “a somebody’. It’s time to say: enough. Our culture is not your campaign. Our future is not for sale.
Alcohol advertising sees young black people as a market. We see them as the future.