Northern Cape Community Alcohol Advocacy Project

The initiative used community mapping to encourage awareness and dialogue to support a ban on alcohol advertising and strengthen community-led advocacy and action. In order to support high-level policy changes being advocated by the Phuza Wize campaign, it was deemed necessary not only to understand how communities view alcohol abuse and advertising, but also to mobilise communities to action against the easy availability and marketing of alcohol.

The intervention consisted of the following:

• 3 community dialogues with community members between the ages of 18 and 30 on the impact of alcohol availability and alcohol advertising in their communities. These dialogues included an "imagining the future" exercise in which people discussed and then drew a picture of their idea of the best possible community.
• a community mapping process. Participants in the community mapping process were identified by Soul City prior to the start of the Community Dialogues. Once the team was assembled, participants were given three days' training in community mapping. This training was experiential and participatory, focusing on hands-on knowledge and skills. The participants were also invited to attend the dialogues as a way of stimulating and deepening their interest and understanding of these issues.
• a 6-week programme. Participants then worked together one day a week for each of the six weeks in which the programme was running to conduct community mapping of the alcohol and violence hotspots in the area. This was recorded on a map and housed in the Local Drug Action Committee office. The maps were then analysed and discussed. As one participant commented on what was produced: "The map says so much. No one really saw the extent of shebeens and the impact before."
• an interviewing process. Interviews were conducted with youth to determine their perspectives on alcohol advertising and the impact of alcohol consumption on behaviour.

The project concluded with a community workshop that brought together various organisations, government departments, community members, and other interested parties. The workshop's intent was to: celebrate what had been accomplished; present the materials developed from the mapping process; provide a forum for interested community members; and help generate and share ideas for local action going forward.

According Soul City, the stories collected from Galeshewe show that risky sex is common after alcohol consumption. Furthermore, women are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault when they are in public drinking places or travelling home from drinking places. Women are also vulnerable to sexual assault when they are in the vicinity of the drinking place, even if they have not been there. Given the high prevalence of HIV in the Northern Cape, these stories of risky sexual behaviour and sexual assaults show that alcohol consumption by both men and women places women at increased risk of contracting HIV.

HIV/AIDS, Alcohol Abuse

According to The Soul City Institute, the Northern Cape is a valuable region for piloting intervention programmes because it has the highest unemployment rate (30%) and the lowest overall condom use (23%) in South Africa - not to mention high alcohol use, high inter-generational sex rates, and high teenage pregnancy rates. Females cited alcohol as the most common reason for multiple partners, while for men "sexual urges" and "fun/variety" were identified as key reasons. Binge drinking (5 or more drinks per sitting) almost weekly was reported by 21% of men in the province. People cited very high levels of alcohol use: 50% of young males and 40% of young females had used alcohol in the previous month.