They are young and gorgeous, dressed scantily, if at all, and with sex on the brain. When not unbuckling belts, rolling in bed, entwining legs and sliding hands towards nether regions, they are talking about sex.
And they are everywhere. On billboards and television, in newspapers and magazines, suffusing South Africa with what resembles a racy advertising campaign for Coca-Cola or Levis.
In fact this is an HIV/Aids prevention campaign, one of the most audacious and controversial to be attempted in Africa, and the use of branding techniques is intentional. If it works, safe-sex will become as hip and ubiquitous as Coke.
South Africa has about five-million people with HIV, more than any other country, and driving the pandemic is the sexual behaviour of teenagers. If current infection rates continue, half of all South Africans below the age of 15 could become infected over the next 10 years.
Such statistics are the reason why official reports are given titles like Impending Catastrophe. With 40% of the population below the age of 20, a holocaust will unfold over the next few years unless there is a dramatic change.
But changing sexual behaviour is precisely what two decades of HIV/Aids initiatives have largely failed to do. Across the continent, around 90% of people are aware of how one gets HIV. Yet still they have unprotected sex. Different strategies –cajoling, threatening, frightening, begging — have been tried, with little success.
South Africa is now trying something new, a national prevention programme called loveLife. Aimed at 12- to 17-year-olds, it is the country’s main barrier against the wave of new HIV infections. The UN and foreign governments are among those watching to see if it works.
Media blitz
Funded mainly by foundations set up by the American philanthropists Henry Kaiser and Bill Gates, loveLife ties a media blitz promoting sexual responsibility to a network of telephone-lines, clinics and youth centres.
”The idea is to make loveLife a brand,” said a representative, Angela Stewart-Buchanan. ”In South Africa you have incredible brand loyalty and recognition. We want to compete with Levis, Diesel, Coca-Cola. LoveLife positions itself as a healthy lifestyle which is cool and hip. Like it or not, young people here have bought into American youth culture, and to reach them we need to be there.”
So slogans encouraging teenagers and their parents to discuss sex are adorned with the type of images you might see on a rap album. Complaints cascade into the country’s advertising standards authority.
It is not just prudes who object. Several Aids specialists call the campaign misguided, saying it will be less effective than Uganda’s acclaimed strategy of shifting community norms of sexual behaviour.
But loveLife has also been endorsed by the likes of Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and UN experts on Aids.
Does it work? After three years it is still too soon to know, but loveLife offers statistics — challenged by critics — which look promising: almost two-thirds of young South Africans recognise the brand, and of those, two-thirds say they have delayed or abstained from sex as a result.
Among those who are sexually active and know the brand, 78% say loveLife caused them to use a condom, and 69% reduced their number of sexual partners.
The infection rate for young people has fallen over three years, said the campaign’s head, David Harrison. ”We certainly can’t attribute all that to loveLife — it would be too soon — but something seems to be happening. We’re reaching a plateau.”
Some change is attributed to the fact that many in this generation of teenagers have watched their parents die of Aids. But if even some of the change is the result of safe sex campaigns, it would be a remarkable achievement.
Sugar daddies
For girls in Sebokeng, a township south of Johannesburg, sex is often the result of coercion, or is seen as part of a transaction, said Thami Skhonyela (20) a loveLife coordinator. Boyfriends and ”sugar daddies” supply mobile phones, cars and clothes.
”If you tell the boys to stick with one girl, they say they can’t always eat chicken, they want to try different meat,” said Skhonyela.
A group of pupils from two schools, Thankwazi and Esokwazi, gave mixed signals. One 17-year-old girl who saw her cousin die of Aids said loveLife’s mantra — delay sex, reduce the number of partners, protect from disease — had hit home, and she would stay a virgin until marriage.
The silence which followed this confession ended in giggles and guffaws, but the pupil held her ground; four others piped up in support.
Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said yesterday that loveLife was having an effect, though he was aware of criticism, such as its billboards being too sophisticated or subtle.
”There is nothing more difficult in this world that changing sexual behaviour, especially male sexual behaviour, and I was very impressed by what I saw on the ground when I visited their programmes. In schools and youth centres I heard open and frank discussions of sexuality.”
Lewis said some cities in eastern and southern Africa were reporting declines in the rate of new infections among young people, something probably attributable to prevention campaigns as well as the impact of witnessing the ”horror and carnage” of Aids. – Guardian Unlimited Â