South African Breweries (SAB) recently purchased space in Daily Maverick to publish sponsored content, beginning with a piece appropriately titled “130 Years, SAB’s Legacy Is South Africa’s Story”.
It’s true: South Africa’s story is closely interwoven with SAB’s legacy as a South African alcohol producer and marketer, but it begs the question: Which parts of their legacy and our story are they proudest of? Let us consider a few.
We have the world’s highest rate of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), with an average of 11 out of every 100 children born with this condition, and in some communities this rate goes up to 28% of children. Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder describes physical, behavioural and learning conditions that can occur in persons who were exposed to alcohol while in the womb.
Depending on the severity, they are at risk of experiencing every challenge that makes it harder to grow up and be a useful, contributing member of our society. They are typically a burden to their mothers, families, teachers and peers. They risk dropping out of school, engaging in antisocial and criminal behaviour and of experiencing lifelong problems with substance abuse and addiction.
Alcohol stunts and damages growing brains. There is no safe amount of alcohol to consume during pregnancy.
Unplanned pregnancy
Pregnant girls and women typically admit to drinking in the first three months of unexpected pregnancy, before they know that they are pregnant. In many instances, foetal alcohol effects are associated with teenage and unplanned pregnancy. Children who become pregnant are often engaged in illegal, underage drinking. Alcohol causes a loss of inhibitions. It is harder to make good decisions when drinking or drunk, and this increases vulnerability to opportunistic sexual advances or sexual violence. Alcohol warnings on packaging don’t extend to girls and women who may be sexually active and not on contraception.
Is this the legacy that SAB is proud to share with South Africa? They claim in the same sponsored content that they do good work to minimise some of these problems. Let us be clear, this is no more than a version of the arsonist firefighter, who sets the fire and then wants to be hailed a hero for putting it out. As is the case with fires, Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is much easier to ignite than to douse.
Recent studies estimate that alcohol contributes to 80% of deaths of young men in South Africa. We often refer to interpersonal and gender-based violence in South Africa as a “hidden pandemic”. Alcohol is associated with almost all such incidents. The social and economic cost to the criminal justice system, the health system and other government programmes is overwhelming, with estimates of actual costs being between 8 and 10% of GDP.
Is it this bit that SAB is proudest of?
Or is it the link between alcohol, road crashes and deaths, including those of drunk pedestrians? Or the relationship between alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases? Or is that 70% of in-school teenagers self-report that they have participated in binge drinking.
Or that their brilliant innovations teach children to normalise a taste for alcohol, knowing that the younger they start, the more likely they are to binge drink as teenagers and to go on to have troubled relationships with alcohol, some for the rest of their lives? Or that 13% of all deaths in South Africa have a direct link to alcohol consumption?
SAB has over time used our sporting heroes (the “brand behind our boys” — and now our girls and women too), our national flag, and even the “rain down in Africa”, to advertise and associate itself with the aspirations of our young people, notably now girls, who have always tended to lag behind boys in consumption. SAB can afford to, when many others cannot, because it has made its products desirable and accessible to young people and new drinkers. While it is estimated that fewer than 40% of South African adults drink alcohol, those who do are the most prolific in Africa and are right up there with the world’s biggest consumers of alcohol. The majority of drinkers drink beer.
Many drinkers are dependent on alcohol and are customers for life.
SAB has very publicly associated itself with and sponsored our law enforcement agencies in carefully worded “don’t drink and drive” campaigns, as though the only harm associated with alcohol is behind the steering wheel, thus implicitly encouraging the idea that it doesn’t matter if you get drunk and commit acts of indecency, impropriety, violence or dangerous stupidity; just as long as you don’t drive.
Harsh reality
It has massive billboards at our airports, on our roads and in our townships. Sadly, research and the harsh reality about alcohol are neither as attractive nor as addictive as SAB’s products.
While it is by no means only in poor communities that we see the impact of alcohol on individuals, families, businesses, community wellbeing and society as a whole, it is often the stories of the poor that are the most honest and heartbreaking. Stories about failure, neglect and abuse — and of deprivation of children where more disposable income is spent on alcohol than on staples and school shoes. SAB is dependent on these drinkers for its success.
We are a society that struggles with an economy that is at best fragile. We need to spend a lot less on alcohol. To achieve this, we need much stricter policies and regulations about price, distribution, advertising and marketing to counter the powerful alcohol lobby.
For the child born with severe foetal alcohol syndrome today, to a mother who didn’t want her and cannot support her, and for her family and community, it is too late to make a difference.
But for our collective future, it isn’t too late.
It is easy to understand why the alcohol industry lobby is so powerful, and why SAB continues to thrive, with its massive advertising, marketing and promotional spend, selling aspirations to a society in which the majority do not thrive. The reality that debunks the aspirational myths is there for all to see, but it’s not a pretty picture, not a comfortable one, not one on which it is easy to dwell.
We, the people of South Africa, should, however, not allow ourselves to be lulled into accepting that this is the best we can be; a by-product of a narrative written by SAB, with its legacy of profit and gain at the expense of the most vulnerable. DM
Daily Maverick provides a platform for deliberation of differing views on a topic. SAB was given an opportunity to write a view in response to this, but has not yet responded.