Onelove Campaign - South Africa

The objectives of the campaign are to:

• create an enabling environment for social change, in which individual behaviour change is a positive choice;
• kick-start key debates about issues like culture and gender that South Africans need to have if the HIV/AIDS epidemic is to be turned around; and
• empower communities to take positive organised action to prevent HIV/AIDS.

The mass media component of the South African Onelove campaign comprises a prime-time Soul City television drama series, a Soul City radio drama series in 9 languages, community radio station talk shows, and outreach events.

The Soul City 9 television series is a central part of the Onelove campaign in South Africa. It is a 13-episode weekly drama series which began broadcasting on SABC1, the South African public broadcaster, in January 2009. The series follows the lives of Zimele and Lebo, who appear to be the perfect married couple. However, audiences learn that there is more going on and that the relationship is strained: Zimele is involved in a web of secrets and lies, involving inter-generational and transactional sex. The story introduces the viewer to a number of characters as the web of lies unfolds, revealing much pain and HIV. The series is being rerun in the second half of 2009.

The campaign produced a booklet, "Onelove: Preventing HIV in South Africa", which explains why having many partners puts people at risk and talks about other risky behaviours. It also includes information for people who want to do something in their communities to contribute to social change, especially as part of the Onelove campaign. Click here to download this booklet in PDF format. Over 1 million copies of the booklet in 4 languages have been distributed.

The Onelove campaign also includes a media advocacy strategy which largely focuses on raising public debate on the key factors that drive MCP, such as culture. As part of this initiative, the campaign developed a media handbook called "Multiple and Concurrent Sexual Partners: What's Culture Got to Do with It? A Handbook for Journalists" and discussion documents on culture and MCP. Click here to download the media handbook in PDF format. The campaign is also generating opinion articles on key themes for use by the media, and is encouraging radio and television debates on MCP. To support this process, the campaign is distributing media toolkits which consist of the Onelove booklets, posters, and a t-shirt and a bracelet. As of November 2009, over 800 toolkits had been distributed.

The Onelove campaign ran 30-minute talk shows on both community radio and national radio stations. The talk shows included expert guests, phone-ins from the public, and competitions. A radio drama was launched in June 2009 and was broadcast across 9 SABC African language radio stations over the following 2 months. The radio drama of 30 episodes was designed to encourage people to talk about key issues that drive multiple sexual relationships and to challenge some of these drivers - for example, notions of masculinity that encourage multiple sexual partners.

OneLove in South Africa also seeks to encourage communities to discuss issues surrounding MCP, such as culture, religion, and gender. Together with partners, the Onelove campaign is holding workshops and community dialogue events across South Africa. These are geared toward youth in school, out-of-school youth, students, visitors to shebeens [unlicensed drinking establishments], traditional leaders, and miners.

The campaign is also using two existing Soul City magazines, the ClubZone magazine and the Soul Xpression magazine, to include articles and messages related to Onelove and MCP, polygamy, and relationships in general.

In July 2009, a Onelove single and music video, produced by Native Rhythms, was released by Soul City. The song features some of South Africa's top musical talent: Zuluboy, Danny K, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Siphokazi, Bucie, Zonke, and Fikile Mlomo, who won Soul City's Search for a Star in 2005. The OneLove song emphasises the need to talk, protect, and respect, in line with the campaign message.

Television and radio advertisements and public service announcements (PSAs) are also being broadcast on national radio and television stations and on community radio stations.

As part of its social mobilisation component in 2010, the OneLove campaign is offering a Train-the-Trainer programme that culminates in community dialogues that encourage discussion around HIV and MCP. The programme involves training master trainers who in turn train community workers/coordinators, who then roll out community dialogues in the communities they live in. The trainees are given OneLove toolkits, which include OneLove booklets, t-shirts, DVDs of the Soul City series 9, posters, and OneLove merchandise, to support the rollout of dialogues in the community. Soul City is working with 18 partner organisations nationally to implement community dialogues through the train the trainer programme.

Overall, the focus of the OneLove campaign in South Africa in 2010 has been in establishing partnerships with governments and organisations to roll out the OneLove campaign in all provinces and districts in South Africa. In these partnerships, Soul City provides training, OneLove materials, and skills support to partners who want to run OneLove activities in their communities.

For example, in May 2010, the OneLove campaign was launched in the North West province in partnership with the Department of Social Development who approached Soul City to help implement the OneLove campaign in the province. Activities, which will be launched in all four districts in the province over the next year, will consist of master training sessions, community dialogues by community coordinators, and a youth programme. The campaign will target traditional and religious leaders and the general community. It will also partner with Motsweding radio station and a local community radio station for above-the-line media. This is the first of the South African provinces to take on the OneLove campaign and Soul City hopes that other provinces in South Africa will follow.

The OneLove campaign has also formed a partnership with OASIS, an NGO which works in Cosmocity, a community of 500,000 people in Johannesburg. This partnership will include the training of community workers, community dialogues, community marches, and the distribution of campaign booklets.

In March 2010, the campaign started broadcasting the "Love Stories in a Time of HIV and AIDS" series, a collection of 10 short films produced in 10 SADC countries as part of the regional OneLove Campaign. The series included the South African film "Umtshwato - The Wedding", which was produced by Soul City. The film is set in a village in the Eastern Cape and tells the story of Nomandla, who is in the final stages of her traditional Xhosa wedding to Makhosi. On her special day, she discovers a terrible truth about Makhosi which her mother is determined to hide. Click here to find out more about the "Umtshwato - The Wedding".

The campaign is also planning to broadcast a new OneLove 30 second PSA focusing on MCP and HIV testing in the second half of 2010.

HIV/AIDS

In South Africa there are close to 6 million people living with HIV/AIDS. In 2007 there were 2 million HIV-related deaths in South Africa.