Johannesburg, South Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa
Colloquially known as Jo’burg among other nicknames, Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and one of the largest urban areas in the world. The Johannesburg City Pilot takes place specifically in Alexandra Township, which is commonly referred to as Alex. Established in 1912, the township is estimated to include more than 20,000 informal dwellings.
Harmful use of alcohol context
The years of health life lost—a metric discussed in HBSA’s Design and Outcome Measures for the AB InBev Global Drinking Goals Evaluation paper—in Alexandra are estimated to be attributed to several elements:
CITY PILOT AT A GLANCE
Population: 179,624
Founded: April 1, 2019
Program Officer: Thokozile Budaza
Number of YHL lost due to the harmful use of alcohol: 14,985
Steering Committee Coordinator: Josephine Tshabalala
STEERING COMMITTEE
Josephine Tshabalala
Steering Committee Coordinator
Josephine Tshabalala has over 12 years’ experience as a project and stakeholder relationship specialist.
She previously worked on Nation Building projects across South Africa as a project coordinator with the Aggrey Klaaste Nation Building foundation where she coordinated the early childhood development (ECD) program which allowed her to work very closely with ECD Practitioners in across South Africa in partnership with the ABSA Foundation. The program aimed to recognize excellence in the ECD sector, innovations in ECD training methods and practices, and encourage the pursuit of excellence in the sector of ECD. Josephine has also worked in the marketing field where she stated off doing educational roadshows in schools working with an organization called HDI Youth Marketeers, which developed specialized ways of captivating the youth market in schools, malls, communities, and digital playgrounds of urban, peri-urban, and rural South Africa. She worked on the You Decide Campaign which was a campaign aimed at curbing underage drinking by raising awareness of the dangers and consequences of underage drinking by focusing on the youth and the broader communities they live in, including parents, teachers, and tavern owners across South Africa. She later worked on a project to reintroduce the Evidential Breath Alcohol Testing (EBAT) apparatus in South Africa, focusing on building and strengthening stakeholder relationships between SAB, National Department of Transport, Road Traffic Cooperation and the Deputy Prosecuting Department within the National Prosecuting Authority.
Mbali Motsoeneng
Manager Policy & Research, Private Office of the Executive Mayor, City of Johannesburg
Member since 2018
Kgosi Mogotsi
Corporate Affairs Manager of AB InBev
Member since 2018
Marcia Tembe-Mncwabe
Smart Drinking Squad manager for AB InBev
Member since 2019
Michael Botolo
Assistant Deputy Director of Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD)
Member since 2018
Clara Monnakgotla
Community Developer & Trainer at South African National Council on Alcoholism (SANCA)
Member since 2018
Paseka Mathlaku
Deputy Director of the Gauteng Liquor Board
Member since 2018
Mish Hlope
Chairperson of South Africa Liquor Trader Association
Member since 2018
Kgopotso Phaladi
Operational Manager of Riverpark Clinic
Member since 2018
Oupa Motaung
Acting Assistant Director Stakeholders Management & School Safety Coordinator for Department of Education
Member since 2018
Angie Mokasi
Director of Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD)
Member since 2018
Margret Madolo
Operations Manager for Department of Social Development
Member since 2018
Makaziwe Fox
River Park Clinic Committee Chairperson and Community Leader
Member since 2018
Phumzile Maseko
Liquor Officer at SAPS
Member since 2019
PLANNED INTERVENTIONS
Screening and Brief Intervention is an evidence-based practice used to identify, reduce, and prevent the harmful use of, and dependence on, alcohol and illicit drugs.
Partner: HIVSA (Implementation), Witswatersand University (Evaluation)
Project status
Plans call for 42,000 adults to receive SBI screening at health clinics in 2020 and 2021, with 1,000 people screened per month for the first six months, scaling up by an additional 500 per month to a level of 2,500 per month in the last six months of 2021. Roughly 80% of those screening positive will receive an intervention. An initial survey indicates that adults account for 96.9% of heavy drinking in Alexandra, so the reduction in the harmful use of alcohol from this intervention would be 2.6 percent. As the project is being integrated into existing care services, it’s likely to persist after this initial startup.
RBS is a training program that is designed to help staff at establishments like bars, restaurants, and liquor stores that is designed to reduce excessive alcohol consumption and other alcohol-related harms at the community level.
Partner: TBD
Project status
The RBS program will kick start with geo-mapping liquor outlets in Alexandra and Tembisa, Johannesburg to calculate tavern and shebeen density as well as the distances between shebeens and other alcohol outlets, taverns, and sensitive locations such as schools, clinics, and churches. The information collected will also provide information on which liquor outlets are not complying to the municipality by-laws.
After the mapping, the City Pilot is planning universal, comprehensive, ongoing RBS training for liquor traders including restaurant servers that will include a behavior change component. Observers known to the liquor traders will visit selected liquor outlets regularly to check on compliance. Observers will then report their findings to the traders and routine non-compliance will result in additional training and eventually law enforcement. It’s estimated that this program will reduce the harmful use of alcohol by at least 1%, and possibly more.
ONGOING INTERVENTIONS
Root causes for violence against women include the individual- and family-level factors of alcohol abuse, mental health problems, violence exposure, and related adverse experiences. SASA! is a groundbreaking community mobilization approach developed by Raising Voices for preventing both violence against women and HIV. It is uniquely designed to address a core driver of violence against women and HIV: the imbalance of power between women and men, girls and boys. Documented in a comprehensive and easy-to-use Activist Kit, SASA! inspires and enables communities to rethink and reshape social norms. SASA! is the only program that has shown community-wide effects in Africa—one study found that SASA! reduced physical intimate partner violence by 47%, yet a 25% reduction in effectiveness is assumed in this replication. With physical IPV responsible for 13% of the harmful use of alcohol in Alexandra, the projected reduction in the harmful use of alcohol is 4.6 percent.
Partner: Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (ADAPT)
Project status
SASA! Will include the use of an evidence-based approach for reducing violence against women by targeting a range of individual- and family-level factors, including alcohol abuse. With physical IPV responsible for 13% of the the harmful use of alcohol in Alexandra, the projected reduction in the harmful use of alcohol is 4.6 percent.
As road crashes account for an estimated 2.7% of alcohol-attributable YHL loss in Alexandra, the AEC is intended to support well-publicized, high-visibility enforcement that include breath testing and effective prosecution of those arrested for drink-driving. The likely impact should parallel the 7% effectiveness of other saturation patrols, resulting in a 0.3% reduction in YHLs attributable to alcohol.
Partner: EYAM
Project status
In 2019, Steering Committee funded the design, alterations, additions, and refurbishments of the existing Alcohol Evidence Centre at Metro Police Department (JMPD), Marlboro Testing Centre. Through the AEC, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department will implement Evidentiary Breathalyzer Alcohol Testing (EBAT) in order to confront the scourge of road fatalities and injuries.
In December 2013, the Road Traffic Act and accompanying regulations were amended to accommodate breath testing as an enforcement tool. The AEC as equipped with Drager Intoximeters which meet National Prosecution Authority requirements for successful prosecutions of drunk driving cases. Operator manuals, curriculum designed and signed off by the RTMC, and MPO’s training was provided to the JMPD academy. The evidence collection process is designed with NPA assistance to ensure validity of evidentiary value. The AEC was launched on November 22nd, 2019 by the Johannesburg City Mayor, Herman Mashaba.
In 2020, the City Pilot will continue to support the efforts of the AEC through a social marketing campaign tackling drunk driving, including the promotion of the AEC. The City Pilot will also provide technical support to the AEC to assist with the prosecution of drunk drivers.