The South African element of the OneLove campaign was launched on the 14 January 2009.
The overall goal of the campaign is to reduce new HIV infections in South Africa by 10% by 2011. This will contribute to the goal set by the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC), which aims to reduce the number of new HIV infections in South Africa by half in a couple of years.
” We need to challenge gender stereotypes and cultural norms that perpetuate this unsafe behaviour and to and create debates around what needs to be done. Is it really manly to have many sexual partners or in this time of HIV is it just an unnecessary risk?” says Sue Goldstein, Soul City’s Senior Executive: South African Programmes.
Mass media campaign
The OneLove campaign is using mass media and social mobilisation to communicate its its message.
In South Africa, the mass media portion of the campaign is made up of Soul City series 9, the popular prime-time TV drama series, the Soul City radio drama series, community radio station talk shows and outreach events.
Soul City series 9 airs on Mondays on SABC1 at 20h30.
You can register as a fan of Soul City series 9 here
There are also TV and radio advertisements and two booklets with over a million distributed in four languages.
Discussions at community level
OneLove in South Africa also encourages communities to discuss issues surrounding multiple and concurrent partnerships. These issues include culture, religion, how we see and treat women and so on.
In line with this objective, Soul City and its partners held a community launch of the OneLove campaign in Soweto on the Saturday 24 January. The event was held at Ubuntu Kraal in Soweto. There are also plans to hold community dialogue events in other parts of South Africa.
To learn more about MCP in South Africa, listen to this audio tape. You can also download the research report on Multiple Concurrent Partnerships in South Africa from our Resources section.
