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 fizzy drinks or jeans.
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 behavior 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 per cent 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 behavior is precisely what two decades of HIV/AIDS initiatives have largely failed to do. Across the continent, about 90 per cent 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 program 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.
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 centers.
"The idea is to make loveLife a brand," said a spokeswoman, 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 behavior.
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 recognize 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 percent say loveLife caused them to use a condom, and 69 percent 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 only some of the change is the result of safe sex campaigns, it would be a remarkable achievement.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing