Nomcebo Dlamini has buried family members lost to addiction. She watched relatives drink their lives away. And she has spent her career making sure those losses translate into something South African communities can use.
As campaign director of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance in South Africa (Saapa SA), Dlamini investigates the relationship between alcohol and South African society, taking her work into communities where families confront violence, child neglect and addiction. Her starting point is always listening. Over a decade in public health advocacy, she has watched young people struggle with substance use and resolved never to simply identify a problem without attempting to address it.
The harm she documents is not abstract. Across South Africa, alcohol flows at children’s birthday parties and family braais, appears at weddings and funerals, dominates prime-time sports advertising, and sits on shelves on nearly every street corner in townships nationwide. Raising questions about it can seem almost transgressive. Dlamini has made that questioning her professional mission.
Her path to this work was not predetermined. Armed with experience in project management and youth development, she followed curiosity. She discovered the Central Drug Authority and South Africa’s National Drug Master Plan, puzzled by how few people seemed aware of either. In 2021, she applied to serve on the authority itself. What she observed there has never left her.
“There was a lot of focus on illicit substances,” she says. “But hardly any focus on alcohol because it is a legal substance. It’s almost ignored as a drug. But alcohol is a drug. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not causing harm.”
That observation became the cornerstone of her advocacy. Travelling through communities across South Africa, Dlamini has found that residents understand the crisis without needing persuasion. They live with alcohol’s consequences daily. More than 70 percent of South Africans she has spoken with acknowledge a serious problem. Yet the specifics remain largely unaddressed by policy.
“One of the biggest challenges is that we binge-drink,” she explains. “Our beer is cheap, sometimes cheaper than a loaf of bread. Families are making choices between buying bread and buying beer. Communities are asking us the same questions: Why is it so cheap? Why is there so much advertising? Why is it everywhere?”
The patterns that emerge from these conversations reveal interconnected harms. Women describe gender-based violence. Grandparents describe children abandoned while parents drink. Community leaders describe neighbourhoods where taverns outnumber parks and sports facilities. Dlamini has completed research examining the relationship between liquor outlets and gender-based violence, finding that they mirror each other geographically: where liquor establishments concentrate, incidents of GBV rise significantly.
“When you talk to women who are dealing with gender-based violence, in almost every instance alcohol has enabled it to happen,” she says. “Either the perpetrator was intoxicated, the victim was intoxicated or both were.”
Child neglect emerges as another recurring theme. Small children are left alone while parents drink at taverns. Older siblings raise younger ones. These are not isolated stories. They are the lived realities communities share with her repeatedly.
One moment remains indelible. During a community dialogue in the Eastern Cape, a 14-year-old girl stood and challenged the adults present. “Why is this allowed to continue?” she asked. “We keep telling you that this is traumatising us.”
For Dlamini, advocacy has always been personal. She grew up surrounded by alcohol and watched addiction destroy opportunities for people she loved. These experiences cemented her commitment to public health work.
“I saw firsthand as a child just how destructive it was,” she says. “That’s why this work is so personal. When people ask why I care so much, it’s because I’ve seen the damage. I’ve buried people. I’ve watched family members lose their lives to addiction. It’s not something I read about in a report.”
Her mother offered another model. She recognised the dangers and protected her children from the worst of those environments. This protection shaped Dlamini’s thinking about women’s roles today.
“I was lucky enough to have a mother who saw the dangers and decided to protect us,” she says. “And now I ask myself: ‘What are we doing as women today? Are we protecting our children or are we joining in? We’re the ones buying the champagne. We’re the ones making alcohol part of children’s celebrations. Why are we normalising a drug?’”
Her message has never been that people should not drink. Rather, she argues for clear sight: communities themselves are telling policymakers that alcohol destroys families. They ask why it costs less than bread, why advertising surrounds them, why it has become so normal. They already understand the problem.
Policy advocacy frustrates. Progress moves slowly and powerful industries resist surrendering influence. “There are many moments when you feel like giving up,” she admits. “You work so hard and then nothing changes. You feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach. But then I ask myself: ‘If I give up, what happens? The industry isn’t going to stop making profits on its own.’”
As South Africa marks Women’s Day, Dlamini hopes the next generation will redefine leadership, asking young women to stop seeing certain things as glamorous and start seeing them for what they are. More on her work and perspectives is available at https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/2026-08-06-the-woman-asking-south-africa-to-confront-what-it-has-normalised/
“I want young women to become leaders who give other young women hope,” she says. “That’s the legacy I want to leave.”
The question that remains is whether South African policy will move at the pace communities are demanding, or whether the industry’s resistance will continue to outrun the voices of the people most affected.