The biggest challenge for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa is human trafficking: the buying and selling of human beings for forced labour and prostitution. It’s a trade that relies on deceiving those trying to escape poverty - a lie that works up to 4 million times a year. But this deception can no longer work if people are informed. Our brief was to do exactly that, inform the vulnerable and give them a toll-free helpline setup by our client, The Southern African Counter Trafficking Assistance Programme.

To achieve this disappearing act, we needed to think like the criminals, and like them we decided to use deception. We created tunnels with false walls, which precisely matched the real walls behind them, so that when people walked through, they disappeared, leaving onlookers wondering what had happened. Thereafter, we would inform them with our message and a toll-free helpline number

Thankfully the results were immediate generating mass awareness around human trafficking leading up to the 2010 World Cup both locally and internationally as is spread from national radio stations to news sites and blogs. But more importantly we were able to engage with people in poverty stricken areas, without access to main stream information channels, provide a toll-free helpline and inform them about the realities of human trafficking, making them impervious to the lies used by traffickers. We made the unimaginable, imaginable. SACTAP has also decided to keep running this campaign during the 2010 World Cup and beyond.