Western Cape Premier Alan Winde said the province was seeking an urgent meeting with Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Health Minister Zweli Mhkhize to make the case for a resumption of wider economic activity.
This was to limit the impact of ‘pandemic number two: unemployment, hunger and starvation’. The call coincides with what the province said was a levelling off, and even a decline, in Covid-19 deaths.
Allowing greater activity in the wine and tourism industries, in particular, was vital as they were important job-creators.
Winde said the Western Cape now needed a ‘differentiated’ approach to enable it to tackle the crisis of joblessness and hunger, and the economic plight of sectors struggling to survive.
News24 noted that it had been reported recently that the wine industry could lose up to R7.5 billion if the ban on alcohol sales continued for six to eight weeks. The alcohol ban had plunged it into uncertainty.
The report also said South Africa’s tourism sector may have already lost an estimated R54.2 billion from mid-March to the end of May as Covid-19 travel and leisure restrictions battered the industry.
In Winde’s weekly ‘digicon’ yesterday, the province’s Health Department head Dr Keith Cloete reported that Covid-19 deaths in the Western Cape were now “plateauing” and even dropping.
The ongoing ban on cigarette sales regained attention yesterday, with reports on papers filed by the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer, British American Tobacco (BATSA), for its case next month, and – embarrassingly for the government – a news report on senior military officers filmed smoking at the funeral of African National Congress veteran Andrew Mlangeni.
The reports speculated on whether the officers would be asked to provide invoices to show they had bought the cigarettes before the lockdown ban was imposed four months ago, as police minister Bheki Cele has said would be the case for anyone caught smoking in public.
In its court papers, BATSA said the ban on the sale of tobacco products from the start of the lockdown in late March infringed the rights of all in the chain of supply and consumption in the industry, and was unconstitutional.
It said it would argue that lockdown Regulation 45 was unconstitutional, as it ‘violates the rights of every participant in the supply chain for tobacco and vaping products’.
BATSA was quoted by Fin24 as saying in its court papers: ‘We submit that the infringement of autonomy amounts to a limitation on the right to human dignity in Section 10 of the Constitution. The Minister bears the onus of justifying this limitation.’
It also said that the government’s ‘concern that the health system in South Africa may be overrun if the sale of cigarettes is allowed, is not supported by the experience of other countries’.
Positive cases grew in South Africa yesterday by 11 362 to a cumulative total of 471 123 (with 297 967 recoveries). Deaths rose by 240 to 7 497.
The highest tally of cases is in Gauteng (168 369), followed by the Western Cape (93 737), the Eastern Cape (75 872) and KwaZulu-Natal (71 240).
In other virus-related news
- Reuters said more than 16.83 million people had been reported to be infected globally and 660 997 had died;
- Deaths in the United States rose by nearly 1 300 on Tuesday, the biggest one-day increase since May, according to Reuters. California, Florida and Texas, the three most populous states, reported one-day record spikes in deaths on Tuesday, together accounting for 584 of the 1 292 new deaths. Arkansas, Montana and Oregon also had one-day record increases in fatalities. The US had lost nearly 150 000 people in total since the virus was first detected in the country in January, the highest number in the world, with more than four million Americans being infected;
- Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam warned the hospital system could face ‘collapse’ as it grappled with a sharp rise in cases. She said the city was ‘on the verge of a large-scale community outbreak’ and urged people to stay indoors. New regulations, including mandatory face masks and the closure of dine-in restaurants, kicked in yesterday. Less than a month ago, the average number of new daily cases was under 10, but Hong Kong is now regularly reporting over 100 new daily cases; and
- Dr Hans Kluge, Europe regional director for the World Health Organization, told the BBC that increasing infections among young people could be driving recent spikes across the continent. ‘An increasing number of countries are experiencing localised outbreaks and a resurge in cases. What we do know is that it’s a consequence of change in human behaviour. We’re receiving reports from several health authorities of a higher proportion of new infections among young people,’ he said.