Today’s High Court case on the four-month-old ban on cigarette sales would decide whether criminals would continue to get rich or whether almost 300 000 people who worked in or depended on the legal tobacco industry for a living would survive.
So said activist Yusuf Abramjee, founder of Tax Justice South Africa, who yesterday filed an affidavit in the Western Cape High Court in support of the case against the ban being brought by British American Tobacco (BATSA).
Abramjee was quoted by IOL as saying: ‘For the sake of our future, we must hope that our judges put an end to this hugely damaging and unworkable prohibition. The court would have to choose between protecting the country’s honest citizens and their constitutional rights or a government that made arbitrary regulations and criminals coining it in the booming tobacco black market.
‘It is a watershed moment when South Africans will be told whether we live in a country where honesty and hard work is rewarded or if crime really does pay. Whether our lawmakers must adhere to the Constitution and common sense, or if dictators lead by decree and personal agendas.’
Abramjee added: ‘We’ve lost over R4.5 billion already, while children are going hungry. Criminals have made R13 billion, while thousands of decent citizens have lost their jobs.’
Far from curbing smoking, the ban had enriched criminal syndicates to the tune of R100 million a day.
Business Insider reported that Pick n Pay’s chairperson Gareth Ackerman told the group’s annual general meeting that the bans on alcohol and cigarette sales ‘more than any other decision taken by the government during this pandemic’ were the ones that ‘risk creating cynicism and division that we cannot afford’.
He said: ‘South Africa is virtually the only country in the world that has prohibited the sale of these products during the pandemic. There has been no explanation as to why South Africa is right and so many other countries are wrong. What explanations we have been given have been confusing and contradictory. And, sadly, everyone knows that tobacco and liquor remain readily available through the black market.’
Ackerman added: ‘The government will have to be far more deft in getting the economy back on its feet. It will have to recognise its limitations and withdraw from controls it has put in place, play to its strengths and allow citizens and the private sector to play to theirs, unleashing the creative energy of the whole society.’
The government had ‘on several occasions reassured [the country] that they are listening and consulting. But we see little evidence of this,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the African National Congress (ANC) parliamentary caucus has expressed its embarrassment at the ‘barbaric behaviour’ reflected in corruption related to Covid-19 relief funds.
ANC chief whip Pemmy Majodina said: ‘As the ANC caucus, we are deeply embarrassed by this barbaric behaviour and call on the fast-tracking of all these government-led initiatives to investigate and bring [perpetrators] to book immediately. Law enforcement agencies must work around the clock to stem the tide of these criminality
‘Impunity seems to be [the] order [of the] day when the rate of infections is rising and essential workers continue to experience shortages within hospitals regarding availability of personal protection gear.
‘This impunity must stop. The brazen nature that has been characterised by massive irregularities and acts of misconduct continues to dent the name of the organisation and makes [a] mockery of all our commitments to fight corruption (sic).’
Positive cases grew in South Africa yesterday by 4 456 to a cumulative total of 521 318 (with 363 751 recoveries). Deaths rose by 345 to 8 884.
The highest tally of cases is in Gauteng (183 090), followed by the Western Cape (97 261), KwaZulu-Natal (85 986), and the Eastern Cape (79 844).
News24 reported that the rate at which Covid-19 cases were increasing had, according to official reported data, started decling for the first time since the beginning of the outbreak in March.
In other virus-related news
- The number of infections in Latin America has passed the five million mark, making it the world’s hardest hit region. Brazil has continued to drive the regional surge with more than 2.7 million infections and close to half of the region’s more than 200 000 deaths;
- Tens of millions of people in the Philippines were back in lockdown after doctors warned a surge in new cases could push the healthcare system to collapse, according to a BBC report. Stay-at-home orders are now in place in Manila and four surrounding provinces on the island of Luzon for two weeks. The country emerged from one of the strictest lockdowns in June. But hospitals have been struggling to cope with a five-fold rise in confirmed infections, now surging past 100 000;
- More than 800 people died of coronavirus in India on Monday, the highest number of new deaths in the world for that 24-hour period. India has also seen more new infections than any other country; and
- Iran has reported more than 2 700 daily infections – the highest number in more than a month – and 212 deaths.