Clumsy communication by the government sparked further shock and outrage this week, heaping more misery on tobacco companies and the R140bn alcohol industry through its apparent flip-flopping on how long the ban on both products will remain in place.
The prospects of an indefinite ban would have been an utter disaster and raised the possibility of even further wide-scale permanent closures and huge job losses for both industries.
SA is ranked as having the fifth-highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world with a death rate now above the global average and climbing. Earlier this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the liquor sales ban, which the government had lifted in June, would be put back in place — in an effort to reduce the strain on already overburdened hospitals by preventing alcohol-linked traumatic injuries.
The cigarettes sales ban — the only one of its sort — has been in place since SA went into lockdown, and remains the subject of fierce litigation and heated public debate.
Despite this, however, the government appears to have been less than measured in its communication on these issues, with co-operative governance minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma controversially urging the public to “call the police when we see people with alcohol” — despite that only sales of liquor are prohibited, not its consumption.
Then on Wednesday, the government’s official Twitter account posted that the bans on alcohol and cigarettes sales “will remain in place throughout the lockdown period”.
“The purpose is to save lives and protect the health and wellbeing of our people,” it said.
The tweet was met with immediate outrage from the Fair-Trade and Independent Trade Association (Fita) — which is awaiting judgment in its application to appeal against the Pretoria high court’s dismissal of its cigarette sales ban challenge.
After Fita demanded that the government clarify the tweet, which followed Ramaphosa’s comments three weeks ago that the cigarette ban would be lifted once lockdown levels were altered, the government posted that its initial Twitter post was “incorrect”.
“The sale of alcohol and tobacco products is prohibited under the current level 3 regulations. This decision may be reviewed at any time by the relevant structures, should the conditions which necessitated it change. We regret any confusion the tweet has caused.”
Within hours of those tweets, however, Fita chair Sinenhlanhla Mnguni had posted a government “fact sheet”, dated July 15 2020, which repeated that the “ban on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes will remain in place throughout the lockdown period”.
That fact sheet appeared to only heighten public suspicion about government’s position on the liquor and cigarette sales ban and prompted lead government communicator Phumla Williams to issue a late-night statement.
Williams said the fact sheet “still purporting that the ban on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes would ‘remain in place throughout the lockdown’ is the document that informed the erroneous tweet withdrawn by government this afternoon”.
“Government fact sheets are internal documents which are not publicly shared. We therefore do not know how this particular document got into the public domain. Government reaffirms its position that the prohibition of sale of alcohol and tobacco products remains under the current level 3 regulations”.
Mnguni told Business Day on Thursday that Fita did not accept this explanation.
“This has caused major consternation among tobacco industry role players and the public at large as it gives a strong impression that the fact sheet reflects internal government policy which it does not want to make public,” he said.
Mnguni said this stance appeared to be driven by “fear of the exact type of public backlash government experienced when the tweet confirming their position was published”.
He said the government’s apparent flip-flopping on the bans “will no doubt have severe consequences not only for all those who make a living from these industries, but on the fiscus and the lives of many South Africans as well”.
British American Tobacco SA (BATSA), which is seeking to challenge the cigarette sales ban in the Western Cape High Court, said on Thursday that recently released research from the University of Cape Town had confirmed that the cigarette sales ban had not stopped people smoking and had resulted in a boom in the illicit tobacco trade.
UCT’s research unit on the economics of excisable products found that 93% of SA’s 8-million to 11-million smokers are still able to buy cigarettes.
BATSA says this illegal trade boom has led to the fiscus losing “R35m in taxes every single day”.
“After 118 days of lockdown, the ban on tobacco products sales has now cost over R4bn in excise taxes alone and substantial job losses.”
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