The COVID-19 pandemic is stressful for almost everyone, everywhere. But one country’s rules to fight the virus added a great deal of additional stress to smokers and to the national treasure.
That country is South Africa, where the sale of tobacco has been banned since the shutdown was established in late March. Alcohol sales were also banned, then allowed when the blockade was lifted, then banned again as infection rates rose and the blockade tightened.
But the ban on cigarettes has been maintained throughout, until today; It will be lifted starting Monday at midnight, as South Africa relaxes its shutdown in response to a drop in new cases (the alcohol ban will also be lifted)
Botswana and regions of India had already lifted their tobacco bans a couple of months earlier, leaving South Africa the only country in the world that still had one.
The result, according to investigators and anti-crime activists, was a classic distortion of supply and demand, creating an explosion in the illicit cigarette trade that continued to satisfy most smokers and deprived authorities of tax revenue. how much they needed. Meanwhile, the smoking ban did not prevent South Africa from developing more than half of African infections.
“Restrictions on the sale of tobacco will be lifted,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said Saturday night, when he announced the relaxation of many lockdown restrictions. Some media outlets had signaled the next move earlier in the week, but South Africa’s 8 million smokers and its 30 billion rand ($ 1.7 billion) tobacco industry weren’t getting their hopes up.
After all, Ramaphosa announced in late April that the ban would soon be lifted. But then, under pressure from other high-level lawmakers in his African National Congress (ANC) party, he suddenly changed his mind.
“We will have to wait and see when the regulations are released,” said Sinenhlanhla Mnguni, president of the Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association (FITA) of South Africa, on Saturday, immediately after Ramaphosa’s new announcement.
Shifting reasons
However, the official justifications for the tobacco ban changed over time.
Initially, stores were prohibited from selling everything except essential items, in order to minimize the time people spend there; cigarettes were not considered essential.
A month later, when President Ramaphosa had to make his shameful U-turn by lifting the ban, Cooperative Governance Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the politician in charge of South Africa’s anti-COVID efforts, explained that this was due. to “health problems” reasons. Specifically, he referred to the phenomenon of people sharing cigarettes and, therefore, spreading the virus.
Legal challenges
The first was a lawsuit by FITA, the group representing South Africa’s domestic tobacco growers, which argued that the ban was irrational and therefore illegal. In what De Vos sees as a bad decision, the Pretoria High Court ruled in favor of Dlamini-Zuma in late June, ruling that the decision to implement the ban had been rational, even if unreasonable. It also rejected FITA’s argument that tobacco is an essential product.
FITA was granted permission to appeal on Friday, the day before Ramaphosa announced that the ban would be lifted. Mnguni said the organization has not yet decided on its next move. Meanwhile, the Western Cape High Court was due to rule soon on a similar lawsuit, this time brought by the South African branch of British American Tobacco (BATSA).
