Minister of Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has argued that the benefit of a liquor ban outweighs the costs, adding that the latest lockdown restrictions had been “remarkably successful” in reducing the spread of the coronavirus, reports Business Day.
The government was responding to SAB, a subsidiary of the world’s largest brewer, AB InBev, which is seeking to have the regulation to ban alcohol sales from 28 June set aside. This the fourth time since the country imposed lockdown restrictions in 2020 that sales of liquor have been prohibited. The case was heard last Friday in the Western Cape High Court by Judge Robert Henney.
In legal papers, Dlamini-Zuma argued that lockdowns were “remarkably successful, in the sense that the contagion moderates within weeks of their imposition”.
“Most of its overheads continue to be incurred but the income to meet them is no longer there. The losses, on a daily basis, are enormous,” SAB said in court papers. Dlamini-Zuma accused SAB of only “acting in its commercial interests” and not taking the larger context of the pandemic into account. The minister argued in court that research by both the "World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as other leading economists, indicates that the long-term benefits of controlling the pandemic outweigh the cost".
SAB’s main case relied on a technical argument that argued that the way the minister had written the liquor sales prohibition was without a time frame and thus was not a temporary suspension of alcohol sales, but a full-time prohibition. This, it says, exceeded Dlamini-Zuma’s powers under the Disaster Management Act and was thus unlawful.
“The truth is that the first respondent has sought to sidle emergency powers into law under the guise of disaster management so as to avoid the democratic scrutiny she would otherwise have been obliged to face,” SAB said in its papers. Concern about the time frame in the regulations was relevant as a State of Disaster could technically last years, said SAB Advocate Alfred Cockrell.
For the government, Advocate Karrisha Pillay said the State of Disaster applies for a limited period and the liquor ban was thus not of indefinite duration when read in the context of the Disaster Management Act. Judgment was reserved.
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