Cape Town – Activist Yusuf Abramjee, the founder of Tax Justice South Africa, has filed an affidavit in the Western Cape High Court in support of a bid by the local unit of British American Tobacco (BATSA) to overturn the government's four-month-old ban on cigarette sales.
“For the sake of our future, we must hope that our judges put an end to this hugely damaging and unworkable prohibition," said Abramjee, whose organisation campaigns against illicit trade and other crime.
He said the case, set down for hearing on Wednesday and Thursday, gave the court a choice 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 said it was obvious that since late March when tobacco sales were banned under a lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, smokers had continued to smoke and were buying cigarettes "at sky-high prices via sophisticated criminal networks that make R100 million every day".
Hence the case would decide whether criminals continued to get rich or whether almost 300 000 people who worked in or depended on the legal tobacco industry for a living survived, he 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," Abramjee said.
“The ban has been broken from Day 1 of lockdown. It should not be allowed to break our nation for a single day longer.”
He added that the ban was costing the state R35 million in tobacco excise taxes daily and that the money could have been used to fight the Covid-19 pandemic or shield the vulnerable from its economic repercussions.
Batsa, the country's cigarette maker, is arguing that the ban is irrational and unconstitutional.
The prohibition is also being challenged by the Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association, which lost its case in the high court but has now approached the Supreme Court of Appeal in the matter.
African News Agency (ANA)