Despite a business group’s threats to drag President Cyril Ramaphosa to court over a ban on alcohol sales in the country, the South African Cabinet on Friday insisted that the embargo would remain during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said Cabinet had resolved that the only alcohol “permitted to be sold is the one that is used for commercial use such as sanitisers and health and related issues.”
“But the liquor that we drink is not allowed to be exported, in the same way that it’s not allowed to be sold,” Dlamini-Zuma said.
The announcement followed a Cabinet meeting to discuss the issue brought to it by a group of South African alcohol sellers in Gauteng Province, the country’s industrial heartland that hosts Johannesburg.
The Gauteng Liquor Forum, a grouping of 20,000 micro and small businesses in the province, had asked Ramaphosa to lift the sales ban or face a lawsuit.
The ban “is unreasonable and unconstitutional,” the forum wrote to Ramaphosa.
Following their letter to the presidency, the high office had asked the business persons to wait until the end of Friday when it would respond to their letter after the Cabinet meeting.
The forum is yet to respond to the Cabinet’s decision to sustain the ban on liquor sales in the country during the month-long lockdown which ends on 30 April.
NM/jn/APA