Government can’t wish away booze

South Africa is a strange country, sometimes. Yesterday, it had the hangover even before the boozing started ... the financial hangover that has pummelled the alcohol sector, thanks to the lockdown ban. It is estimated that the South African wine industry lost more than R1 billion in the five weeks that exports were banned and more than R300 million a week for the nine weeks that all local sales were prohibited.

Thousands of workers in the agricultural sector producing alcohol, who were laid off, might not get their jobs back. The future looks equally problematic for those workers retrenched by the producers, distributors and retailers of booze.

A major part of the craft beer business, which has been growing by leaps and bounds and providing jobs, will probably be lost forever.

Against this, government will say the ban on booze helped keep hospital wards clear for Covid-19 patients … because they would otherwise have been filled with the victims of alcohol abuse.

At the time the ban was imposed, though, there were no huge waves of people infected by coronavirus swamping hospitals. That, however, is starting to happen now. If any ban was to be imposed, it should have been done now, logic would say.

SA has been one of those countries with the strictest lockdown rules and, clearly, government was hoping it would continue to maintain its international image of doing well in the fight against coronavirus by clamping down as hard as it could on its citizens.

Also, there is little doubt that the anti-booze lobby in the ANC has used the crisis to push its own agenda of permanent restrictions on the sale and marketing of alcohol.

But, the queues at bottle stores yesterday will have underlined the point: you can’t wish away booze.