Don’t punish all with booze ban

When the government said yesterday it had no plans to reinstate the ban on alcohol sales, many would have planned to besiege bottle stores today to stock up. That’s because the only thing that has been predictable about our ministers involved in running the campaign to control the coronavirus pandemic is that they are unpredictable.

Further, the worrying reality, for many tipplers, is that there are those within the ANC who appear to see the pandemic as a reason to ride their own little hobbyhorses in pursuit of transforming the country into a better place.

Hence, we have had the crusading minister-in-charge, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, insisting, without strong enough evidence, that cigarettes should be banned because of the negative effects they will have on actual and potential Covid-19 sufferers.

The reason for the alcohol ban – which would keep the anti-booze campaigners in the ANC happy – did, and does, make sense in the context of trying to keep our hospital wards as open as possible to cope with the looming infection tsunami. Those reasons are being shown, at present, to have been frighteningly accurate, given reports of how booze-related injuries – from fights, assaults and car crashes – have already started clogging up hospital emergency rooms.

While we sympathise with the medics having to deal with the effects of irresponsible behaviour, we are concerned about the ramifications of reinstating the ban.

People will revolt – either by taking to the streets or looting and torching – and will continue to buy black market booze anyway. And there will still be casualties.

A booze ban, though, would be another attack on basic human rights and an admission that the government cannot do its basic job of enforcing the law.

It is the people who commit crimes while drunk who are the criminals. They should be punished, not the rest of us.