Cigarettes should be strictly smoked at home – Cele
BONGANI HANS
CIGARETTES should be strictly smoked at home because if you are found with it in your car, you will have a lot of explaining to do, including disclosing who sold it to you, warned Police Minister Bheki
Cele yesterday.
“Cigarettes must be smoked in your house, as it is not illegal to smoke. The only problem is when we find it in your car and you fail to show us where you got the cigarette,” he said in a virtual press briefing.
“When you say you brought the cigarette, here is the receipt, we take you and go and get the person who sold the cigarette to you.”
DA spokesperson Andrew Whitfield said Cele was “smoking his socks”.
“There is no regulation making provision for any person to be compelled to provide proof of purchase for their cigarettes.
“These latest comments join a long list of irrational and petty ministerial edicts which cause confusion in public and among the police officers deployed to enforce the regulations.
“The DA demands that the minister publicly retract his comments and apologise to the nation,” said Whitfield.
In his briefing, Cele said organised crime syndicates had taken advantage of the ban on alcohol and cigarettes to expand their illicit trade.
He said there had been an increase of smuggling of contraband liquor and tobacco between South African borders with Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which were then sold on the black market.
“Our lockdown partners, the SANDF, have disrupted some of these illegal operations,” he said.
Law enforcement agents had confiscated alcohol and cigarettes worth more than R1 million and
R1.6 million in March and April respectively.
Cele said under Level 5, there were more than 100000 cases against the breaking of regulations.
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“In just over a month, this number has more than doubled and it is almost at 200030 for contraventions that include liquor related and cigarette related offences, illegal gathering, which have gone down since the Level 4 (started), failure to confine to places of residents, which remains a serious challenge, cross border and inter-provincial business related offences,” he said.
He said most arrests in connection with the lockdown offences were in Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Kwazulunatal and Gauteng, which mirrored infection rates.
“Arrested persons were either issued with fines or released on warnings while some are out on bail,” he said.
On general crimes, Cele said while domestic violence, house and business robberies and hijacking had declined during the initial lockdown period, there were crimes that had increased during the level 4, whose regulations had been slightly relaxed to allow more movements of people due to reopening of some companies.
He compared the level of crime during and before the lockdown.
“On March 26, 2019 and March
27, 2020 we had 2970 murders, but under lockdown we had 1072 and the difference was 1898 (cases),” he said.
Rape had declined by 4431, attempted murder by 1439, assault GBH (grievous bodily harm)
17796, robberies with aggravating circumstances were 9427 down.
“Car hijacking is 1868 down. On robbery non-residential we are 1798 down, on robbery at residential (area) we are 1482 down.
“When comparing incidents of cash-in-transit robberies during lockdown to the same period in 2019, the number has dropped remarkably from 26 to four incidents.
“Although lockdown figures for serious and violent crime are still lower in comparison to 2019, we have noted an increase in hijacks especially if compared with the first two weeks level 5 to the first two weeks of level 4,” Cele said.
Gauteng was leading the pack with hijackings, followed by the Western Cape, Kwazulu-natal and Eastern
Cape respectively.