A trickle of legal booze better than bootlegging

After more than two weeks in lockdown, South Africans are getting a bit twitchy. It’s not just the isolation and boredom getting to us; for many it’s the inability to buy alcohol and cigarettes. On these pages you will read how people have come to terms with that — either through being philosophical about it and embracing the chance to quit their vices, or by turning to black market tactics and buying and selling them illegally. The reasons for the ban on alcohol and cigarette sales were understandable and cogent. The drop in the rates of murder and violent crime has been spectacular due to the non-availability of alcohol, police minister Bheki Cele said last Sunday morning. In the first week of lockdown, the number of murder cases fell from 326 in the same period last year to 94. Rape dropped too, from 699 cases to 101; serious assault fell from 2,673 to 456, and armed robberies and carjackings reduced from 8,853 to 2,098 cases. Gender-based violence cases remained high, however, with 2,300 complaints that week.

Cele is known to be something of an anti-alcohol activist, and now we can see why. The number of hospital beds freed up by the ban gave hospitals an opportunity to redirect their attention to planning for and caring for coronavirus patients.

Similarly, the ban on cigarette sales was understandable. With many cigarettes sold as singles on the street in SA, the potential for transmission of the virus is real. An infected seller could transmit the virus to 20 customers through the sale of a single packet.

But as justifiable as these decisions were, we must be careful that while we flatten one curve, we do not fatten another.

As you will read on these pages, some people are so desperate for their daily drink that they will pay a drone operator a handsome sum to transport their tipple to them by air. Street and community WhatsApp groups are also full of offers to trade anything for alcohol and cigarettes. Bartering a bottle of red wine for a freshly baked quiche has become de rigueur in some suburbs despite the threat of arrest if one is found with alcohol in one’s car.

People will always find a way to get what they want. What the government needs to do is devise a way by which a moderate amount of alcohol and cigarettes can be sold, in a way that does not threaten the aims of the lockdown. It’s either that or bootlegging.