Plugged in and cast out

A reporter goes shopping for contraband

My neighbour takes a long, hard prison drag of the gwaai , blows out some smoke and says, “These things are trash.” He exhales a little again and swears, “This is the last time I’m buying these.” We split the 20 packs from the day’s foraging, knowing full well that the cigarettes themselves won’t match the branded boxes they are sold in. All things considered, though, it’s easier to buy cigarettes than it is to buy liquor in the eighth week of the ban on liquor and tobacco as part of the government’s Covid-19 lockdown measures. My neighbour lights one of these fake chele chele while we wait for a text back from his liquor plug, also known as his supplier, so that our weekend can finally start.

As the debate between supporters and opponents of the government’s protracted lockdown period threatened to explode this week, the black market trade in these now contraband products was collapsed into a single, amorphous welt on society and the economy. But a more nuanced picture of the South African informal economy was presented by people who, over seven weeks, told of their experiences buying and selling liquor and cigarettes for consumption or distribution.

During the lockdown period, the availability, price and quality of liquor and cigarettes have fluctuated for each set of products.

In the first two weeks of the lockdown, a variety of cigarettes previously priced high enough to be considered legal carried an additional, nominal markup of roughly 5%. Where retail chains and registered supermarkets toed the line, small and informal traders happily crossed it and collected the profits they had previously been muscled out of.

Rachel is in her early 70s and unwell. She used to run a spaza shop from her house on a corner flanked by two residential complexes in one of Joburg’s middle-class suburbs. The shop helped her and her grandson get by. She says that although it was not much, she was able to make the profits from cigarettes, sweets and snacks stretch.

During her busiest period in lockdown, she sold several cigarette brands illicitly — Courtleigh and Stuyvesant Red and Blue from British American Tobacco at R50 a pack, Marlboro Red from Philip Morris, and Camel Blue Switch from Japan Tobacco at R60 apiece.

Her spaza shop thrived during this period, and attracted undue attention from law enforcement. When cigarettes became increasingly expensive and difficult for her grandson to source, she shut the spaza shop, snacks and all.

In Vosloorus, Diepkloof, Spruitview, Alexandra, Mamelodi, Soshanguve and other townships and suburbs surrounding Joburg and Pretoria, the price of liquor jumped at midnight on March 26. In the preceding days, those who could afford to stock up on liquor for what was expected to be a three-week ban, did. Those who couldn’t would pay a bit more.

By three weeks into the lockdown, soft tack liquors like beers and ciders were scarce, and more expensive (by roughly 25%) when they could be found.

Njabulo from Vosloorus has been able to work from home, cutting some costs in the process, money he can use to pay these inflated prices for illicit liquor.

At the beginning of the lockdown there were lots of people who still had beer. A week or two later there was less and less beer.

With the lockdown being extended, there were increases in prices. We were told that it would cost us R350 for a bottle of vodka or gin that should cost R120. Truth be told, I am a person who would spend R450 on a bottle — but now I’m spending that on a bottle that should retail for R150 at most.

Liquor trading across SA is more effectively regulated than the tobacco trade, in normal times. As measures to restrict the liquor trade became more stringent, to include a prohibition on transporting liquor, prices increased further and the illicit trade went deeper underground. Suppliers and re-sellers became more wary of their customers and simultaneously more desperate to sell off the stock they had to avoid detection.

The WhatsApp text comes in with the darkness, an hour or so before the daily curfew is enforced. We get into the car, withdraw cash at the nearest ATM and drive to a secluded petrol station where the green and yellow branding is faded and peeling. Parked, waiting for the plug to arrive with our order, we complain about how, just a few weeks ago, we would not have been caught dead drinking “1818” Smirnoff vodka.

A white Porsche Cayenne SUV pulls up to one of the petrol pumps. A police van pulls up to another a few seconds later. We drive off without discussion.

As we turn onto a main road, the plug phones and directs us to another petrol station close by. Our suspicions are confirmed when the plug comes out of the Porsche and into our car with bottles clinking softly in the tattered backpack he has over one arm.

“Bafwethu, Bheki is making me feel like I deal drugs,” the plug says by way of greeting.

We take what we ordered and another bottle he proffers, even lower down the “I would never” scale. He counts the cash, stuffs it in his pocket and is back in the Cayenne before the open-door lights in our car are out.

We drive home, in the opposite direction to the SUV.

For small-scale cigarette resellers who have continued to trade in loose single and 20-pack cigarettes despite the national ban, the choice whether to put themselves at risk of contracting the new coronavirus and possibly being arrested sometimes comes down to livelihood. The profit margins are minimal, but without them some resellers’ families might not have food on the table.

‘Bafwethu, Bheki is making me feel like I deal drugs,’ the plug says by way of greeting

The quality and variety of cigarettes fell as the prices rose with lockdown extension announcements and as the police and military presence in some communities became more pervasive.

As children played on his street and teenagers smoked a hookah pipe, Paul explains his choices.

“The spaza is actually here for a very long time but since a couple of months I started cigarettes with it. Cigarettes make the most profit. Savannah, Courtleigh and Stuyvesant are the most popular brands.

“It’s very difficult to get the cigarettes because every day it’s a new price, the prices just went up. It’s just what’s available, you take what you get. Most of the cigarettes are fong kong and the famous brands we can’t get any more so we have to maar go for whatever we get. The people selling them are local shops around us, mostly the foreigners.

“My wife and I both don’t work and we have a grandchild so we need to take care of him also. Kimbies and whatever else is needed in the house. It doesn’t make much of a difference, but we survive.”

Kafele worked as a shop assistant at the China Mall on Johannesburg’s Main Reef Road until it was shut with the national lockdown. Now jobless, he not only faces the costs of rent and food, he has to figure out a way of paying the R500 demanded of him by the South African Police Service and Johannesburg Metro Police officers in a raid on his apartment block last week.

“Me, I work at China Mall and it is not open. How can I pay rent, get something to eat? That is why I am selling cigarettes,” he says.

“Me, I am from Malawi. I understand I can go home, but the border is closed. Even if I get transport to go there, I don’t have money, it’s R3,000 to get there.

“When I get R100, I thank God because I can eat for three days.”