Booze ban price is ‘thousands of jobs’

The current ban on liquor sales is placing thousands of jobs and the industry as a whole in jeopardy and without a court’s intervention, disaster looms, wine farmers say.

“The stark financial reality is that the continued prohibition of on-site sale and consumption of wine in restaurants will lead to many restaurants not reopening, the permanent loss of thousands of jobs in the restaurant industry, the loss of substantial wine sales by wine farms and the consequential loss of thousands of jobs on wine farms,” the chief executive of the Southern Africa Agri Initiative, Francois Rossouw, said in papers filed in the High Court in Pretoria.

He said this constituted “economic losses and damage that the whole of SA simply cannot afford”.

The papers were filed as part of an urgent application, launched by the Southern African Agri Initiative, in conjunction with nine other associations and wine farms, to lift the ban in so far as it relates to wine.

They also want the record of decision that gave rise to the reinstatement of the ban, following a brief suspension last month.

The ban in its current form infringes on their rights to human dignity, freedom of expression and freedom of movement, the farmers said.

Unsold wine has to be discarded if it reaches its sell-by date and that effectively leads to wine producers being deprived of property without compensation as well.

Rossouw described the knockon effects of the ban as “destructive”. He said many wine farms operated as small- or mediumsized family businesses and that they, together with licensed restaurants, employed thousands.

“All these workers are dependent to a lesser or greater extent on licensed restaurants on wine farms and elsewhere across the country being able to resume their operations profitably which is only possible if licensed restaurants are again allowed to serve wine with their meals and if wine tasting on wine farms is again allowed,” he said.

Many of these workers had not been able to earn a living while the sale of liquor and the operation of restaurants and hotels was banned or severely restricted.

“Many are still precluded from earning a living because of the crippling effect of the continued ban on on-site sale and consumption of wine.”