Respect our rights – we’re not children

ARUNDHATI Roy, the Indian author and Booker Prize winner, recently wrote of the world lockdown: “We are being asked to give up everything – our privacy and our dignity, our independence – and allow ourselves to be controlled and micro-managed.”

Our national Coronavirus Command Council, in their pathological aversion to smoking and alcohol, has taken away our dignity and is now micro-managing us. I do not need a lecture on the social contract, or the rights of the individual versus the state and its people. I do not need to be told that smoking damages the lungs – my mother was a smoker and died an agonising death from lung cancer.

I do not need the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, to lecture me about the irresponsible behaviour of many drinkers and the danger they pose to our health system during this crisis. When my son was doing his internship at Baragwanath Hospital, he and his young colleagues dreaded a Saturday night after an Orlando Pirates/ Kaiser Chiefs match. They would treat scores of so-called spectators for knife wounds and axe injuries. In many cases, they were the same people who had to be treated over and over again.

As a 71-year-old, I am emphatically not in favour of the ban on cigarettes or alcohol, as I consider this an abrogation of my rights as a responsible taxpaying citizen. We cannot be held to ransom because a shebeen drinker in Khayelistha beats up his girlfriend, or because Cele or Fikile Mbalula are paranoid about teetotalism.

A fellow academic from New York City told me the other day that their liquor stores and the coffee stores are literally booming with trade.

In most Western countries, and other parts of the world, alcohol is an adjunct to food.

Even in some Islamic countries, alcohol is available to non-Muslims under strict conditions.

Covid-19, or no Covid-19, we will continue to have road deaths, murders, rape and spousal abuse. To think otherwise is to have a false sense of security.

All we drinkers and smokers ask this government is to respect our rights and not to treat us like infants.

HARRY SEWLALL | Parkmore

| COURTNEY AFRICA African News Agency (ANA) I DO NOT need to be told that smoking damages the lungs – my mother was a smoker and died an agonising death from lung cancer, the writer says.