‘Liquor has turned SA into banana republic’

ONE OF the reasons the Transport Department pushed for a total ban of alcohol among drivers is that liquor has turned South Africa into a “banana republic”.

Transport spokesperson Colleen Msibi told The Star yesterday that the introduction of the National Road Traffic Amendment Bill to Parliament was a calculated move to eliminate drunken driving. Driving under the influence has been blamed for the high number of road fatalities.

The bill was brought to the National Assembly within two months of Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula saying in a gazetted notice that it would be introduced “during 2020”.

The amendments were intended to “further prohibit and reduce the limit of alcohol in a specimen of blood taken from any part of the body”, the bill said.

This, once passed by the two houses of Parliament and signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa, will empower police to arrest a motorist who took even one dumpie of beer.

Under the current National Road Traffic Act, drivers can have 0.05g of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

This means drivers can avoid arrest if they have no more than 0.05% of alcohol in their blood, or the equivalent to one dumpie of beer.

Said Msibi: “Alcohol has turned our country into a banana republic. Even under the lockdown people want to indulge in alcohol. It cannot be.

“Alcohol is to blame for the deaths of many breadwinners on our roads, with a huge cost to the economy.

“It has contributed immensely to bad driver behaviour which leads to traffic violations, road crashes and the road death toll.

“We are therefore tightening our National Traffic Act screws in order to uphold the rule of law,” Msibi said.

He defended utterances by Mbalula in January that the alcohol ban among motorists would become effective with the implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (Aarto) by June 2020.

Howard Dembovsky, chairperson of the Justice Project South Africa, had earlier criticised Mbalula for “talking rubbish” by claiming that Aarto would bring to 0% the legal alcohol level.

“The Aarto does not prescribe the level of alcohol in blood, only the National Road Traffic Act does,” Dembovsky said.

Said Msibi: “It is not true that Aarto does not deal with alcohol levels. Some people are just obsessed with semantics as though lives lost on our roads are a subject of public debate.

“Let’s be clear on this matter, in terms of Aarto drunk driving is categorised as an offence (and) not an infringement.

“In other words, it will be dealt with using the instruments of the Criminal Procedure Act.

“This means that those drivers found with alcohol in their blood will see the walls of jail.”

The Star reported recently that activists had mixed views about amending legislation to punish even motorists who had just one dumpie.

Caro Smit, founder and director of SA Against Drunk Driving, said amending the legislation would be meaningless if testing for alcohol was not improved.

“Police and traffic officers need to stop people for alcohol testing.”