Limpopo liquor traders prepare to oppose midnight ban

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JEREMY MAGGS: The National Liquor Traders Association has launched an urgent court application to interdict the implementation of the Limpopo Liquor Act of 2009. The act prohibits the sale of alcohol after midnight and is set to be affected tomorrow. With us now is Lucky Ntimane from the National Liquor Traders Association, a very warm welcome to you. So can you elaborate, firstly, on why you consider this issue a threat to the livelihoods of your constituency?

LUCKY NTIMANE: So if you look at the alcohol industry and more specifically the tavern sector, which is an on-premise [channel], it is based in the township, taverns in their general format operate from the township. So they are one and the same with community. You cannot talk about communities without talking about taverns and vice versa. So if you are going to curtail the trading hours by two hours, so what you’re then doing is you’re reducing the profitability and the income earning potential of those taverns by two hours.

Maybe there’s an important statistic that I need to highlight. So over a seven-day period, between Friday and Sunday, taverns make 70% of their income from just those three days alone. So if you remove six hours, you’ll then have eaten into their ability to make an income to sustain their businesses.

But also the people who are employed in that space are paid on an hourly basis. So those people will then earn two hours less on a day.

But also, you have artists who we book to come and perform in our establishments, the entertainers, it means they’ll not be booked for longer. They will not have that extra two hours because now we are closing early. But if you look at establishments such as bars, restaurants, even hotels that have bars, they will not be able to trade beyond 12:00am.

So what you’re doing is you’re creating an environment where it will not be feasible for a lot of entertainers who are not originally from Limpopo to go to Limpopo for business because if you book a DJ, they will play in two or three places on the same evening because there are more hours in that evening. But now you’re reducing that. So the livelihood of the taverns as a base will be affected in terms of earning potential. But also, you’re now creating an environment where it’ll not be feasible for people to go out and drink because now they have less time to spend at a tavern.

JEREMY MAGGS: How many taverns in Limpopo would be affected, do you think?

LUCKY NTIMANE: This would be a guess from my side, [we’re] probably looking at about 6 000 taverns, that’s a guess estimate. We have about 39 000 taverns in the country, the majority of which are in Gauteng.

JEREMY MAGGS: How do you respond to critics who might argue that limiting the sale of alcohol after midnight is a reasonable restriction for public safety reasons?

LUCKY NTIMANE: Jeremy, to be honest with you, because we share the same sentiments that fighting crime is everyone’s responsibility and crime does affect us as liquor traders as well. We have seen a lot of shootings that took place in taverns in the past because we’re part of communities we are affected by the very same crime.

But then to punish liquor traders and take two hours as a means of fighting crime, in the absence of any scientific evidence that points to the fact that if you remove two hours from trading per day, then we’re going to fight crime, then it’s a questionable proposition.

We want to be convinced through facts that this is in fact going to work. Limpopo is not even in the top three of crimes in the country [sic].

So we don’t understand why they will actually pedal that narrative that if they reduce two hours, they’re going to fight crime. If it was Gauteng, maybe we’re going to take a listen because Gauteng accounts for 17% of crime in the country. But for Limpopo to come with such a proposal, it really beggars belief. We don’t understand.

JEREMY MAGGS: What alternatives are you proposing to the Limpopo government?

LUCKY NTIMANE: The alternative is to find a sustainable working solution for all of us to fight crime without having to pinpoint liquor traders as culprits that must be curtailed to be able to fight crime. It requires everyone, all of us civil society, NGOs [non-governmental organisations] the police themselves, [and] other departments of government to come together to find a solution that we all fight crime.

At a high level, Jeremy, the problem that we have as a country is that we have nine different liquor laws. So provinces use these local laws to drive their own agenda.

Maybe it is wise, maybe we need to start having a conversation that because we’re one country, why don’t we have just one liquor law because the issues of alcohol abuse affect everyone. You can’t have a situation where in Limpopo things are done differently to how they’re done in Gauteng.

JEREMY MAGGS: I’m wondering if liquor traders themselves are taking any measures right now to mitigate the potential impact given that the court hearing, if I’ve got my timelines right here, the court hearing is scheduled for a week after the implementation of the act.

LUCKY NTIMANE: We are talking to the members on the ground and there’s a lot of confusion and, hence, we’ll be reaching out to the MEC [Member of Executive Council, Rodgers Monama] to get from him whether he is going to suspend this pending the finalisation of the case, as we had asked.

There’s a reason why, Jeremy, why this case is not sitting tomorrow is because we had asked the MEC to revert back to us with a way forward on July 27, which was on a Thursday, because that would’ve given us enough time to file papers and give government 72 hours, as it’s required by the state. There’s a state law that requires that if you take government to court, they need to give them 72 hours.

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Then he has not responded, so we had to second-guess him on Friday when he kept quiet, and then we had to file our papers. The only date that we could get on an urgent basis was on August 8. But we really view this matter in a serious light and it’s very urgent. It’s unfortunate that through technicalities, maybe by design of the MEC, we are not able to sit in the court tomorrow.

JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think this could be a test case for the rest of the country?

LUCKY NTIMANE: I really believe so. If you look at currently, we’re dealing with a proposal by the Western Cape Liquor Authority to change some of the laws there and I can tell you, we are being consulted. We are making submissions and they’re getting back to us as an industry but also as taverns.

We are engaging with the Western Cape, and we don’t foresee a situation there where we’ll take each other to court because we’re able to resolve some of our differences in this consultation phase.

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But in Limpopo, there was never a consultation. The artists were never consulted, the entertainment was never consulted. This was just, I think, a dress rehearsal for what they had planned to do all along.

JEREMY MAGGS: Just a final question. Have you engaged with the large liquor suppliers in this respect?

LUCKY NTIMANE: So in our meeting that we had last week Monday with the MEC, we were joined by the Drinks Federation of South Africa [DFSA], which is an overarching body representing all the liquor manufacturers in South Africa. So by extension, the biggest manufacturers are also party to these conversations. But maybe I need to emphasise, they’re not party to the court case.

JEREMY MAGGS: Are they concerned?

LUCKY NTIMANE: They’re very much concerned because this is going to affect them. The biggest business in the liquor space in South Africa goes through taverns. The township carries a lot of this market. So if there is an impact in terms of sales, it is definitely going to affect them directly.

JEREMY MAGGS: Lucky Ntimane, thank you very much indeed.