Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane File picture: African News Agency (ANA) Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane File picture: African News Agency (ANA)
Cape Town – Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane will lobby the national government to prohibit the sale of alcohol again in the province should its people continue to break lockdown regulations while queueing to buy alcohol.
“Protecting lives is more important than alcohol sales,” said Mabuyane, reflecting on the first week of alcohol sales under level 3 of the lockdown.
Some of the people who spoke to Independent Media in East London said their “panic buying” of alcohol last week was due to “fears” that the government might ban its sale again.
Mabuyane said if people continued to violate lockdown regulations by not physically distancing when queueing to buy alcohol, the province “will be left with no choice but to lobby the national government to prohibit the sale of alcohol again”.
“I am afraid if the scenes of long queues in liquor outlets were anything to go by, we might see a spike in infections. This defeats the very same essence of saying people must stay at home, maintain social distance and adhere to proper hygiene,” said Mabuyane.
The Eastern Cape Department of Transport and Safety reported on June 2 that 10 people were killed in road accidents within the 24 hours since the unbanning of alcohol sales.
The department’s spokesperson, Unathi Binqose, said alcohol had been cited as a major contributing factor to the majority of these accidents.
At the weekend, the department reported 12 road deaths. In one of the accidents, at T12 road towards Matatiele, Binqose said the driver was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. This was after a female pensioner was killed in an accident. On the N6 road from East London towards Stutterheim, two pedestrians were knocked down and declared dead on scene. The driver was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and charged with reckless and negligent driving. The Eastern Cape has the highest number of Covid-19 infections in the country after the Western Cape.
In his weekly newsletter yesterday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We know that some of the infections in the province (Eastern Cape) were the result of people travelling from the Western Cape.
"What this tells us is that no part of the country is an island It is for this reason also that people are not permitted to travel between provinces while the country is at alert level 3, except under specific circumstances.”