Legal counsel for South Africa’s Cooperative Governance Minister told the Western Cape High Court that it is bound by last month’s ruling to uphold the ban on tobacco product sales, reported IOL.

Andrew Breitenbach, the legal counsel for Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, said that a precedent had been set by the Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association (FITA) case, where a full bench of the Pretoria high court found that the decision to impose the tobacco sales ban was legal and rational. According to the report, Breitenbach told the court, “There is a reason for this and it is called legal certainty.”
On August 4, the court heard the representative for British American Tobacco SA (BATSA), Alfred Cockrell SC, argue that Dlamini Zuma had failed to pass the legal test of necessity when the ban was implemented. Cockrell argued that it could not be proved that it was necessary to prevent smokers from smoking, because there was no conclusive scientific literature linking tobacco consumption to a greater likelihood of contracting a severe case of COVID-19.
According to the report, BATSA told the court that South Africa had lost USD 1.9 million a day in excise taxes since the ban was implemented on March 27. However, Breitenbach responded that the consequences of smoking cost the country around USD 2.3 billion per year, and that, in total, the South African Revenue Service collected approximately USD 2.6 billion in revenue taxes the previous year, the majority of which came from tobacco and alcohol.
Judgement in the case was reserved.