THEMBINKOSI GCOYI: Policing lifestyles, the new obsession of our governing class

South Africans must rank among the most accommodating citizens to government interference with their lifestyles.

While acquiescence has always seemed to be a particularly dominant citizen trait, the Covid-19 pandemic showed how open most citizens are to government control when they believe this to be in the common good. In a lot of instances this should be applauded, as it demonstrates that most citizens recognise the government’s legitimacy to exercise power. After all, SA is a functioning democracy.

However, it is becoming clear that this government takes for granted the people’s acquiescence. This is especially the case when it believes the majority view aligns with its own. When it comes to drinking and smoking in particular, South Africans tend to be conservative, and almost always acquiesce to government policies that encroach on the rights of individuals to make decisions about their private lives.

For instance, most South Africans agree that alcohol plays a role in elevated social decay, including gender-based violence, road accidents and murder. Thus, any measures to control drinking are considered justifiable in the eyes of many. Similarly, many South Africans view smoking as a dirty habit and tend to support legislation that seemingly seeks to protect non-smokers by limiting the rights of smokers.

It is troubling, though, that South Africans so readily accept other government laws that interfere with their personal choices without much resistance. Two recent examples of this malady are the Limpopo Liquor Act — the “midnight law” — which came into effect on August 1, and the Tobacco Products & Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, which is under consideration by parliament’s health portfolio committee.

The Limpopo Liquor Act prohibits the sale of liquor after midnight by any and all establishments, including bars, taverns, shebeens and nightclubs. According to the province’s MEC for economic development, environment & tourism, Rodgers Monama, the department “plays a critical role in reducing alcohol abuse and supports moderate drinking as opposed to unsafe nightlife at various drinking outlets which continue to serve our people alcohol during hours beyond midnight”.

The hubris inherent in this statement from a public office-bearer is unfathomable. Essentially, the MEC has given himself the power to decide how the people of Limpopo should socialise. In his view the people of Limpopo, who he refers to as “our people”, should drink moderately and in their homes before midnight, and any behaviour outside those boundaries should be regulated by law. That legally licensed outfits can sell alcohol to people over the legal drinking age of 18 years is of no consequence to him.

The Tobacco Products & Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill seeks to punish adult smokers and vapers, as well as the purveyors of these products. This includes big tobacco companies, small vaping companies, as well as informal traders, spazas and shebeens. The legislation proposes sentences ranging from three months and 20 years in jail for such ghastly infractions as smoking in your own house or in your own vehicle when there is a non-smoker or non-vaper present.

Incredibly, it empowers neighbours to report each other to the police for smoking on their own properties, should the smoke have the temerity to waft across fences. Judging from the self-congratulation from the department of health and the antinicotine lobby, it appears many South Africans are delighted at the prospect of sticking it to smokers/vapers. 

In all the fanfare and celebration of these Stalinist laws and regulations many citizens have forgotten to ask what the root causes of excessive drinking and the growing numbers of smokers in SA might be. I don’t have the answer to this, but to the extent that the government knows the answers it glosses over them because these laws affect people whose rights are apparently not worth defending in the eyes of many.

Yet every encroachment into private life invites the next encroachment. The more a government realises that it is possible to legislate against behaviour and habits it does not like the more emboldened it will become to target the things that may be close to our hearts.

Today it is the turn of alcohol and tobacco. Tomorrow it may be sugar, salt, cake, potato crisps or any number of other items or behaviour our public health police deem to be bad for us. Already, moves are afoot in this area, with hare-brained campaigns for food labelling and further reducing the sugar content of sugar-sweetened beverages. Where does this government overreach stop? 

Many of us take these policies by the government as an actual attempt by the government to alter behaviour. Nothing could be further from the truth. Given the state of policing in SA, the sale of liquor will undoubtedly continue beyond midnight across Limpopo. All the law will achieve is to force many traders to be inventive about how they hawk their wares to their patrons outside the law. It will also open a gap for non-licensed entities to trade outside the law, possibly opening avenues for sale to under 18s. As the Covid-19 lockdowns taught us, nature and innovative South Africans abhor a vacuum.

Such a situation erodes public trust in the rule of law, as citizens witness a widening gap between what is prescribed and what is practised. This disconnection can breed a culture of noncompliance, where individuals disregard the laws as a matter of course, knowing they are unlikely to face consequences.

Ultimately, it creates an environment where law-abiding citizens feel unfairly burdened, while those intent on breaking the rules continue to do so with impunity. As in Covid-19, legal traders will obey the new drinking laws, syndicates are guaranteed to spring up and fill the unmet post-midnight demand.

As for tobacco control, proposed measures are hopelessly out of touch with the reality of SA’s tobacco market and the factors driving rising smoking rates. A market saturated with illicit products cannot be fixed by the imposition of yet more regulations on a compliant industry and smokers.

Blaming vaping for increasing smoking rates among the youth fails to account for the entirely predictable outcomes of cheap tobacco flooding the market through illicit channels. Any argument to the contrary demonstrates a bias towards pre-packaged solutions that do not take account of SA’s circumstances.

Lest we forget, dictatorships do not beat drums announcing their arrival and intentions. They creep in through innocent-sounding policies and regulations ostensibly designed to protect citizens from themselves, while ceding excessive powers to the government.

South Africans will do well to remain vigilant against heavy-handed regulations that infantilise voters in the name of high-sounding, moralistic views about acceptable conduct of private affairs. 

Gcoyi is MD of Frontline Africa Advisory. He writes in his personal capacity.