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After facing widespread criticism on some of its lockdown regulations, the government on Thursday moved to publish new regulations allowing for more e-commerce activity.
This means that online stores can sell a whole range of products except for alcohol and tobacco.
In the updated regulations published on Thursday, trade & industry minister Ebrahim Patel, who has previously opposed unfettered e-commerce activity during the lockdown, said “e-commerce can be a critical enabler to opening the economy through contactless transactions, which can reduce the movement of consumers, and the density of shoppers in retail spaces ”.
“Further it can accelerate innovation, support local manufacturing and increase access by the informal market and poorer South Africans.”
Patel said e-commerce is an important retail platform, however appropriate health and safety protocols need to be put in place which can allow the full e-commerce activities.
DA MP and trade and industry spokesperson Dean Macpherson welcomed the move to allow more e-commerce.
“The minister should not be applauded for doing what was clearly the right and logical thing from the very beginning,” Macpherson said.
He said, however, “this is a humiliating about-turn for the minister after initially banning e-commerce for the irrational reason of it not being ‘fair’.”
This repositioning by Patel follows unrelenting public pressure and legal action that the DA had initiated today in the High Court against the banning of unfettered access to e-commerce.
“Minister Patel has had to learn a painful lesson that citizens will not tolerate his high-handed ideological madness that he is currently inflicting on us as he seeks to determine what freedoms and rights people should enjoy under the lockdown.
“The DA hopes that this backtracking by the minister will be followed up with him removing the regulations on clothing and how you may wear them which he gazetted on Tuesday evening,” Macpherson said.
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