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By IOL Reporter 
6h ago
Cape Town – Despite the lifting of the cigarette ban in late August, in a reserved ruling, the Western Cape Superior Court ruled on Friday that the ban on tobacco sales during the lockdown was not constitutional.
British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) and others had taken the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), President Cyril Ramaphosa, and the National Coronavirus Command Council to court in May over a ban on the sale of tobacco products. tobacco.
The three Western Cape Superior Court judges who presided over the case said Regulation 45, which Cogta Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma relied on to effect the ban, “cannot and does not stand up to constitutional scrutiny,” News24 reported.
They said that “the respondents have not demonstrated that regulation 45 is necessary or that it met and / or promoted the objectives” of the National Law on Disaster Management.
Because of this, the judges ruled that the regulation was ultra vires, which means the government acted beyond its powers, TimesLive reported.
The government had argued that the ban was aimed at preventing intensive care units from being flooded by smokers. BATSA maintained, however, that the government had not justified the ban in law or science.
The court ruled that each party should pay its own costs because the ban on the ban had already been lifted and because the government was dealing with something completely new and had to act quickly.
“Respondents had a constitutional and moral obligation to act quickly at a time when very little was known about the Covid-19 pandemic. Fining them with costs would be, in any circumstance, unjustified,” the ruling reads.
The court had heard the arguments of the case for two days, on August 5 and 6.
“Two weeks after the reservation of the sentence, the ban on the sale of tobacco and related products was lifted. The effect of the prohibition, prima facie, makes the questions raised during the hearing debatable and an incompetent verdict, ”the sentence reads.
However, due to a number of factors, the court ruled that it was “in the interest of justice to determine the merits of the case despite the controversy”, including the fact that the state of disaster has not yet been lifted and it is “a possibility that the violation reported in the current case will be repeated in the future.”
MESS
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