Participants from SAB, the Beer Association of South Africa (Basa) and the National Liquor Traders Association said the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown restrictions had hurt the alcohol industry, particularly small-to-medium businesses. (Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Wine-related businesses are battling to survive South Africa’s fifth ban on alcohol since the first one was implemented last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
About 22% of grape producers, wineries and other businesses linked to the wine industry will probably not be able to survive the next year — and 46% of these are black-owned, according to a survey released on 9 July by the wine body, Vinpro.
The survey was released days before President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to announce whether there will be changes to the adjusted lockdown level 4 Covid-19 restrictions, including the alcohol ban, which will have been in place for 14 days by Sunday. The latest restrictions were imposed as cases soared during the country’s third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Some 549 respondents participated in Impact of Covid-19 on the Wine Value-Chain Survey, which was conducted from 3 to 5 July.
“Around two-thirds of all respondents’ revenue is generated from domestic wine sales, which reiterates the importance of domestic trade for the survival of the industry,” said Vinpro managing director Rico Basson.
“The local market is of particular importance to smaller wineries and black-owned brands, which are heavily reliant on sales channels such as their tasting rooms, hospitality offering and e-commerce.”
Drawing from the survey, Vinpro said if the current ban continued for another six weeks, only 51% of the wine industry would be able to uphold monthly expenses, while black-owned brands and farms would be able to fund only 31% of their payroll.
Basson said urgent government intervention was needed to ensure proper policing and to accelerate the ongoing national vaccination programme against the coronavirus.
“Covid-19 is endangering both the lives and livelihoods of South Africans. It is certainly not viable to cut off an entire industry’s lifeline every time there is a spike in infections, in part due to citizens not being disciplined, as well as delays in the vaccine roll-out,” he said.
A difficult balance
The government argues that alcohol bans have helped ensure that health centres dealing with Covid-19 patients are not burdened with trauma cases linked to drunken behaviour.
The South African Medical Resource Council (SAMRC) has previously described the relation between the alcohol ban and Covid-19 as “two colliding epidemics”.
Responding to Western Cape statistics retrieved between 13 July and 21 December 2020 last year on trauma admissions, it said the numbers showed that “with every relaxation of alcohol regulations, we see trauma numbers consistently increase”.
The trauma surveillance data showed a week-on-week increase of 25.7% in trauma admissions one week before implementing alcohol restrictions, and a decrease of 20% one week after the reinstitution of alcohol restrictions.
But the South African Liquor Brand Owners Association added its concerns to those of Vinpro about the negative economic effect of the ban in a statement.
The Restaurant Association of South Africa (RASA) said the ban “is terrible, it’s a pointless decision, it’s inhumane, it is destroying people’s livelihoods”.
“Close to a million jobs will be at risk over the next few weeks … We should be doing things differently, we should not just shut everything down like we did last year,” RASA’s Wendy Alberts posted on the association’s Facebook page on Thursday.
The South African Breweries (SAB), supported by RASA, has launched a court bid against the government, challenging the prohibition.“This ban affects more than one million livelihoods across the alcohol industry value chain, Mr President. This next ‘family meeting’ everything is on the line for our families,” the SAB said on Thursday in a direct appeal to Ramaphosa.
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