Critical Consumer Pat Sidley
MOST South African consumers had a magnificent year. The disenfranchised majority acquired and used that precious commodity — a vote — and got the government they wanted.
This government in turn often proved more responsive to consumer needs than the last lot. Its interventions ranged from keeping the maize price at bay to suggesting consumers boycott bread after the last huge millers’ increase (perhaps letting them eat cake).
The new government introduced some changes through its reconstruction and development programme and its Health Ministry that have provided the greatest boon to consumers this country has ever seen. Pregnant women and children under six years old have are getting their health care free and despite the moans, groans and accusations of bureaucratic bungling in the introduction of this change, its benefits are huge and outweigh any hiccups which may have occurred in the system.
Additionally, school children in impoverished circumstances are being fed by the state — another major benefit to the consumers of the country. These children are our future.
For this critical consumer, one change has recognised a hobby-horse long ridden: the tobacco companies are feeling the pinch of a minister of health less susceptible than her predecessors to the usual pressure from the usual quarters. Dr Nkosazana Zuma has stood up to them — and more is to come.
An area she could devote some of that tough stuff to sooner rather than later is seeing to it that the industry keeps to some ethical norms — like honesty about price increases. After all, it is the government that the industry is tainting with a suggestion that its regulations have inspired two tobacco price rises this year.
Dr Yussuf Saloojee, executive director of the National Council Against Smoking, relates sitting in a meeting this year with the Ministries of Finance, Health and the tobacco industry representative, Thys Visser of Rembrandt. The occasion was the pre-Budget discussion in which Health was seeking to increase the tax on cigarattes.
Saloojee said that Visser begged for minimal increases in the tax on tobacco, citing the precarious state of the industry. However, the moment the Budget was announced, the industry increased prices, more than doubling the hike caused by tax. The tax increase was 14,22 cents for 20 cigarettes. The industry increase brought it up to an extra 40 cents for a pack of 20.
They’ve just done it again. With warnings on packaging expected at the end of May, the industry, citing the new requirements on packaging six months from now put the price up by another 10 percent.
No doubt in January and February, when the pre-Budget shake-down takes place, Zuma, Saloojee and others will hear them pleading hard times and please to keep the tax down.
The other area that needs Zuma’s attention is sports sponsorships. The terrible twins of the anti-smoking lobby, Saloojee and Derek Yach of the Medical Research Council, have called for the prevention of the use of tobacco sponsorships in sport.
In an article for the South African Medical Journal, Saloojee and Yach state that tobacco sponsorship “creates a dependency among sports administrators”. They illustrate this contention with the Australian example of test cricketer Greg Matthews who was fined A$8 000 by the Australian Cricket Board for appearing in a government- backed anti-smoking advertisement. They defended their action, according to the authors, by stating that “we have to protect the interests of our sponsors”.
The contribution in 1992 by the tobacco companies to South African sports sponsorships was 3,3 percent of the total, or R8-million out of R240-million, according to Saloojee and Yach.
In the United States, tobacco companies now spend more on sports sponsorships than on advertising their products directly. “The same trend is likely in South Africa unless stringent counter measures are taken,” they say.
Sports sponsorships, say the authors, also get around the SABC’s ban on tobacco advertising on television.
Research has been done which shows the link between advertising and smoking, and it’s enough to encourage the companies to continue sponsorships. In one study mentioned by Saloojee and Yach “a third of 10 and 11-year-olds were able to name cigarette brands and sponsored sport. This indicates the power of sports sponsorships in putting cigarette brand names in associated sports imagery into children’s memory.”
They recommend an increased tobacco tax to be used as a source of funding for a health promotion foundation. One such operation in Victoria in Australia contributed “three to four times more to sport than had the tobacco companies. Beneficiaries included a number of sports, like table tennis, which previously were unable to attract sponsors.”
They also call for a ban on sponsorship of scientific research. This, they say, should apply to sports scientists — by which presumably they would include sports medicine professor Tim Noakes at the University of Cape Town. UCT recently accepted a R20-million sports sponsorship from the tobacco industry. (Noakes was not available for comment this week.)
They conclude that “South African sport can ill afford becoming dependent on an industry that is responsible for considerable death, disease, and disability in the country”.
Will the creative energy that goes into some of those great movie advertisements for cigarettes be put into anti- smoking equivalents? It would be nice to see those toffy- nosed Dunhill types coughing their lungs out; or the witty Gauloise man, who allows the dog to run away with his pants before lighting up, being savaged by a bull terrier.