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The Beer Association of South Africa has issued an urgent call to President Cyril Ramaphosa to lift the blanket ban on alcohol from 16 January.
BASA said this would be imperative to ensure the survival of small business owners of craft breweries, who now find themselves on the brink of closure due to the third alcohol ban.
CEO, Wendy Pienaar, said they have been “inundated” with calls from members who have been left depleted of their savings and reserves, and are now in desperate need of financial relief if they are to survive.
“The third ban is devastating to craft brewers, who are small business owners who work within small margins, always putting the welfare of their staff before their own. It was now no longer a question of keeping businesses open, but has become a question of whether business owners, their employees, and families will have any food to eat this month,” she said.
Pienaar said it was the same people who stepped up during the hard lockdown to produce soap and stew in the brewhouses to feed over two million people.
She said BASA remains aware of the severity of the crisis facing the nation as it battles Covid19, and supports all efforts to curb the infection rate, but Pienaar said everyone needed to work together to save both lives and livelihoods in this fight.
“Basa is therefore calling on President Ramaphosa to consider the plight of craft brewers by not extending the blanket alcohol ban beyond 15 January,” she said.
