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Democratic Alliance interim leader, John Steenhuisen, has accused Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of lying to the nation about the reasons behind the continued ban on cigarette sales.
He said that in an earlier statement, the Minister said the decision was partly based on some 2000 objections received earlier from members of the public.
However, Steenhuisen said in court papers opposing a legal challenge by the Fair-Trade Independent Tobacco Association, Dlamini-Zuma attached submissions that show that there were not 2000 submissions, but 1 535.
He said of those, 47% had nothing to with cigarettes or smoking, 23.3% were in favour of smoking and only 29.6% supported the ban which he said amounted to just 454 submissions.
“Clearly the minister was lying to South Africans in order to further her own pre-determined agenda,” Steenhuisen said.
“The question is when the minister said on live television that government took that into consideration, debated the matter, looked at it, was she implicating the rest of the National Command Council in this lie, or did she herself deceive her cabinet colleagues?”
“Either way, this conduct renders her wholly unfit to occupy the position of a cabinet minister, and particularly one with such sweeping powers under the Disaster Management Act,” the DA leader said.
He said it was, of course, immaterial whether 2,000 or 454 people wrote in to support the ban as this had never been the basis for the formulation of any other lockdown regulations.
Steenhuisen said had the president himself not assured South Africans mere days earlier that cigarettes would go back on sale under Level 4, the submissions opposing the ban would most likely have dwarfed any support.
“But, the fact that Minister Dlamini Zuma took the decision to make up a number of alleged supporting submissions and then lie to the people of South Africa in her briefing should be grounds for immediate suspension from her position,” he charged.
