DA welcomes Patel’s decision to unban e-commerce

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomed the unbanning of all e-commerce by Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel during the lockdown.

With immediate effect, Patel announced on Thursday that it has now been legalised for online stores to sell anything other than booze and cigarettes under Level 4 regulations.

In a statement, DA MP Dean Macpherson said Patel should not be applauded for doing what was clearly the right and logical thing from the very beginning.

“Make no mistake, this is a humiliating about-turn for the minister after initially banning e-commerce for the irrational reason of it not being ‘fair’.

“This repositioning by the minister follows unrelenting public pressure and legal action that the DA had initiated today in the high court against the banning of unfettered access to e-commerce by South Africans,” he said.

READ: You can now buy anything but tobacco and booze online

Macpherson said the minister had to learn a “painful lesson that citizens will not tolerate his high-handed ideological madness that he was currently inflicting on us as he seeks to determine what freedoms and rights people should enjoy under the lockdown”.

He said the DA hoped that the unbanning of e-commerce by Patel would be followed up with him removing the regulations on clothing and how people may wear them, which he gazetted on Tuesday evening.

“This moral victory for the country on e-commerce is testament to the powerful voice of South Africans and the DA in unison to regain sensibility during this lockdown crisis which has now inflicted pain and suffering on many more people than it should have,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, a lobby group called The Restaurant Collective said they were disappointed that President Cyril Ramaphosa did not ease restrictions to allow “call and collect” immediately for meals’ service – but is hoping the government will allow sit-down restaurants for Level 3 of the lockdown.

(Compiled by Molefe Seeletsa. Additional reporting, Brendan Seery)

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