Don’t let booze be a headache

Whatever their motives, many South Africans are going to get stuck into the booze now that the government has lifted the ban on alcohol sales as part of the relaxed Level 2 Covid-19 lockdown regulations.

One motive might be to celebrate; after all, it has been a dry five weeks since the authorities reimposed the liquor ban … and we’ve had precious little good news since the start of this pandemic, albeit now the infection numbers seem to be in decline. The other motive – and probably more likely, given the current state of our country on many fronts – would be for people to drown their sorrows.

The benefits of the surge in the curve of boozing is that it will definitely put money back in the pockets of the alcohol and agricultural industries, which have been hard-hit by the bans. Excess could also mean success for those sectors of the economy, like restaurants and hospitality establishments, which make their real money off liquor sales.

Whether this accelerated spending will help save the hundreds of businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs which have already been lost, remains to be seen… although the prognosis doesn’t look good.

The downside of the binge drinking and hoarding, which will undoubtedly characterise this phase of the lockdown, is that if drunken behaviour gets out of hand – through the increased violence and drunken driving, which quickly fills the beds in our hospitals – we run the risk of the ban being put back.

And apart from that, sooner or later, we are all going to have to return to earth. That is what is known as a hangover – and the one from Covid-19 will be terrible. After all, like the boozer who mixes his drinks, mixing our government with a crisis is a recipe for an enormous headache.

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