Subcouncil 19 recommends that the application for extension of liquor licence trading hours received from reference no WCP/039030 PICK ‘N PAY LAKESIDE be REFUSED for:
1. Monday to Saturday from 18:00 to 20:00, and
2. Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00 for off-consumption purposes.
For the following reasons:
Clause 9 h) of the City’s by-law - CONTROL OF UNDERTAKINGS THAT SELL LIQUOR TO THE PUBLIC” – requires that the City must, reasonably and fairly consider whether it is in the public interest to approve or grant an extension of trading days or hours;
From research into this issue the following extracts regarding the harmful effects of alcohol abuse are submitted as being relevant:
1. Extracted from the Daily Maverick of 15 July 2018:
– “A new study by BMC medicine has shown that 1 in 10 deaths in South Africa can be attributed to alcohol abuse in some way – with men in low income groups the most at risk”.
– “Overall, approximately 62 300 adults died of alcohol-attributable causes of death in South Africa in 2015.
– “the approximation of one in 10 (~12%) people dying from alcohol-related causes is much higher than the previous estimate of 7% in 2010, showing that there is a growing problem in the country.
2. Extracted from the South African Alcohol Policy Alliance paper on Alcohol in South Africa:
– “South Africa is among the top five countries in the world that have the highest consumption of absolute alcohol per drinker per year, the second highest category of harmful patterns of drinking and the highest category for past year heavy episodic drinking.”
– “53% of fatal (Harris & Van Kneejerk 2002) and up to 73% of non-fatal (Plüddemann et al. 2004) interpersonal violence injuries tested positive for alcohol in urban areas of South Africa in 2001.
– “Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is prevalent in the country particularly in the Western Cape. 42% of farm workers were found to have drunk during pregnancy. In research conducted in the Western Cape the prevalence of FAS was found to be 46 per 1000 in 1997 and 75 per 1000 in 1999.”
3. Extracted from the Douglas George Murray – Stephen Harrison Legislative Review September 2021
– “The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies regulation of the public or commercial availability of alcohol as an important way to reduce alcohol-related harms, including murders and assaults, and to prevent easy access to alcohol by vulnerable and high-risk groups. The reduction of hours or days of sale of alcoholic beverages is recommended by the WHO as a key strategy in this regard”.
– This strategy has been expressly adopted into South Africa’s policy framework for the regulation of alcohol. South Africa’s National Liquor Policy, 2016, makes this clear:
“To reduce the harmful use of alcohol, it is also important to regulate the availability of liquor. One of the strategies to reduce the availability of liquor includes the need to regulate days and hours when liquor sales should be permitted. Liquor authorities and municipalities need to control access to liquor by restricting time for sales of liquor”
4. Extracted from the White Paper - Western Cape alcohol-related harms reduction policy.
– “The WHO ranks South Africa as the country with the highest per capita alcohol consumption in Africa, referring to the total recorded and unrecorded litres of alcohol consumed as an average of the 15+ year population. The average consumption of pure alcohol per drinker, which excludes abstainers in the population, is estimated at 27,1 litres per year; this places South African drinkers in the fifth highest position on the continent and at the upper end of global consumption.”
– “The alcohol industry makes a considerable contribution to South Africa’s economy, with the latest independent costing study estimating that the manufacturing and retail of alcohol contributed R93,2 billion to the South African economy in 2009, or 2,9 per cent of the GDP. However, the economic contribution of the liquor industry is dwarfed by the costs of alcohol consumption, which was estimated at between R245 to 280 billion in b2009 (10 – 12 per cent of GDP)”
– “Reducing the availability of alcohol is a WHO “best buy” to reduce alcohol-related harms, because decreasing alcohol trading hours is among the most effective and cost-effective alcohol-related harms prevention strategies.”
– “Cutting hours and days of trade reduces the consumption of alcohol and leads to reduced alcohol-related harms. A systematic review found that increasing trading by two hours increases harms, so a two-hour reduction is anticipated to reduce harms.”
– “Reducing the amount of time business owners sell alcohol would mitigate the harms that their surrounding communities are shouldering. Reducing alcohol-related harms is also in the broad business community’s interest. Alcohol is related to 72 per cent of lost productivity in general and diminished workplace productivity accounted for 45,9 per cent of alcohol-related costs.”
It is clear that what is applied here is diametrically opposed to what is recommended by the World Health Organisation, the National Government, the Western Cape Government and many Non-Governmental Organisations.
In assessing this specific application, no special reason or site specific condition could be found that would support extended hours in the public interest. The sub-council can find no benefit to the local or wider community.
The application is therefore not considered to be in the public interest and is not supported by Sub-Council 19.
