Opinion by Dave Marsh
Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula, tonight (August 25) positively glowed with moral rectitude as he hammered nails in the coffin of the major national challenge – resurrecting the tourism sector and youth unemployment.
It will be up to the private sector associations in tourism to awaken him to the importance of the sector and how zero alcohol levels for drivers will smash the best hope of the unemployed to get gainful employment.
Business conferences, business lunches and even weddings will be few and far between with the introduction of zero alcohol tolerance for anyone in the driving seat of a car.
What will happen to car hire when he effectively puts an end to people drinking on long flights to South Africa – or even domestic routes? Depending upon your departure point a single drink in the departure airport could land you in jail when you arrive.
As with the irrational smoking ban, our minister wants us to lead the world. Without offering any evidence as to how many people are responsible for accidents when complying with the current law, he is making sure the tourism and hospitality industry shrinks drastically at a time it is on its knees.
His law appears to be a cop out for enforcing internationally acceptable alcohol levels that allow people to socialise without being a danger to others. He ignored how the smoking ban criminalised people, that few people stopped smoking and that it will fuel rampant police corruption.
He implies that his new law will save the country R18.2 billion (€917m) – the cost of drunken driving to the country – hardly enough to keep the relatively few people employed at SAA for even a year.
Meantime, according to Statistics South Africa, 63% of the country’s unemployed are aged between 15 and 34 years. Tourism is the greatest hope for these inexperienced people to get a job.
Well it was. Unless our Minister of Tourism, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane – and the associations that represent this sector – urgently explain the unintended consequences of this law.
