Nothing to toast in proposed liquor laws

ARE you old enough to remember apartheid liquor policy? How it affected black South Africans? Drunk cyclists and pedestrians everywhere? Blacks forced to buy from whites? Restricted trading hours forcing people to drink faster? Endemic black alcohol abuse?

Because the Department of Trade and Industry remembers it, it is scrapping the last vestiges of that ghastly legacy. Its National Liquor Policy opines that liquor has been characterised by "disparities informed by historical legacies (that) created a large informal liquor segment whereby many unlicensed liquor outlets operated and continue to operate", and that apartheid liquor policy caused "countless raids, harassment, arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment of African people (and) led to social breakdown, family violence, alcohol-related diseases, crime and accidents in poor communities". A large illegal liquor trade "mushroomed".

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