President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office has denied he was trying to distance himself from the government’s controversial cigarette ban after a tobacco lobby group questioned his non-involvement in the state’s legal defence of the decision, notes a Business Day report by legal writer Karyn Maughan.

In court papers filed late on Saturday, Fair Trade and Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) chair Sinenhlanhla Mnguni said it was ‘noteworthy’ that Ramaphosa, as head of state, ‘has failed to depose to any affidavit’ in the increasingly hostile court battle playing out between the organisation and Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Dlamini-Zuma insists that the decision to impose the ban, which is one of only two imposed globally, was driven by a desire to protect smokers from potentially fatal Covid-19 outcomes. She has said additional medical literature has bolstered the decision to impose the ban and renders Fita’s challenge to its rationality ‘clearly unsustainable’.

Mnguni disputes this and has accused Dlamini-Zuma of acting with bias, ‘which can only be motivated by an ulterior purpose’.

The Minister, he argues, ‘stops at nothing’ to achieve the ultimate goal, namely the indefinite banning of cigarettes and tobacco products in SA. He says Dlamini-Zuma has ‘regrettably assumed the role of legislature without due regard for the constitutional separation of powers and has used the powers vested in her (intended for a most deserving cause), to achieve the cessation of smoking’.

While that battle is due to be heard in the High Court in Pretoria tomorrow, Ramaphosa has yet to provide any explanation, under oath, for why he announced on 23 April that the cigarette ban would be lifted, only for Dlamini-Zuma to state, just days later, that it would remain in place.

A week ago, notes Business Day, Ramaphosa conceded he should have been the one to communicate the new decision, as his failure to do so ‘created a very unpleasant type of situation where people started saying that the Minister was undermining the President’.

Dlamini-Zuma has stated under oath that she and Ramaphosa are not ‘at odds’ over the ban.

However, Ramaphosa has not sought to explain in court papers why he made that initial announcement lifting the ban.

Presidency spokesperson Khusela Diko insisted that ‘the President is in no way distancing himself from the decision to continue the ban and the litigation’ by not filing an affidavit in the Fita case. She said it was appropriate that Dlamini-Zuma defend the regulations that put the cigarette ban in place because the law required that the person under whose name regulations are promulgated under the Disaster Management Act ‘defend them when they are attacked’.

Diko stated that Presidency DG Cassius Lubisi had filed a ‘confirmatory affidavit on behalf of the Presidency and as Secretary of Cabinet’ in the case, effectively meaning that Ramaphosa was not required to do so.

Mnguni, however, pointed out that Lubisi’s affidavit centred on the confidentiality of National Coronavirus Command Council minutes and in no way addressed Ramaphosa’s 23 April announcement that the ban would be lifted, and what had motivated it.

Full Business Day report (subscription needed)