South Africans travelling abroad are often gobsmacked by the price of booze, especially in European countries. It’s not only our weak rand at play there, it’s also the fact that governments impose high taxes on alcohol to discourage consumption.
A similar thing has been proposed by Treasury and it is being fought tooth and nail by the big alcohol industry icons. SA Breweries – via its CEO Richard Rivett-Carnac – believes that putting a minimum price per unit of alcohol would hurt the poor by making booze more expensive.
Longtime community health expert Dr David Harrison – CEO of the DG Murray Trust – disagrees vehemently with this, pointing out on our pages today that the death rate from alcohol in poorer communities is 4½ times higher than wealthier ones. Surely that would come down if booze prices went up? Harrison also points out that SAB sells its one-litre bottles of beer 2½ times cheaper than the equivalent in cans.
One litre of this cheaper beer is enough to put a person “well above the legal driving limit of 0.05%”.
Given that booze destroy lives, sparks gender-based violence and costs taxpayer money in repairing the damage it causes, we support the idea of hiking the price.
This article was published by The Citizen on 12 August 2025. The Citizen also published a version of our media statement on August 12, 2025.
