Tax Justice's Abramjee files affidavit in support of BATSA ahead of tobacco ban court challenge

Cape Town – Activist Yusuf Abramjee, the founder of Tax Justice South Africa, has filed an affidavit in the Western Cape High Court in support of a bid by the local unit of British American Tobacco to overturn the government's four-month-old ban on cigarette sales.

He said the case, set down for hearing on Wednesday and Thursday, gave the court a choice between protecting the country's honest citizens and their constitutional rights or a government that made arbitrary regulations and criminals coining it in the booming tobacco black market. “Whether our lawmakers must adhere to the Constitution and common sense, or if dictators lead by decree and personal agendas."

Hence the case would decide whether criminals continued to get rich or whether almost 300 000 people who worked in or depended on the legal tobacco industry for a living survived, he added.

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