The planned protest - started and shared via a Facebook lobby group called Unite Against The Tobacco Ban - was expected to be held at the Union Buildings on Tuesday and in nine other places around the country. Marches went ahead in Cape Town and Durban.
Civic group Unite Against The Tobacco Ban staged a protest outside parliament in Cape Town on Tuesday, demanding that the ban on tobacco, tobacco products, e-cigarettes and related products be lifted with immediate effect.Smokers marching against the ban on tobacco products said their rights to protest were violated when police officers waited for them at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
When SowetanLIVE's sister publication TimesLIVE arrived in Pretoria, a few protesters - all wearing masks - also arrived, but were turned away by police. The officers said the gathering was illegal."We have the right to protest. To say we don't under the Disaster Management Act is not correct," he said."The police were already here. The captain came and showed us the regulations and said we were not allowed to be here. They warned us," he said.
" It's clear to me they don't care what people say. The people have no say or rights. It seems like democracy is dead in South Africa," he said. Durban resident, Charlene Wannenburg, is not a smoker but was one of four people who picketed outside the Durban magistrate's court. "We haven't had access to legal cigarettes since lockdown because they cost more than R1,000 a carton, so we have been buying illegal ones for about R650. I have a sore throat because every day I'm smoking a different brand. A packet lasts me a day and a night and maybe half of the morning, so I am not a heavy smoker," said Pienaar.
Protester Adrianne Gopper, said:"I am a smoker. It's my life and my choice. I decided to start smoking from the age of 23 and taking that away from me is against my constitutional right. We are paying ridiculous prices."
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