Nicola Mawson|Published
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana faces renewed calls to set out a timetable for alcohol pricing reform in Wednesday’s mini-budget, with public health advocates warning that further delays will come at a cost to lives and public services.
Rethink Your Drink, an alcohol harm-reduction campaign by the DG Murray Trust, wants the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) to provide a roadmap for minimum unit pricing, alongside excise tax reform and stronger enforcement against illicit alcohol trading.
Minimum unit pricing would establish a floor price based on the amount of alcohol in a product, targeting cheap, high-strength drinks without imposing the same price increase across all alcoholic beverages.
The campaign says moderate drinkers currently pay roughly R12 per standard drink, compared with as little as R1.53 among heavy drinkers.
R3 a drink
It cites South African modelling suggesting that a minimum price of R3 per standard drink could reduce consumption among heavy drinkers by 11.9%, compared with 0.3% among moderate drinkers.
Those are modelled population-level effects, however, and do not establish how people living with alcohol use disorder would respond. Alcohol dependence is a medical condition, and pricing measures are not a substitute for treatment and support.
Kashifa Ancer, project lead for Rethink Your Drink, says minimum pricing would give government another means of addressing harmful drinking without relying exclusively on excise increases.
“MUP gives government another lever to reduce harmful drinking without relying on excise increases alone,” Ancer says. “But it is not a substitute. If excise taxes are reformed, MUP must come with them. The strongest approach is to use both tools together.”
The SONA
The demand follows President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address in February, when he identified minimum unit pricing and higher excise duties among measures being considered to curb excessive alcohol consumption.
Ramaphosa also called on provinces to limit the density of liquor outlets, restrict trading hours and end the sale of alcohol in large containers.
National Treasury has already examined minimum unit pricing in its review of alcohol taxation, published for public comment in November 2024.
The debate comes amid disagreement over the scale of South Africa’s illicit alcohol market and whether higher taxes necessarily encourage consumers to move away from legally produced alcohol.
As IOL reported in August, University of Cape Town economist Corné van Walbeek challenged industry claims that illicit alcohol consumption increased by 55% between 2017 and 2024.
Growing in use
Van Walbeek’s analysis found that consumption of tax-paid alcohol increased by 24.2% over the same period, while per-capita consumption rose by 8.3%, despite declining per-capita GDP and disposable income.
In addition, Van Walbeek questioned whether the research commissioned by the alcohol industry provided sufficient evidence to establish the claimed growth in illicit consumption.
Van Walbeek did not dispute the existence of illicit trade, but argued that its scale and growth required more credible evidence. The industry’s position is that widening price differences between taxed and untaxed alcohol could strengthen illegal suppliers, threatening jobs and government revenue.
Rethink Your Drink argues that illicit-trade enforcement and pricing reform should proceed together, rather than treating one as a reason to delay the other.
Violence
The campaign also links alcohol reform to the government’s efforts to reduce gender-based violence, while emphasising that alcohol does not cause such violence or excuse perpetrators.
Ancer says the MTBPS should establish policy decisions and implementation timelines ahead of the February 2027 Budget.
“Every year of delay comes at a cost to lives, public health services and children’s futures,” she says.
In addition, the National Responsible Gambling Programme’s helpline triage and assessments revealed that 35% of individuals contacting the helpline for the first time reported higher alcohol consumption levels, with 61% of individuals stating they did not consume alcohol.
Godongwana is scheduled to deliver the MTBPS in Parliament at 2pm on Wednesday. The statement is expected to update government’s fiscal projections and spending priorities, rather than announce the detailed tax measures normally reserved for the main Budget.
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