Will African states use Covid-19 to grab more power?
May 15, 2020
3 minutes
By Peter Fabricius
never let a good crisis go to waste, SirWinston Churchill may, or may not, have said. Many politicians and economists are now taking that advice anyway, capitalising on the Covid-19 crisis, to advance their own agendas or justify their pet theories.
In South Africa, for instance, the a strong anti-smoker, seems controversially to have browbeaten President Cyril Ramaphosa into reversing policy and imposing a ban on tobacco and cigarette sales during the lockdown. The minister of trade and industry, Ebrahim Patel, likewise banned e-commerce partly because of “the impact on other businesses”.
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