Cape Town club, bar owners "won't back down" in new liquor bylaw battle

A group of disgruntled club, bar and restaurant owners say they won't back down in their battle with Cape Town over its liquor bylaw and will push ahead with legal action despite the city's decision to put the brakes on the legislation.

The Club, Bar and Restaurant Association of the Western Cape says it has already paid legal costs amounting to R100 000 and is awaiting a legal opinion from its advocate Jan Heunis. The legal opinion is expected on Monday.

On Wednesday the city said it would not gazette amendments to the bylaw while it awaits a legal review of the legislation.

The association said at a meeting yesterday that it was still planning to interdict the city from implementing its bylaw once certain amendments have been gazetted.

Yesterday the city issued a statement saying that it had commissioned a legal review of its new bylaw before any amendments were gazetted.

Zeeshaan Nordien, a spokesman for the group, said the fact that the city won't be gazetting the amendments today came as "good news for us". "But they are just looking at little flaws. They are probably going to have a much stronger bylaw and won't look at the constitutionality of it and how it's going to impact on us. But we've got some breathing space."

He said they would go after the Western Cape Liquor Act once the bylaw was out of the way.

Vusa Mazula, owner of Zula Sound Bar in Long Street, said it was important that the group didn't "melt away" like it did last year when the liquor bylaw was gathering steam.

The club owners also took a swipe at the city's research, saying a lot of the case studies were done overseas in "small villages".

Justifying the bylaw, the city said research had shown that the reduction of alcohol trading hours had had a positive impact on alcohol abuse.

The city gave an example of a study in Diadems near São Paolo, Brazil, which found that a new law forcing bars to close at 11pm had the effect of reducing murders by 106 a year or 30 per 100 000 of the population. It said prior to the new law most bars traded 24 hours a day. Diadems has a population of 357 064, according to Wikipedia, as opposed to Cape Town's 3.6 million.

The city said studies in Australia and South Africa had also shown positive effects.

Kevin King, owner of Trinity in Green Point, called on the city to provide relevant statistics from Cape Town.

Another club owner said the city must also provide proof regarding how many people were involved in accidents after 2am.

A Facebook page has also been set up to garner support for the industry. The group currently has 134 members.

Cape Times

Posted at 09:02AM Jan 14, 2011 by Editor in Residential  |  Comments[2]