Getty Images Tax Justice SA has issued a report in the flourishing illicit cigarette industry in South Africa. TJSA founder Yusuf Abramjee says illicit cigarette sales are costing government "billions of rands" in unpaid taxes. Vendors appear not to fear law enforcement and many seem not to know or care about the minimum tax threshold. The sale of illicit, tax-evading cigarettes has become "endemic" across South Africa in the wake last year’s 5-month Covid-19 lockdown blanket ban on tobacco trade, according to an undercover investigation and subsequent report by Tax Justice SA (TJSA). TJSA’s undercover team visited over 40 mainstream retail and wholesale outlets across Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban to secretly film cigarettes being sold at a price below the minimum tax that must be paid on them by law.