• People buying cigarettes legally were relieved to be paying "normal" prices after lockdown regulations were eased.
• Not all shops had full stock yet and the transactions were quick in-and-out affairs, with few queues.
• Liquor store queues were not as long as they were during the brief respite midway through the hard lockdown.

"These are not April prices," joked a man as he dashed into his local Spar in Cape Town for cigarettes as legal sales resumed on Tuesday.

His friend said during the hard lockdown he paid up to R150 for a pack of his own brand.

Now he gets six packets for R300.

"It was a double-edged sword buying illegally. I tried to stop at the beginning, but, well..." the man trailed off.

"But this is my fundamental right."

At a tobacconist around the corner, two friends compared notes over the brands they bought on the down low as they stood a distance from each other.

"Ja, those popping ones! My bru to be honest, I will probably smoke some of those smokes again," he laughed through his mask.

'I've been to three shops'

There were only two people queuing at the shop, which still has a limited selection available.

A man who was in the queue left disappointed.

"I've been to three shops already for my brand. Nobody has it."

At some of the shops, which had secretly traded in tobacco throughout lockdown, their security was whittled down to one person again, from the large lockdown team of guards and spotters, which had included a person pretending to be lounging in a park over the road.

A packet of Caesar Menthol was selling at R25 and at another tobacconist, the cheapest brand in the shop was R16.50.

Women who had finished the school run turned out of shopping centre parking lots with cigarettes dangling from their lips again, and bakkie drivers hung an arm lazily out of an open window, a cigarette in hand and tapping at the driver's door to music while waiting for the traffic light to change.

Until midnight it was not permitted to buy, sell or transport cigarettes, but by Tuesday morning the familiar sight of smokers outside workspaces had also returned.

Many of the men waiting for work at corners had also treated themselves to a cigarette, as they sat on rocks hoping to be chosen for a job.

Modest alcohol queue

At Makro in Montague Gardens, Cape Town, the queue for the liquor section was modest compared with the mid-lockdown rush to stock up.

At that time, earlier during lockdown, the queue had snaked around the fringes of the large parking lot.

To the question of whether people were broke, one person commented on Twitter: "No it's just too effing cold to go out!!" and another wrote: "Power to the alcoholics. We are free from abusing alcohol".

A man in the queue said: "I used to get a bottle [during lockdown] and split it with three friends, who would spot me the money so it was not so bad."

He was waiting to get a bottle at a "normal" price and was looking forward to resuming his regular weekly darts game in real life again, now that socialising rules have also been eased slightly.

"We played online, but it wasn't the same," he said as the queue was rearranged under a shelter when the rain in Cape Town started up again.

The bulk-buy warehouse kept its social distancing rules in place, only letting in a limited number of people at a time.

A bar owner trawled into the parking lot, his car heavily laden with crates of empty quarts of beer.

While unloading to take it in for a refill, a song with the hook "This is South Africa" blasted from his CD player.

"It was tough," he said of the toll on taverners.

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