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E-tolls: When regional courage trumps national power

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Wayne Duvenage is a businessman and entrepreneur turned civil activist. Following former positions as CEO of AVIS and President of SA Vehicle Renting and Leasing Association, Duvenage has headed the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse since its inception in 2012.

This weekend’s ANC Gauteng Provincial Conference has laid down the gauntlet to the national executive authority. The e-toll scheme must be halted. It is a message that speaks with undertones of political fallout and a potentially damaging loss of public support for the ANC in Gauteng’s forthcoming local elections.

This call and warning by the current Gauteng ANC leadership was actually made almost three years ago, but was not heeded by Premier Nomvula Mokonyane at the time. Instead of unpacking the issues that had the potential to become the problem it now has, Mokonyane and her MEC for Transport, Ismail Vadi, stood by the NEC’s decision and were somehow convinced by SANRAL’s executives that all would turn out fine in the long run.

History has now shown that the e-toll plan has grossly missed the mark of an effective mechanism to extract funds from the public, in order to re-pay the bonds for a freeway upgrade. Hiding behind a logical motive of “user pay” for an irrational scheme simply does not cut it for society, especially when there is an existing and more efficient user pays mechanism within Government’s current arsenal of policies – the fuel levy. This has been the input recently shared by society to Makhura’s e-toll Advisory Panel and is now the fuel for Mashatile’s scathing attack on the scheme and its architects.

Today, the national authorities should answer a number of questions, such as; why did they blindly believe SANRAL’s side of the story? Why did they not seriously question the unrealistic economic modelling forecasts or the 8,4:1 benefit to cost ratio, discredited by many economists? Why did they accept the notion that the e-toll target market of the middle class and rich would fear prosecution and scramble to queue for their e-tags? The only forecast that SANRAL did get right was that big business (whose boards were populated with connected government people or enjoyed favourable government business dealings) would have their fleets tagged.

Unwavering to the public outcry for three years from 2010 to 2013, the megalomaniac authorities appeared to be high on a cocktail of authoritarian power mixed with SANRAL’s reassurances, and duly launched the scheme on 3 December 2013. They did so ignoring the valuable insights of business, COSATU, the Church and other critics. However, as predicted and in a short space of ten months, their decision was a horrendous one indeed. One which the newly elected Gauteng ANC Provincial Executive is left to piece together in time for the 2016 local elections. And they have two entities to thank for this mess; the SANRAL Board and the ANC NEC of 2008 (and beyond), for not challenging them.

Paul Mashatile’s PEC has been spot on. Their call has sent a strong message to the NEC and fired a salvo into the SANRAL camp – to refrain from behaving as if they are the government. And rightfully so, as SANRAL have become a power-hungry entity, almost untouchable and whose decisions have for too long gone unchallenged by those to whom they report. It’s been a blissful place for the SANRAL executives who conveniently hide behind the mantra ‘We merely implement government policy’ when their own schemes don’t go according to plan. Who will SANRAL blame for the troubles that could very well emerge from the overpriced long-distance toll plazas, or the Stormvoël toll gates in the peri-urban area of Tshwane that have angered so many for so long now?

One wonders if – after this e-toll mess has been cleaned up – the national government and higher courts will be wiser and mindful of two glaring lessons emerging from this debacle:

  1. To take seriously the input of their critics. So often the state-owned entities have become too close to the plans they seek approval for, with many a critic calling for a review, hence the crises relating to funding for roads, energy, the national carrier and so on. There is a wealth of valuable information on the business and NGO side of the fence, if indeed government authorities choose not put the fear of God into them and instead, invited them to critique their plans.

  1. National policies that impact on regional and local matters must secure meaningful input from that level prior to enactment. OUTA was extremely surprised when the courts decided to rule against tagging of the e-toll bill at a regional level. As pointed out in this weekend’s Gauteng ANC’s declaration, their traffic patterns and economy has been negatively affected by the urban tolling decision. How the courts could not see this leads one to realise how out of touch with reality they can be at times.

The questions that remain are: Will the Minister of Transport, the NEC and SANRAL really ignore the e-toll opinions expressed by the ANC Gauteng Provincial conference? Can the government ignore the will of the people who have defied the system and refused to pay their e-toll bills? Can the e-toll scheme ever succeed in Gauteng? The answer to all these questions is NO. Which leaves two final questions that follow: who will call the press conference to announce the closure of the scheme, and when will the purple haze be turned off? DM

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