Illustrative image: Sanral logo. (Image: Wikicommons) | Hands with money. (Image: Freepik) | N2 highway. (Photo: Tony Carnie) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca) When my family and I finally start to think about getting off the highway at the end of our annual holiday, with the Hillbrow Tower just behind us and Brixton just ahead, I start to consider which offramp I’m going to use.
There’s a little debate in my head: which way will get us home, back to the dogs and cats and no doubt a dead rat in the shower and the general unpacking that awaits?
As we come off the highway, and turn to leave the offramp and move back onto normal Joburg roads, my car always gives a sort of shudder.
It’s the sound any being would emit upon leaving the well-maintained smoothness of a Sanral road and returning to the horror that is Joburg’s current roads.
You have to hand it to the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) – you don’t need a sign to tell you you’re on one of its roads. You feel it. Through your bum, through your seat.
But I have to wonder how a group of people who are so clearly competent at that level believe they can, for a moment, get away with trying to screw companies and, ultimately, customers and you.
Very early in the year, while many of us were still contemplating the trip home, the Supreme Court of Appeal handed down a ruling that essentially showed that Sanral had tried to force companies providing services along our national roads to pay a lot more.
Currently, if you run a filling station along a national road, you have to pay Sanral 0.5% of all of your turnover from petroleum products and 1% of the gross turnover of the property.
Basically, Sanral will get 0.5% of all of the petrol and diesel value you sell, and 1% of the value of the Cokes, chips, condoms and online gambling vouchers that you sell.
Sanral decided, simply through a board meeting, that it would raise this to 2.5% of petroleum product value and 6% of all turnover.
The judges, thankfully, saw this for what it was.
One of the main reasons they ruled against it was that Sanral had not properly consulted – it had not advertised that it was considering this change and thus no one could object to it.
But Sanral won’t stop there.
Moneyweb reported yesterday that the roads agency has now decided it wants to extend the legal authority it has to 60m from a national road, and 500m from an intersection.
It also appears it is keen on getting into the charging business, they would essentially provide charging stations for the electric vehicles we’re all about to buy because we have no choice.
Now, while you might think at first blush that this is all very good and far-thinking of Sanral, can you imagine for a moment, just for a moment, pulling into a petrol station that is owned by the government?
Because it would be doing exactly the same thing: charging for a service.
And as people who object to this (and there are many) are pointing out, it would also mean Sanral is able to both provide services and regulate who else is providing services.
It would be competing and regulating in the same market.
When The Money Show contacted Sanral to join a conversation on this last night, the roads agency said that while it had been on a roadshow, it was still awaiting a legal opinion.
Thus, it was not available for an interview (you might be pleased to know that one of those who oppose this new policy – from CHARGE, which is providing charging stations – was happy to chat).
I have to say, when an organisation first tries to keep quiet about what it is doing, then says it held a “roadshow” and is awaiting a legal opinion and therefore can’t talk, it seems to me that they’re simply bullies.
They must be abusing their status as a state-owned entity and their power to implement regulations.
By not taking questions on it in public, they’re proving something else.
That they’re cowards.
Have they learnt nothing from e-tolls? That you can win in the courts but you can’t win in the streets.
Even if you own some of them.
You have to consult.
Properly.
And actually listen to people.
I do wonder if this might backfire slightly. I cannot think of a reason that Sanral should be allowed to take a percentage of the turnover of fuel stations.
Should it not just be an agency that enables commercial activity, rather than an agency that only extracts from it? It should be providing road access and leave the rest of it up to the other regulatory authorities.
This might well open a hornets’ nest of questions that Sanral has to answer. If it does, that will be a warning to Sanral. And to others.
That you cannot bully people.
No matter how good your roads are. DM