In what is undoubtedly the best kept secret of the upcoming festive season, the labouring classes whose employment brings them to Sandton on a daily basis are about to discover that the heart of South Africa’s financial district is set to become a car-free zone for the month of October. This is not October 2017, or even October 2016. D-Day is less than three weeks from now and while the plans change on a daily basis, its key elements (limited vehicle access and a Berlin-type wall along most of West Street) have begun to acquire a granitic quality.

The event (one could hardly describe it as a celebration) goes under a rubric which would have George Orwell chuckling away on the other side of the Great Beyond. Certain to deliver vehicular constipation to Sandton on a scale alongside which reinforced concrete would seem like Vaseline, this festival enjoys a name even the African National Congress (ANC) spin doctors would have baulked at proposing: it is to be known as Eco-Mobility Month. If Parks Tau and his cronies have their way, it’s with us for one 12^th of every year until we learn to replace four wheels with two, and two wheels with Shanks Pony. (“Two wheels good, four wheels bad etc etc.”)

It is evidently part of a wider, European-inspired, programme to reduce congestion and to persuade high carbon footprint motor vehicle aficionados to make use of more egalitarian modes of transport. It’s a lovely idea, in the same way as organic beef, free-range eggs and safe sex all tick the right boxes in the ivory towers of well-meaning socialist-inspired, do-goodism. It assumes that everyone has the discretionary spending power to make the right moral choices, or at least a well-enough managed libido to reach for a condom before grabbing the fragile elastic on a pair of knickers. Eco-Mobility month has been rolling along (seemingly quite uncontroversially) in a number of cities – all of which have sophisticated transport networks to move the bulk of the working classes between their places of residence and the centralised commercial hub.

This, as anyone who has to access the Sandton town centre on a daily basis will attest, is not the way the most optimistic town planner would describe the Sandton central business district (CBD). An estimated 100,000 vehicles descend every day on the square kilometre which is the financial heartland of South Africa. Many of these are minibus taxis delivering vast numbers of lower-echelon employees to the shops and offices of the Sandton agglomeration. Others are participants in semi-formal lift scheme arrangements bringing East Rand workers to the more lucrative pickings available in the banking hub El Dorado. Many are sales representatives whose work takes them in and out of the central area several times each day. Some are shoppers, for whom Sandton City and its environs are the reason that they (or their partners) work so hard in the first place. The remainder – from middle management up to executive level – are discretionary solitary occupants of their vehicles. Since parking bays don’t come cheap in Sandton office blocks, it’s a safe assumption that those who do not share their cars with their colleagues enjoy some seniority in the hierarchy. However, in terms of total numbers, it is clear that the vast majority of Sandton workers (other than those who need to move around as part of their job descriptions) already use public transport, or participate in collaborative travel schemes.

Of course it’s not impossible to change the transport habits of many of those who participate daily in the game of grid-locked dodgem which runs from 7.00am to 9.00am and again from 3.30pm to 6.30pm. For a start, more people would use the Gautrain from Rosebank (and even from Marlboro) if the park-and-ride facilities there could accommodate more vehicles. Who wouldn’t, given the time waste of getting into Sandton and the cost of garaging. The same may be true of Rea Vaya, once it gets going, once its networks are tried and tested, once it’s proven to be reliable and largely strike-free. None of this is going to happen in the next three weeks – after which 1 October will be upon us and with it the full catastrophe of Eco-Mobility.

There is of course a reason the organisers have been strangely silent about their big surprise (other than the pleasure of watching the public reaction once the full extent of their ill-conceived plan becomes known): they’re still tweaking their blueprint. It is also possible (at least in theory) that they have come to recognise the improbability of any buy-in from the working public. In its latest incarnation, their plan is simply to make it as difficult as possible for traffic to traverse the Sandton CBD. If you want to go into the heart of the maelstrom, feel free, but don’t expect that getting out will be easy. If you want to cross the north-south line defined by West Street (the main road which runs along the outside of the Gautrain station), sadly that won’t be possible within the central area. (You will be allowed onto the exterior ring road – if you can get there – and from there you can traverse the Great Divide). You may be able to use park-and-ride facilities on the outside of the central zone – though four weeks before D-Day the communications company could not provide a parking plan because the traffic consultants were “still working on it”.

Anyone with a modicum of common sense can tell this project contains all the elements of certifiable insanity: traffic restrictions before alternative modes of transport are available, planners still working on their blueprints while the barricades are being erected, implementation teams whose primary talents are their political connections, rather than the specific competences required to ensure a less-than-catastrophic result. It also comes at a time when the South African economy is in free-fall under the twin-pronged assault of ANC dirigisme and the crisis in the world markets. What better time to compromise productivity in the engine-room of the South African economy? You’ve got to love the government for its consistency: it so hates capitalism that if its policies alone won’t collapse the system, it will chuck bits of gravel into the working parts to make sure everything grinds to a halt.

It’s just possible that there are a few project managers who recognise the madness of trying to impose the constraints of Eco-Mobility now – in 2015 – before alternative transport arrangements are in place, before those most affected by the plan have bought into it, before there is infrastructure enough to make viability a realistic prospect. It seems there’s precious little they can do: foreign mayors have been invited to attend the festivities. It appears the ANC would prefer to bring Sandton to a standstill rather than lose face and cry off. It’s a choice of sorts, one made – like so many others – as if there was no risk of losing an election. Either this means that even if the ANC were voted out they wouldn’t vacate office, or else they’ve come to believe their own propaganda and assume they’re secure until the Second Coming. Either way, the DA should think of Eco-Mobility 2015 as Parks Tau’s gift to them for the 2016 municipal elections. DM