The African National Congress’s (ANC’s) recent national general council (NGC) – its mid-term review of policy implementation – was meant to give to provide an indication of the party’s progress as well as the direction of future policy development. It was a chance for the party to address growing uncertainty and its electoral decline.

Instead, we received yet more confirmation that they are a party in decline, both in numbers and in policy coherence. We also got the message that they will do whatever they can to hang onto power for as long as they can. And, judging by some of the discussions on the weekend, this will not necessarily be by democratic means.

A number of resolutions adopted at the NGC should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who has an interest in preserving our democracy. For the ANC it’s now all about consolidating power, protecting leaders and securing their own narrow interests. Their mandated task of bettering the lives of ordinary South Africans seems to have been long forgotten.

Chief among these worrying NGC developments is the proposal for a Media Appeals Tribunal, which will be little more than a tool for the ruling party to fight and control any media they deem hostile. It is a clear and direct threat to our hard-won media freedom, and South Africans must unite in opposing it.

Then the ANC also put the proposal for a reduction of the number of provinces back on the table. I wrote about this last week, where I described the electoral advantage they would seek by gerrymandering the provincial boundaries of the Western Cape, run by the Democratic Alliance (DA). It is the move of a party that has given up any hope of victory through the ballot box, and must now turn to cynical ploys as a last resort.

A third worrying NGC resolution was a push for South Africa’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Following the shameful episode earlier this year when our government helped to sneak Sudanese president and wanted war criminal, Omar al-Bashir, out the back door instead of arresting him, the ANC now wants to clear up any doubt about their position by withdrawing as a signatory to the court.

This will allow future liaisons with the likes of Al-Bashir to go ahead unhindered, and it will ruin whatever global credibility we still have. It will steer us even further away from the foreign policy legacy of Nelson Mandela. Aside from the fact that the laws of the ICC are domesticated in South African law, it is essential that we find justice for all of the African lives lost under dictatorships on the continent.

The ANC also resolved to address the rapid rise in university fees by developing a regulatory framework to curb these increases. They acknowledged that not enough had been done to provide tertiary education to poor students, but they stopped short of committing to a plan to fix this. The elephant in the room is the fact that universities are substantially under-funded, and it is telling that Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has been so silent on this issue.

The solution lies in a multi-pronged approach that should include skills levy funding for both short courses and long-term studies, an expansion of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme funding, state sureties for students seeking loans and the repayment of loans through public service for certain areas of qualification.

But there is one result to have emerged from the NGC that has avoided much discussion: For the first time the ANC, as a party, has come out in support of e-tolling. Until now it had preferred to let the government carry the can for the disastrous project. But following last weekend’s discussions there can be no more ambiguity: The ANC officially endorses e-tolling. (This must surely place them at loggerheads with their alliance partner the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which has been a vocal opponent of e-tolling all along).

Late last year it seemed, for a brief moment, as if the ANC in Gauteng would stand up to the government on e-tolls. But their opposition didn’t last long and by February this year they were all singing from the same song sheet again. The party’s endorsement of e-tolls at the NGC has finally removed all doubt: the people of Gauteng cannot count on the support of their own government when it comes to fighting for their interests.

And while you can argue that the decision to toll Gauteng’s highways was made by the Cabinet and not by the provincial government, neither Gauteng nor the metros of Johannesburg or Tshwane had the political will to put up a fight. The province is now stuck with e-tolls and their debilitating effect on the regional economy, and by all accounts this is only phase one. There are more in the pipeline.

Now contrast that with the South African National Roads Agency’s (Sanral’s) plans to toll parts of the N1 and N2 around Cape Town. From the outset, the DA-run Western Cape government, as well as the DA-run City of Cape Town, opposed what was clearly an ill-conceived plan to toll the two main highways into the metro. (In this case, it wasn’t the Cabinet that had decided to do so, but Sanral itself.)

Even before details of the costs involved were dragged out of Sanral, it was clear that this financing model would be catastrophic for Cape Town’s poorest commuters. The legacy of apartheid’s spatial planning meant that the overwhelming majority of people who would be affected by the highway tolling would be poor and black.

The projected costs for the project had shot up from just over R1.6-billionn in 2000 to almost R45-billion in 2010 – a spike of over 2,600%. Over the 30-year period of the tolling concession, Cape Town motorists would pay almost R50-billion in toll fees at a cost of almost three times more per tolled kilometer than motorists in Gauteng.

The process by which Sanral had reached its decision to toll roughly 180km of the N1 and N2 highways was also flawed. The ministers who signed off on the project were unaware of the costs and could therefore not consider the socio-economic effects of tolling. There was also no record of Sanral’s board having made the decision, which meant Sanral CEO Nazir Alli most likely did so on his own.

There was no way the DA in the City of Cape Town would allow this to proceed without a fight, and so it challenged Sanral’s Winelands tolling project in the Western Cape High Court. The court agreed with the city and instructed Sanral to halt all tolling plans. Should it want to proceed with the Winelands tolling project, it would now need to start from scratch, including a proper public participation process.

This was a significant victory for the people of Cape Town. And this is what it means to have your local or provincial government in your corner. It means they will fight tooth and nail to see to it that the interests of the many are put ahead of the narrow interests of the few. This is what a responsible and caring government does: it represents and it protects its people.

I have no doubt that the DA’s victory over Sanral in the Western Cape High Court would have emboldened the people of Gauteng to renew the fight against e-tolls there. Undoing the current e-tolling project might not be a straightforward task, but there is still a huge fight to be fought to stop the next phases being rolled out in the province.

One thing is clear: the ANC Gauteng provincial government will not intervene to halt this, and neither will the ANC metro governments. The only way to fight the expansion of e-tolls in the province is to vote in a government that has the stomach for that fight. And that can only be a DA government.

Next year’s local government elections could be a watershed moment for a province like Gauteng, with both Johannesburg and Tshwane metros teetering on the edge of losing their ANC majorities. If enough people use their votes to fire the local governments that no longer fight for them, 2016 could mark the start of a new chapter for Gauteng.

And a change of government in Gauteng could also be a tipping point for South Africa, as more South Africans see the benefit of a government that is prepared to fight for you. Because this would be a government based on accountability and transparency; a government that would never even consider a Media Appeals Tribunal; a government committed to human rights; a government that will ensure sufficient funding for tertiary education; and a government with a plan for public transport and road funding mechanisms that will render e-tolling obsolete.

This would be a government that truly works to build a better future for all. DM