Cape Town - The Western Cape High Court has dismissed the South African National Road Agency Limited’s (Sanral’s) application to file four affidavits.
The affidavits sought to imply the road agency’s board had considered and approved the decision to declare the N1 and N2 as toll roads.
The City of Cape Town opposed Sanral’s application to file the affidavits.
The City argued that the filing of the affidavits was too late in proceedings, as all of the other affidavits and heads of argument had already been filed, and that the belated application brought by Sanral on July 17 was not proper.
It argued that Sanral could not give a credible explanation for the delay and that it was aimed at rescuing their case when the flaws in their actions were exposed.
“It is the City’s view, and the City will argue as such, that this decision was taken solely by Mr Nazir Alli, chief executive of Sanral, and not by the Sanral board, as is required by the Sanral Act,” said Transport Mayco member Brett Herron.
The City approached the courts to compel Sanral to give records of its decision making on the proposed Winelands Tolling Project in 2013.
Herron said Sanral failed to provide the City with a resolution by the board or board documents, either in the Rule 53 record or in response to the Western Cape High Court.
He said the road agency understood the significance of the lack of a board decision as in April 2014 Alli circulated a memorandum to board members, stating: “The purpose of this memorandum is to ask the board to resolve that the N1, Bellville (R300 interchange) to Sandhills and the N2, Swartklip (R300 interchange to Bot River) be declared toll roads.
“This element in the procedures to declare the road as a toll road was inadvertently omitted in the process to declare the above roads as toll roads”.
The high court will hear the review application on August 11.
Cape Times