Johannesburg - Nearly a year since Gauteng's e-tolling system was implemented, activists maintain the system is a massive failure that has racked up a whopping R2 billion in unpaid motorists bill, and a compliance rate of just 30 percent.
Although e-tolling has split the ANC - the Gauteng ANC is now opposed to the system - the Department of Transport and South African National Roads Agency maintain that the system remains the most implementable. Last week, the Saturday Star asked various players, including the Department of Transport which failed to respond, to put their case forward.
A PROJECT DOOMED FROM THE START
Warnings that e-tolling would not work were ignored, writes Howard Dembovsky of the Justice Project SA
It’s been a full twelve months since the so-called “national policy” of e-tolling came into being in Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane, and despite the railroading, stamping, sabre rattling and outright threats adopted by national government and its state-owned corporation, Sanral – citizens have clearly not bought into the concept. Some choose to call this “civil disobedience” while others call it “civil courage”. I prefer to call it the facts of life.
Repeated warnings that e-tolling would not work were not only ignored, but were actively fought against by Sanral, that consistently told us “you won’t understand” when questions like “why are these roads so expensive?” were asked. Then they used your and my money to fight litigation instituted by the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) and others to prevent them from “scrambling the egg” they have well and truly scrambled now.
Early last year we became aware why these roads were so expensive – because of collusion and price fixing among construction companies under the watchful eye of Sanral, but of course we must believe that it was vigilant against the same thing being done by other contractors. The eNatis system has proved to be deficient in locating people to bill. Cloned and false number plates have spiralled out of control. The Post Office… let’s not go there! The list of “we told you so” goes on and on.
The system has been championed by Sanral as being “the only fair and practical way of funding roads infrastructure” and they have additionally chosen to shoehorn this into meaning that it is based on “the user-pay principle” adopted by national government. Interestingly, Sanral has also fallen back on the excuse that it doesn’t make national policy, it only implements it – as if we should be expected to believe that the cabinet suddenly woke up one day and said “let’s give e-tolling a whirl!” without being sold the scheme by anyone.
Despite repeated threats by Sanral against citizens of criminal prosecutions for non-payment of e-tolls, the registrations take-up has been extraordinarily low. Much lower than even the so-called “e-tolls detractors” expected. Sanral has attributed this, at least in part, to the so-called spread of “misinformation” by those opposed to e-tolling and has, in particular, launched scathing verbal and often personal attacks against individuals in Outa and other organisations they blame for public dissent against e-tolling. It’s presented no evidence to back its claims, though.
While the likes of Outa, Cosatu, Justice Project SA and many others may have brought this issue to the public’s attention, Sanral and the government have simply failed to take any notice of the fact that ordinary owners of motor vehicles are opposed to e-tolling and so this project was doomed to fail.
The fact is that e-tolling is the “some users pay principle” and it cannot be anything else. Even if it were to become the “most users pay system”, there would never be 100 percent compliance and if anyone thinks the NPA would apply for extradition orders to haul foreign visitors back to South Africa to stand trial for driving on these roads and not paying, they are quite mad.
Sanral has been talking about “the rule of law” and threatening criminal action for almost as long as it’s been telling people about the so-called benefits of e-tolling. Sanral and the NPA should have started instituting prosecutions way back in April if they were confident they would succeed in convicting anyone. Instead, they chose to wait and let the outstanding unpaid e-toll bills spiral to what is conceivably close to R2 billion by now.
They still haven’t prosecuted anyone for non-payment of e-tolls, but if or when they do, the knock-on effect of criminalising what could quite realistically be hundreds of thousands of people will cripple the economy – not just in Gauteng – if indeed they succeed in convicting anyone at all. If they don’t prosecute people, more and more of those registered will stop paying, until no-one is left paying.
All of this is assuming they don’t try the tactic of nailing a few people in a highly-publicised manner in the hope of trying to scare others into submission. Knowing Sanral, this is far from unlikely despite the fact that e-tolling is currently under review. A lot can happen between now and any resolutions adopted at the ANC national conference in June 2016, which may or may not echo those taken at the Gauteng conference recently.
Beware of applying logic though. Proven logic has not won the day – yet.
E-TOLL SYSTEM WAS SWITCHED ON WHILE PUBLIC WAS TURNED OFF
Wayne Duvenage, the chairman of Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance.
About a year ago on November 19, the Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, announced that the e-tolls “on again, off again” confusion would finally be over and the scheme would eventually be launched on December 3 last year.
It was the day that would mark the beginning of the end of a fiasco that should never have happened. After Outa’s successful interdict of the scheme’s launch on April 30, 2012, the protracted legal battle to halt the launch of e-tolling was set aside on a technicality of administration law in September last year.
The Supreme Court (SCA) could not condone the lateness of the application, and as much as we wanted to have our arguments on the unlawfulness of the e-toll scheme heard, the SCA could not do so. These arguments were set aside for the day a motoring citizen would be summonsed by the prosecuting authorities to explain their non-payment of e-toll bills.
The Outa committee met soon after the SCA decision to decide its future.
Our decision to continue the fight was based on the overwhelming evidence and research gathered since 2010 on the Gauteng e-toll scheme and others around the world. We had enough information and insight to argue not only the unlawfulness of the Gauteng e-toll scheme, but also the extent of its irrationality and gross inefficiency which made it virtually unworkable.
We also knew that in the absence of civil society’s ability to keep Sanral honest, they might just manage to hoodwink, coerce, intimidate and threaten enough people to participate in the scheme.
This might have led to e-tag compliance levels high enough to satisfy the authorities, with some degree of success. Our research showed e-tag compliance of less than 85 percent was not sustainable over time. We also knew that Sanral would have deemed a compliance level of 70 percent as being a great success.
As it turned out, society’s courage to defy the unjust system resulted in a peak compliance rate around the 40 percent mark, about seven months after it was launched. Outa believes that much of its work to counter Sanral’s multimillionrand e-toll marketing and propaganda campaign, played a role in empowering society with the knowledge to remain defiant at such a high level.
At first, soon after the scheme was turned on, we received many messages of condolence. People thought the fight was over, purely because the e-toll system was now switched on. We knew we had our work cut out for us to convince the public that because the purple lights were burning, didn’t mean that the users were paying. Our tactics exposed Sanral’s misinformation on the e-tag sales. We counted e-tags on windscreens at freeway off-ramps and in parking lots and extrapolated our findings to denounce Sanral’s grossly inflated numbers.
We asked politicians to seek clarity of these numbers from the transport minister in Parliament, and our research was vindicated as being accurate to within 1 percent, despite Sanral’s attempts to play down our research. Together with Cosatu, the faith-based organisations and other civil action entities, our messages of civil courage began to sink in.
We attended to every media inquiry and provided input that saw the Advertising Standards Authority rule against Sanral’s misleading advertisements in the middle of this year. Our viral messages and video clips, along with a social media drive, gained traction and the e-toll scheme remained one wherein more users refused to pay than those who did.
By mid-winter, Sanral’s final card to prosecute motorists for non-payment, was about to be played. Outa’s committee met its legal advisers and agreed on a plan to support and fight the prosecution process, if it ever came to be.
Following the Gauteng ANC’s decline at the May elections and recent premier David Makhura’s announcement of an e-toll advisory panel, Peters was wise in her decision to halt Sanral’s plans of e-toll prosecution at the end of June.
Today, the ANC in Gauteng has denounced the scheme, as has the ANC Youth League, the SA Local Government Association and virtually every business and civil society organisation that presented input to the panel. It appears that 11 months after the scheme was given the green light, it is now collapsing at a rapid rate, with the e-tag compliance rate declining toward the 30 percent level and close on R2 billion outstanding in bills.
It is a matter of time for the decision to turn off the farce, one that ought not to have happened in the first place.
SANRAL SAYS: BE REASONABLE
this is the best – and only – way to go about it, writes Vusi Mona, general manager of communications at Sanral.
The raging debate about e-tolling on the inner Gauteng highways has moved beyond the rational to a point where reason has flown out of the window. Sane voices are being drowned out.
Those who are appearing before the Gauteng inquiry are from Gauteng. The voices of the rest of South Africa are not being heard.
By the way, the odd thing about the Gauteng inquiry – it was set up by those who were part of the initial planning and the decisions regarding e-tolling, that is the Gauteng province. The national government does not upgrade and toll roads in a province without provincial consent. In fact, the consent given followed a request from the provincial premier to the national Minister of Transport that the South African National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral) take over the R21. The road was a provincial one until it needed to be upgraded and improved and this had to be done from Sanral’s budget.
Which raises a question: Why have the inquiry if you’re part of the process?
But that’s a by the way.
The most common cry, like that of a startled hadeda on the Highveld, is to go the route of the fuel levy. This is fundamentally flawed, clearly anti poor people and unfair. Despite this being pointed out time after time, this is not permitted to be part of a rational debate.
Let’s take it in turn:
The fuel-levy argument is flawed. The levy has not been ring-fenced for roads since 1988. It goes into the general tax pool, from which all expenses of all departments are covered.
The levy delivers just less than R44bn, which is about a billion less than the Treasury allocation for transport-related expenditure. Of this, Sanral get almost R12bn– not enough to cover what it has to do.
The roads agency needs R20bn above what is necessary to maintain national roads, which it manages, to catch up with the maintenance backlog and improve roads to an acceptable condition. For the rest of the roads in the country, the 97 percent outside Sanral’s writ, the figure is close to R200bn.
This does not take into account the further R120bn the agency needs for the capacity-related backlog in and around the metropolitan areas.
Obviously, the fuel levy does not deliver even an approximation of this total. Just up the fuel levy? To what? Double what it is? Even that is not enough. Triple it?
Imagine the outcry then. It would be hardest on the poor who no longer would be part of the e-toll exemptions for public transport as a result of which they do not pay on the inner Gauteng highways.
A higher fuel levy would mean more expensive taxi and bus rides, hitting those who can least afford it the hardest.
Poor people have not been asked what they think. The Gauteng review panel is listening to those who have the capacity to organise themselves and appear before it. The rest – most people – are silent.
What the inquiry is hearing is not the voice of the people but the voice of a minority of people.
The views of those who live outside Gauteng are also blithely ignored. If you live in Upington, for example, you may not want to pay, through a higher fuel levy, for roads in Gauteng on which you are unlikely to travel.
You have not been asked and will not be asked. Just imposing a fuel levy on all is clearly unfair.
Let’s try to be rational for once. The country needs good roads, and they cost money. The debate should really be about who should pay for them, and not just about the method of payment.
When you use water in your home, you pay for it. You use electricity, you pay for it. For the same reason, you should pay for the roads you use. The person in Upington who also pays for his own water and electricity, should not have to pay for Gauteng roads – he does not use them.
There are wider implications, too. Is it seriously being suggested that e-tolls should be scrapped, agreements with an international company abandoned and the billions be found in the general tax pool that were borrowed from to build the inner Gauteng highways?
What would that do to the country’s credit grading, particularly now that the trade gap is widening and the economy slowing. Borrowing costs would go up considerably, and we, the taxpayers, would have to cough up for it.
Let go of the emotion.
Be reasonable. The way to go is the way we’re going now.
Saturday Star