Pretoria - The fight against e-tolls will rage on beyond the municipal elections on 3 August, especially if the Democratic Alliance takes over the three metros in Gauteng province.
So vowed the three DA mayoral candidates for the metros, who also publicly dared the police to arrest them for non-payment of e-tolls.
Mayoral candidates Herman Mashaba, for Johannesburg, Solly Msimanga for Tshwane and Ghaleb Cachalia, for Erkuhuleni, expressed their defiance against the e-tolling system outside Sanral’s offices in Pretoria on Tuesday.
The trio were there to sign a pledge to scrap the e-tolls system should they assume mayoral positions after the municipal elections.
They were joined by DA provincial leader John Moodey who told party supporters that he was unperturbed by the possibility of being fingered as a criminal for not paying e-tolls bills.
“I’ve vowed never to pay e-tolls,” he said. “You know what I do when I get e-toll bills? I burn them!” he said.
He conceded that not paying e-tolls was against the law, but he said “this is an unjust law”.
According to him, the laws on e-tolls resembled the legal prescripts formulated under the apartheid regime and people being forced to comply with them.
He said the party’s mayoral candidates were “in politics because they are concerned about the plight of the people”.
Cachalia took potshots at the ANC government for imposing e-tolls on the people without consultation.
“They assumed that the e-tolls won’t have an economic impact on the people. Where do they live? They are living in planet Zupta,” he said.
The DA was the only party that had been against the e-tolling system from the start, Cachalia said.
Mashaba added: “I will work tirelessly to remove the burden of e-tolls from the shoulders of our people. We need your mandate so we can fight on your behalf.”
He said Johannesburg residents must punish the ANC in the coming elections for implementing e-tolls.
“We are seeing no job creation or economic growth under the ANC government,” he said. “E-tolls are the enemy of social stability.”
Expensive exercise
Msimanga said the e-toll system was the most expensive exercise the province had ever undertaken.
He accused Premier David Makhura of having lied to the public by saying that the existence of e-tolls was never going to impact negatively on people’s lives.
Msimanga also refused to pay for e-tolls “even if it was one cent a kilometre”.
Should the DA be voted into power it would ensure “no further e-tolling in Gauteng”, Msimanga said. “If you want opportunities and no e-tolls, vote for the DA.”
He said the government had attempted to put up e-tolls in the Western Cape, where the DA governed, but it failed after the party won court cases challenging its plan.
After the polls, the party would explore legal options available “to declare an intergovernmental dispute to stop this continued theft from our residents”, Msimanga said.
The trio said they would fight for residents during consultation on existing tolling tariffs, “to prevent increases that will kill opportunities in Gauteng”.
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