Cosatu e-tolls march to test Ramaphosa
The e-tolls saga that has haunted the ANC since the implementation of the electronic tolling system on Gauteng highways in 2013 has set President Cyril Ramaphosa on a collision course with Cosatu.
With just a few months before national elections, the president will go toe to toe with the country’s biggest trade union federation and ANC alliance partner over the issue. The problem is the timing of this inevitable standoff.
Ramaphosa cannot afford this battle if he hopes to return to the Union Buildings after the elections; he needs to foster good relations with Cosatu.
Having recently rallied the troops, in the form of business and organised labour, behind his investment drive and job creation campaigns, a falling out with Cosatu’ s would most solid certainly harm his vision. The federation also happens to be Ramaphosa support base in the alliance, having backed him since 2017 in his campaign for the party’s top post.
With a divided ANC top six and national executive committee, the president is reliant on Cosatu’s support as it provides him with a united and formidable constituency in the alliance. But on Friday hundreds of Cosatu members will march to his office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to demand that he scrap the user-pays model, which the federation says is unaffordable and harms the poor and the working class.
This will be the first time the federation has protested against the president since he took office. The campaign was inspired by finance minister Tito Mboweni’s remarks during his mid-term budget policy statement last Wednesday that “if we want a road transport infrastructure that works, we need to pay our tolls”.
Mboweni said the government is committed to the user-pays principle as it is the most efficient and effective way to ensure “direct benefits of services are paid for by those who use them”. Those few words awakened a sleeping dog that had been calmed by the government’s mixed messages over the years as calls grew for the tolls to be scrapped.
Cosatu had been lying low on the issue after Ramaphosa conceded the model was “unworkable”, which raised hopes that its removal was a done deal. But the battle is far from over, and it seems that by ventilating the government’s push for motorists to pay up, Mboweni has put a target on Ramaphosa’s back.
The workers have already proved they are able to mobilise to push back. They were among the first formations in society to denounce former president Jacob Zuma, embarrassing him at Cosatu’s May Day celebrations in 2017 by booing and heckling him.
Relations with the presidency reached an all-time low, with Zuma accused of excluding labour from decisionmaking processes.
Ramaphosa cannot afford to find himself in a similar corner, but he has little wiggle room, with the fiscus unable to absorb the R67bn debt owed for the tolling infrastructure.
Cosatu has no plans to relent on its calls for the system to be done away with, having challenged it since before the toll gates lit up on the province’s highways. The trade union federation’s resistance has already led to the staging of a national strike that drew thousands of South Africans from all walks of life and crippled the economy for a day.
Cosatu insiders fear if they act leniently on the government’s renewed commitment to collecting the toll fees they would be allowing Ramaphosa to be a “runaway” president. The march on Friday is meant to demonstrate that the federation is more than prepared to “punish” him, should the need arise.
Although Cosatu resolved at its September congress that it would support the ANC in the lead-up to the elections, it was also clear that this support would be conditional. The “provocation” by Mboweni was therefore reckless in their eyes.
Cosatu has moved to secure the support of the provincial ANC, which has also been trying to shake off the electoral angst that cost it votes in the last election, by calling on the national government to get rid of the user-pays model. As a result, the ANC in the province will be part of Friday’s protest action to the Union Buildings, in effect marching against itself.
Ramaphosa has an albatross around his neck.