Citizens stand up to state
IT DIDN’T matter what we said. All our talking and court action had not halted the process. Government was determined to go ahead. All we could do now was watch the reality of a predicted unworkable system unfold. The final and ultimate hurdle for Sanral had arrived. Could they do it?
Sanral appeared ecstatic that finally the system it had stood so firmly by for all these years was going to go live. Alli said this now signalled Sanral’s ability to start servicing the debt of the road upgrade and he encouraged people to buy e-tags, saying it was “the right thing to do”.
In addition to the hardline intimidation strategies adopted in their messaging, Minister (Dipuo) Peters and Sanral also applied a charm offensive intended to encourage the public to buy e-tags. Their tactics consisted of the following reminders to the public:
E-tag users qualify for a 48 percent discount on the standard tariffs;
Eighty-three percent of e-toll users would pay an average of less than R100 a month; and
A significant number of 900 000 people had made the “right decision” to purchase e-tags.
Peters urged motorists to buy tags. “It’s in your best interest that you get tagged… We are aware of campaigns discouraging people from registering and we wish to encourage motorists not to pay attention to this,” she had said just days before the launch.
The announcement also had an immediate effect on Austrian Kapsch TrafficCom’s share price, which increased to € 45 (R618) by late February last year from € 39 at the time of the e-toll launch date press briefing.
A table of the e-toll events and the corresponding movements in the Kapsch TrafficCom share price depicts an uncanny relationship.
Within a few weeks of the e-toll launch, our concern was a growing sense of defeatism settling in. We got the sense that many road users had started to give up. The commiseration messages kept coming in. This felt like a case of a good fight while it lasted, but now the scheme has been turned on, let’s move on.
This became a serious concern for the Outa committee. The earlier research polls by Ipsos and TNS had reflected that most would remain defiant. We wondered if this was turning out to be a case of more talk and less action.
We had our work cut out for us. With no money to spend on billboards or advertising campaigns, we could only turn to social media and press announcements through the mainstream media to communicate with the public.
Our early messages cautioned that because e-tolls had started this didn’t mean the system was working sufficiently smoothly to achieve its goals for success. The challenge of exposing the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the scheme lay ahead.
We used messages like “civil courage” and reminded our social media members that all the past talk of defiance now needed to be translated into action. The time for civil action was now and we were right to stand up against an unjust and irrational policy. It was time to walk that talk. We were further encouraged by the faith-based movements that joined the fray, asking people to take a stand against e-tolls and not buy an e-tag. The Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Uniting Refor med churches, among others, slammed the government for not listening to the people and for the effect tolling would have on people’s lives.
“We will be accused, as churches, of being unpatriotic and disloyal to government for calling for this resistance, but we cannot blindly follow what government tells us is right for our people. We struggled through, and fought against apartheid, and we will fight this too,” the churches said in a joint statement.
They called for peaceful and nonviolent protest against e-tolls.
A strident voice in the antie-tolling campaign, who had also repeatedly spoken out against the e-toll system on a regular basis, was Howard Dembovsky, the chairperson of the Justice Project South Africa.
He expressed a concern that e-tolls could be launched when government had not made it clear exactly how it would collect money from those who did not pay. There was no indication how motorists would be prosecuted if they refused to pay their bills.
Dembovsky sent legal letters to various gover nment departments seeking clarity on the threatened prosecution of e-toll transgressors. The answers he sought were never received.
It was an important question and over a year later, by 2015 it was one that had still not been fully answered.
A day or two before the gantries were turned on for payment, long queues outside the previously empty Sanral e-toll customer-care centres began to develop. People were flock- ing to get their tags, or so it would appear. It seemed that government’s propaganda was working even though many who were signing up were doing so grudgingly. The queues, however, were also due to the long time it took for each registration.
We were told it took up to two hours to register a user.
Sanral enjoyed seeing these queues and the government-backed television broadcaster, SABC, ran visuals to show how people were standing in line at centres across the region to get their tags. “Get your tags now, ahead of the rush,” was the message espoused by (Vusi) Mona, and I imagined at this stage that Nazir Alli was reclining on his sofa with a broad smile on his face.
Was everything falling into place for him at last? The next 12 months would tell a completely different story.
When the clock struck midnight on December 3 there were no glitches, the computers kicked into gear and the electronic system was open for business.
We imagined that Sanral’s plan to launch just before the Christmas midsummer holiday break would help it to iron out possible glitches during the lowest freeway traffic period before business peaked again in midJanuary 2014.
Cosatu declared the day “Black Tuesday”.
“December 3… will go down in history as a turning point for the democratic state and government. It will represent the day on which our government refused to listen to the views of the people and the poor,’ said Cosatu provincial secretary Dumisani Dakile.
The Outa committee contemplated some form of protest on launch day, but our tight resources and time constraints kept us hamstrung.
Ari Seirlis, from the QuadPara Association of South Africa (Qasa), said: “Wayne, we are planning a protest as the e-toll launch coincides with International Day of Persons with Disabilities.”
Ari has a good track record for campaigning against systems and buildings that are not conducive to the free movement of people with disabilities. Advocacy and campaigning are a skill of Qasa’s. If any organisation could highlight the plight of its constituency under attack, it was Ari and the Qasa team. They had campaigned vigorously outside soccer stadiums in 2010 that were not wheelchair friendly.
The disabled were not exempt from e-tolls and, despite several attempts to have their concer ns addressed by Sanral, not much had happened.
Qasa has a group of active wheelchair campaigners called the “dirty dozen”. They are there in a flash when called on for their presence during a legitimate campaign, chaining themselves to pillars outside the head offices of many an authority. They could create a media stir when they wanted to.
Ari said to me: “That’s it. We are going to chain ourselves to a gantry on the highway, all 12 of us. Can you suggest which one will have the best visibility for us?”
I laughed and said he was crazy, but in the same breath I thought it was a marvellous idea. I was inspired by Ari’s energy. However, after taking legal advice, he was persuaded not to go this route as anyone on foot (or in a wheelchair) on the highway would be breaking the law. The dirty dozen stood a chance of being arrested and Ari didn’t want to risk that.
With a highway protest called off, Ari’s mind remained focused on ensuring the protest went ahead and this time he spoke of doing something outside the e-toll store at the Rivonia off-ramp.
We had to keep the planning for the protest under wraps to thwart any attempt by Sanral to block it. Suspecting that my phone had been tapped for some time now, we did all our communication through WhatsApp. I also got a message to Carte Blanche and a number of the media to witness Qasa’s protest message on launch day at Sanral’s e-tolls kiosk in Rivonia.
“E-tolls has paralysed us,” Qasa declared on its posters. The dozen wheelchair-bound protesters first went into the store and tried to register for a disabled exemption e-tag, saying that Sanral had indicated this was possible, but of course they were turned away.
During the protest, which had now moved into the car park, the group set an old dilapidated wheelchair alight. Pictures of the wheelchair on fire became the image of the day and were splashed across TV screens and newspapers alike.
Their message to government and Sanral was loud and clear: “E-tolls will burn the disabled community.”
Public relations was an important part of the campaign from both parties’ point of view. Obviously, the success of the e-toll user-pays system would depend on the number of people who purchased and fitted an e-tag and then kept their account with Sanral paid up. The more who fitted e-tags, the greater the scheme’s chance of success.
If people refrained from tagging up, Sanral would have a tough time in collecting the funds. We knew any attempt to issue summonses for the criminal prosecution of hundreds of thousands of citizens would attract too much negative publicity and ramifications for the ANC during the forthcoming national and regional elections in May 2014.
While Sanral was talking up the e-tag numbers, our hunch was that society was standing its ground and more people would abstain from purchasing e-tags than those who would. We also knew a sizeable volume of the e-tagged vehicles on the freeways belonged to government, corporate and car rental fleets.
It wasn’t until the eventual launch of e-tolling on December 3, 2013 that the moment of truth would arrive, to enable Outa to expose Sanral’s misleading claims.