Time to end e-tolls fiasco

The national and Gauteng governments need to speak with one voice on whether the Gauteng e-tolls project will be scrapped.

Delivering his budget speech last week, finance minister Tito Mboweni said users must pay to use the roads. However, Gauteng public transport and roads infrastructure MEC Jacob Mamabolo came out on Tuesday to say they had made a “very comprehensive submission” to President Cyril Ramaphosa, Mboweni and transport minister Fikile Mbalula, which they believed could put the e-tolls matter to rest “once and for all”.

“We have made a compelling case clearly stating that it is not correct for residents of our province to be burdened with paying for e-tolls,” said Mamabolo.

He said they had been working with the national government to ensure the project was stopped. We have been here before and Gauteng residents deserve better – to hear one voice on the matter, not this back and forth.

In March 2019, Mbalula was assigned to find an alternative to the e-tolls deadlock after public spats between the provincial leadership and Mboweni. Mbalula had until August the same year to find a solution. But here we are again as Mboweni announced last week that after considering several options to resolve the matter, they decided to retain the user-pays principle.

Some have argued that this could be because national government had not made enough revenue but that is not fair on residents. The threat of e-tolls cannot come back each time the government feels cash-strapped.

This project has clearly failed as citizens have flatly refused to pay for it. The next step is for both governments to find an alternative way of paying for it.

The Gauteng government, with the backing of the provincial ANC, has long declared that it was wrong for residents to pay for e-tolls. This directly affects them, as the party’s bad performance in the last local government elections was attributed to the e-tolls issue, among other things. However, national government keeps pushing for the userpays principle.

We call on the provincial and national governments to go back to the drawing board to find alternative funding measures for this project. They cannot keep making different pronouncements on the matter, sowing confusion and leaving residents in limbo. The people have spoken and must be listened to.