E-tolls: setback for ANC plans

The ANC knows that the 2024 elections are still two years away… and that it cannot continue to put off making a decision on the controversial e-toll financing scheme for the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project. Either way, it has to move soon to resolve the issue – and the latest indications are encouraging. It looks like the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) is already looking to a future after e-tolls.

At least that is what can be read into its recent decision to issue tenders for the “repurposing” of the e-toll highway gantries, into some form of speed prosecution apparatus.

Another idea that it has been flighted would be to use the gantries’ complex vehicle identification systems for some sort of data collection … data which can then be sold to businesses, presumably.

Leaving aside the probability that data harvesting will be illegal because it contravenes the Protection of Personal Information Act, the fact that Sanral is doing this is the strongest indication yet that e-tolls will be scrapped.

Added to that is the government admission in recent months that it has been looking at some sort of fuel levy to finance the development.

If the latter is correct, then it will be beyond ironic, because e-toll opponents suggested in 2013 that a levy of as little as 20 to 30 cents per litre would have been able to pay off the roads by now.

If e-tolls are eventually abolished it will be more than a victory for Gauteng motorists – it will be a huge setback for ANC plans to selectively “privatise” those state services which are paid for already in our taxes.

You cannot say that the “user pays” principle applies to travelling on toll roads, but not to government health and education services, which taxpayers pay for, even though many don’t make use of them.