Sort out the toll fiasco
WE WERE fortunate to have a holiday over the festive season. With our children and grandchildren, we travelled to Zinkwazi in KwaZulu-Natal. Wherever we went on the national roads, or the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) roads to be more accurate, the highways were world-class.
As soon as we entered any of the little towns, the pothole problem was obvious. Anyone who pays attention to these matters will be aware of the consequences of a lack of maintenance. Eskom is a prime example. The loan repayments are unmanageable, let alone the billions that need to be spent on maintenance and upgrades. Town and city councils all over the country suffer from the same problem: maintenance was neglected or else became unaffordable.
After a quarter of a century of this, combined with the need and imperative to upgrade inadequate and sometimes shockingly poor services in many townships, the backlog has grown. Many councils are overwhelmed.
Could the same happen to Sanral? Years have passed without any solution to the Gauteng toll road mess. Most users in and around Joburg refuse to pay toll fees.
Now what? The authorities have proved unable to resolve Sanral’s funding problem. Worse is that powerful people in charge of our affairs make airy promises.
Premier David Makhura is a champion of the abolition of e-tolls; Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula promises to solve the issue in concert with his party colleagues, who are always holding meetings. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has made it clear that those who use the roads must pay. His reasoning is simple: South Africa has run out of money and further large borrowing becomes problematic as our indebtedness reaches unreasonable and enormously expensive levels.
Sanral, too, could strike problems in terms of borrowings. The company has only one shareholder, the government. It has assets of more than R30 billion.
While the leaders charged with solving the Sanral problem have one of their endless meetings, they might like to clarify the possible solutions. It would seem that there are only a few.
One would be by paying a subsidy; this seems not to be viable because the government would have to borrow money to pay it out to Sanral. How long could that continue?
Another possible solution is to increase taxation, but squeezing the overburdened taxpayer would be unpopular and might not produce the increased tax-take expected.
The government might decide that it must enforce payment by toll road users through creating legal consequences for non-payment. An interesting possibility would be a vastly increased programme of public/private partnerships and, since Sanral has a good record in this regard, through the Maputo Corridor project, this might have strong possibilities.
A final option might be converting Sanral into a company similar to Telkom, selling shares on the JSE while retaining 51% in government control.
This is not a simple problem but kicking the can down the road in order to avoid taking hard decisions is a recipe for a gradual deterioration of our roads accompanied by increasing indebtedness and inability to pay.
It is time to stop the nonsense and sort out the problem.
Douglas Gibson is a former opposition chief whip and a former ambassador to Thailand. His website is douglasgibsonsouthafrica.com.