E-tolls elicit a storm of fury
With the Supreme Court of Appeal's ruling against Outa, many are outraged and vow to resist the new tolling system. Political parties and role-players are making plans for the way forward.
A bitter war of words has erupted between Wayne Duvenhage, chairperson of Outa, and Vusi Mona, spokesperson for Sanral, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein’s dismissal of Outa’s challenge of the e-tolling of Gauteng’s freeways.
Mona reacted violently on a comment that the Gauteng etolling would unleash a spate of deaths and carnage on the roads as trucking companies, in an effort to avoid the gantries, will opt for alternative routes. Mona reacted, saying that it was an outrageous claim and that it was one thing to fight a legal battle which you believed in but another all together to spread lies and incorrect information. “Some of it borders on incitement and amounts to shouting ‘fire’ in a packed cinema hall,” he said.
Duvenhage is reported to have said: “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or road engineer to know that tolling does lead to cars and trucks taking routes that are not tolled.”
Duvenhage also pointed out that Mona made it seem as though the Supreme Court of Appeal was the final hurdle and that the outcome of the judgement had to be accepted, when the possibility that the matter could be taken to the Constitutional Court still existed. Duvenhage added that Mona had no right to tell Outa how it should conduct its legal challenges. “Outa believes it still has a strong case with regard to the constitutionality of Sanral’s behaviour relating to e-tolling. Mr Mona should mind his own business and leave us to ours.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court of Appeal’s judgement, Julius Malema, leader of the newly founded Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, addressed thousands of supporters at the launch of his campaign to run in the election saying they should buy his party’s red berets, not e-toll tags.
Anton Albert, Freedom Front Plus (FF+) spokesperson for Transport, said that the FF+ legal team consulted with various role-players regarding their options with the way forward and the possibility of launching an urgent application at the North Gauteng High Court against the e-toll act on Monday.
Patrick Craven, spokesperson for Cosatu, said that Bloemfontein’s court judgment was not the end of Cosatu’s campaign against the e-toll system.
“We are still discussing what we are going to do, but it is a fact that we are most definitely going to do something. It may be marches or a massive go-slow on the highways,” he said.
Mmusi Maimane, DA premier candidate for Gauteng, pledged that if elected as the Gauteng premier, he would do everything possible to stop e-tolling in its tracks.
“Our legal team is currently exploring all options available to us should we win Gauteng in the 2014 elections. The DA contributed R1m to Outa’s court action because we believed it was important to contest the principle of e-tolling. Now we must take the fight to the ballot box in 2014 and vote out the government who brought the burden of e-tolling to South Africans. The fight against tolling is now in the hands of the people of Gauteng,” he said.
In anticipation of motorists refusing to pay e-tolls, Sanral has approached the Department of Justice to discuss the possibility of establishing special courts for e-toll dodgers.
“Justice Project South Africa is not in the least bit surprised about this. We have repeatedly warned that trying to prosecute a million plus non-compliant ‘e-road’ users on a monthly basis will most certainly collapse South Africa’s criminal justice system and we note with interest that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and
the Department of Justice said they ‘could not speculate’ on whether the country’s legal system would be able to cope,” Howard Dembovsky, national chairman of the Justice Project South Africa (NPC), said.
Dembovsky added that what was really disgusting about this mooted action was that ‘special courts’ have not, to date, been established for priority crimes, including, but not limited to, rape, murder and armed robbery.
“When limiting the concept of special courts to serious road crimes, we take note that no such action is apparently being contemplated to effectively deal with problems like driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Considering that driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs claims the lives of thousands of South Africans annually and drunk driving cases rarely get finalised timeously, one would have thought this would have been prioritised,” he said.
He added that the Department of Transport was clearly suffering from a chronic disconnect in terms of its priorities by chasing the collection of e-toll revenues and the prosecution of people who do not comply with this irrational and unjust law above addressing the carnage on South Africa’s roads.
