I knew this day would come, although it took longer than I’d expected. The day when the sword of Gauteng’s e-tolls, hanging over our heads for more than a decade, would be defeated.
The government, after much dilly-dallying, threatening and showing provincial motorists the proverbial middle finger, finally caved in this week when our finance minister pulled the plug on e-tolls.
Who can forget the arrogance of former government spokesman Jimmy (now Mzwanele) Manyi telling us, “This is not just a bad dream; it’s a reality, it’s going to happen. No one should have any illusion whatsoever that this thing is going away. It’s a fact of life and it’s going to happen,” Manyi said in February 2012. He told us to buy e-tags and warned those who planned not to pay that the “law would take its course”.
The resistance to the user-pay principle had been abundantly clear the minute the government announced who would have to pay for the national road that had not even been built from scratch.
When the e-toll project was mulled, the government had not said anything about ordinary motorists picking up the tab. In fact, they were done under the auspices of the infrastructure-built project ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup hosted by South Africa. Billions were wasted on impressing disgracing former Fifa president Sepp Blatter. White elephant stadiums were constructed at huge cost to the fiscus, with construction companies colluding to share the spoils.
New Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi made good on his promise that e-tolls would go. His predecessor, David Makhura, failed to convince his national counterparts and even set up a probe to determine how best the money borrowed from abroad for the e-tolls would be repaid.
Sanity finally prevailed during the medium-term budget speech by Enoch Godongwana.
Personally, I balked at paying e-tolls. The only time I would do so would be when I rented a vehicle fitted with an e-tag, which led to my account being automatically debited.
Manyi was not alone in his madness. His then boss, former president Jacob Zuma put his foot in his mouth when he even insulted Malawi in his bid to make us pay for the freeway project.
“It’s not some national road in Malawi. It is not fair to make the whole of South Africa pay for Gauteng’s road use by taxing everyone’s petrol more,” said Msholozi.
Considering how the government backtracked when the taxi industry made it clear they would not pay for driving on the freeway, I knew it was only a matter of time before our cry was heeded, not least because the governing party faces the prospect of voter rejection at the polls in 2024.
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