So now you cannot license your car unless you have paid your e-toll bill.
Forgive me for asking, but since when did e-tolling fall under the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) Act?
Because e-tolling does not fall under the jurisdiction of AARTO, no metro police officer or traffic police officer could reprimand or punish you for not paying e-tolling.
But now, your licence disk could be withheld for not paying e-tolling. The issuing of a licence disk falls squarely under the ambit of AARTO, and currently the Act only makes provision for four reasons to legally withhold your licence disk.
E-tolling is not one of these provisions.
So, my question is rather simple: When was e-tolling brought under the guidance and enforcement of the AARTO Act? If the Act is going to be changed to reflect this, then surely the proposed amendment should have been discussed at a parliamentary level? I do no recall this.
So far as I know, amendments to Acts have to be discussed in parliament, voted upon, and then ratified if the vote was positive. This has not happened, so it would appear to me that our very Constitution is being thwarted for e-tolling.
Furthermore, if it is now law, as of May 20, 2015, to pay e-tolling, then all previous/outstanding e-tolling bills must be scrapped. Why? Because you cannot punish someone for ‘breaking’ a law before it was law. Therefore, all transgressions as regards e-toll payments prior to e-toll compliance becoming law are null and void.
Or will this legal fact also be trodden upon in government’s quest to implement e-tolling?
Now that it is law to pay e-tolling, allow me to walk you through some figures:
Let us assume 2-million cars in the greater Johannesburg area. At a max cap of R225, this equals R450-million per month. In one year (12 months), one gets R5.4-billion.
E-tolling cost about R2-billion. Given interest, government, or more specifically SANRAL, stands to fully cover the costs of e-tolling, with some change, in one year. Where will all the money go for the following year? There is no way government or SANRAL can claim to spend R5.4-billion a year on road maintenance for Johannesburg. Unless SANRAL intends to tackle potholes in suburbs as well, a fact I highly doubt. Don’t forget, part of Gauteng’s budget from tax payers includes road maintenance. So now SANRAL stands to get even more money. Oh, and then there is the fuel levy which was recently added. Exactly how much money is SANRAL after? What are the politicians not telling us?
Perhaps SANRAL intends to build another Gautrain or two?
Perhaps SANRAL intends to build entirely new, super-highways linking Johannesburg and Pretoria?
Since neither of these plans has been touted, one can only surmise that SANRAL intends to bail out government of its national debt.
Wait, I know, SANRAL intends to buy out Transnet and replace/repair our crumbling rail infrastructure, which has resulted in more heavy-duty trucks on our roads. These are the self-same trucks which wreck the road surface, leading to SANRAL needing more money to maintain the roads.
It would appear that government is so hell-bent on implementing e-tolling that nothing, not even the Constitution of South Africa, will stand in its way.
SANRAL, together with the backing of government, has given the middle finger to the Constitution of South Africa, and its residents.
