National Treasury goes for broke on e-tolls

It was more than a decade ago that the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) CEO, Nazir Alli, and his hired guns were trying bizarre logical contortions to justify the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP).

Banging the drum of “user pays” – the favourite refrain of those who will privatise state assets – to justify the e-toll charges, there were some truly fanciful claims. Like the one made by Sanral’s hired transport economist Dr Roelof Botha, who, with a straight face, said Gauteng users of the roads would save R13.20 for every R1 they spent on tolls.

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That would have put the average value of time saved by the average road user at thousands of rands an hour.

Next up was the argument against a fuel levy increase – which might have been as low as 30 cents per litre in 2013.

Alli and his allies said this would prejudice people in other provinces, trying to convince people it would be impossible to “ring-fence” the levy to Gauteng filling stations only. Had that modest levy been actioned 10 years ago, the cost of the toll roads would have paid in full by now.

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Now, though, Treasury says all the people of Gauteng will be paying for the roads, via a 30% contribution to Sanral’s supposed debt on the project … which amounts to R12.9 billion. The province has also committed to coughing up R4.1 billion towards the GFIP maintenance backlog over four years.

All of this so publicity-hog Premier Panyaza Lesufi can claim, just before the elections, to be the man who slew the Beast of eTolls… Billions in unpaid tolls are still owed by millions of motorists.

It will cost a fortune in time and money to fight them in court and Lesufi and the ANC could then find out what a popular revolt really means.

ALSO READ: ‘Gauteng has to give us money’: Godongwana questions Lesufi’s plans to scrap e-tolls