In Parliament this week it has been revealed that since the inception of the e-toll system on 3 December 2013 until 28 February, R543,5 million’s worth of e-toll-related monies are outstanding.
Over and above that the South African Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) has incurred costs of R54 million to recover R50 million in e-toll debts.
There also has been reports in the news that Sanral is threatening motorists with jail time if they do not pay up.
Justice Project South Africa’s (JPSA) Chairperson Howard Dembovsky has expressed his shock at the costs and the threats in the reports.
“What Sanral does not seem to realise is that South Africans have been subjected to similar tyrannical threats by the previous regime and they did not cave in then – so why would they cave in now?” said Dembovsky.
“It also appears that someone at Sanral has decided to dispense with the troublesome formality of conducting trials and now feels that they can jump straight to sentencing people to jail time. After all, since all magistrates just so happen to have their pensions tied up in the Public Investment Corporation’s (PIC) investment in e-tolling, there is not a single magistrate in South Africa who will be able to hear an e-tolls prosecution without bias.
“We suspect that Sanral now has overplayed its hand and gone a gantry too far with its threats, and may well find that instead of managing to scare more people into compliance, they simply will strengthen the resolve of e-toll dissidents to resist, since there is absolutely no way that the courts willingly will dismantle the Gauteng economy by jailing what, at the bare minimum, will be hundreds of thousands of economically active citizens – even if they could manage the volumes,” said Dembovsky.
