South Africa’s highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, has ruled that the country’s government can start implementing a controversial electronic toll road project, prior to a November 26 High Court review of the matter.
This comes after the Constitutional Court has today set aside an interim order that postponed a plan to toll the Gauteng province's highways.
Government has been planning to implement, through the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL), its e-tolling project on the highways of Gauteng province, which has cities such as Johannesburg and Pretoria. The project is aimed at rasing funds to pay back debts owed as a result of upgrading the province's highways.
ITWeb reported earlier this year that costs of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) increased significantly to almost $10 billion.
As a result, the government expects commuters wanting to travel on the province's highways to help pay back this cost by buying an 'e-tag' device, which is fitted on the inside of the windscreen of a vehicle. Drivers can then top-up the e-tags via prepaid means or credit cards, and amounts of money are deducted from the device whenever a commuter travels under an e-toll gantry.
Toll rates are calculated based upon the distances a commuter travels on the highways.
But the public, workers unions and civil society organisations have been up in arms about the extra expenses that government plans to pile on commuters. Long-distance national roads between cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town are tolled; however, debate has raged in the province about whether fuel levies or e-tolls should be used to specifically fund Gauteng province's upgraded highways .
Earlier this year, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) also carried out mass protests against the project.
And in April this year, the North Gauteng High Court granted an interim interdict that stopped SANRAL from proceeding further with the implementation of e-tolls until a full review of the project takes place in November.
The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) was the applicant for the interdict.
Yet the country's National Treasury wants to be allowed to roll out the project in the interim, and today's ruling theoretically allows the government to do just that, South African constitutional legal expert Pierre de Vos told ITWeb Africa.
"They could obviously implement if they so wished, which is not clear because there is some ambivalence about what their position is now," says de Vos.
"But if they so wish...they could start implementing the e-tolling until such time as a another court makes a ruling on the actual merits of the case," de Vos adds.
Wayne Duvenage, the chairman of Outa, told ITWeb Africa that while in theory the government could roll out the electronic tolling project tomorrow, in reality it may not turn out to be the case - at least immediately so.
Duvenage says there are exemption notices that need to be finalised and tariffs that have to be published.
"It's not like a light switch that one can switch on and then start tolling," says Duvenage.
"This is an engine that you have to start up and the biggest part is that you’ve got to get a couple of millions of motorists tags," he adds.
Government last year said that 500,000 people had already bought e-tags. Yet, Gauteng is home to 8.8 million people, and that is just according to a 2001 South African National Census.
Duvenage further adds that mainly government officials and large corporates have bought the e-tags, while the majority of commuters have not purchased the devices yet.
"I don’t know if that they are going to get enough people to get the tags and that is the biggest issue – people don’t get tags then it's not going to happen.
"So it's not going to switch on tomorrow if it goes their way today, this is going to take a good month or so if not more to get going," says Duvenage.
The next step in this case is the November 26 High Court ruling, where the judge is to decide whether or not e-tolls could infringe on commuters' rights.
If the government loses its case then it would have to stop e-tolling on Gauteng's roads.
But it could appeal such as High Court ruling by going to the Consitutional Court again, resulting in the e-tolling saga being far from over says de Vos.
"Whatever happens today, it's not the end of the matter," says de Vos.
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