Is anybody else feeling the uncomfortable tingles of Déjà vu? Gauteng’s government is, once again, asking for your financial support promising the end of e-tolls (but for real this time, guys). You know, the money-grubbing eyesores that landed on South Africa’s highways back in December 2013.
Ever since, we’ve heard countless falsehoods promising the demise of e-tolls, though nothing official has ever made it past the planning phase. Despite the continual threats to scrap the system, the government continued sending out the bills, eventually promising refunds to those law-abiding citizens who continued paying.
Goodbye forever, e-tolls. You won’t be missed
The decision — one we’ve heard a good few times already — appeared at last night’s State of the Province Address, where Premier Panyaza Lesufi said we’d be seeing the tail-end of e-tolls come 31 March 2024. Yeah, right. We may have been a little more believing if we hadn’t heard it all before.
“E-tolls are a system that was introduced in our province by the national government on the basis that we wanted to improve our road network. We have now reached a stage where we all accept that the people of Gauteng have rejected e-tolls,” said Lesufi.
“When I addressed this house, I declared that e-tolls are history. We had a meeting with all affected parties. We held a meeting with the Minister of Finance, we also held a meeting with the Minister of Transport. All of us now have reached an agreement that by the 31st of March this year, the formal process to switch off and delink e-tolls will begin and e-tolls will be history in our province,” he continued.
Did you catch that? Lesufi specifically mentions that “by the 31st of March this year, the formal process to switch off and de-link e-tolls will begin…” rather than offering up any solid information about when they will officially be considered “history.” With how this government operates, there’s a likely chance that the process of switching off and de-linking the system could take months, even years.
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This may be remedied by the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, as Lesufi confirmed that more details of the system’s shutdown would be discussed at tomorrow evening’s 2024 budget speech. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a more diligent removal scheme than we’ve seen previously. We wouldn’t say no to an update on those refunds, either.