Gauteng’s e-toll failure proves public anger can topple poor policy—and maybe the politicians behind it.
It’s your fault – you e-toll boycotters – that the Gauteng government cannot fix the potholes or the broken traffic lights. And you’ve deprived others of vital public services, like health.
That was the message yesterday from Gauteng finance MEC Lebogang Maile – the latest in a long line of ANC luminaries who have failed to acknowledge their role in the most financially disastrous infrastructure project in the history of this country.
The Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project cost R20 billion in 2010 money for, effectively, just over 190km of improvements and the odd new interchange… at a cost which must have been pretty close to a world record rate per kilometre.
Then, the ANC tried to charge commuters on the “user pays” principle, utilising all sorts of voodoo economics to try to prove the improved roads would actually save us money.
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Even now, they still deny that e-tolls were a further tax on an already-overtaxed population. No wonder there was a revolt.
As the Gauteng government must now pay off the accumulated debt of those “refuseniks”, perhaps the ANC would do well to reflect on how powerful popular protest can be.
If it destroyed e-tolls, imagine what a similar sort of anger could do to you…
