City files urgent interdict against Sanral's proposed N1-N2 Winelands Toll Highway Project

On Wednesday 27 March 2013, the City of Cape Town filed its urgent application for an interdict against Sanral. 

The interdict application will be heard in the Western Cape High Court on Thursday 16 May, when the City will seek an order to interdict Sanral from taking any steps to implement the proposed N1-N2 Winelands Toll Highway Project, pending the final determination of the City's review application, instituted in the same High Court in March 2012.

The City has been unable to bring the exchange of pleadings in the review application to a close because Sanral has refused to provide us with a complete record of documents that are relevant to the toll road project, including how much the project will cost and what toll fees are likely to be levied. 

As a consequence of Sanral's refusal to provide a complete record of documents, the City also brought an application to compel Sanral to disclose them. 

This application was instituted against Sanral on 1 March 2013 and will, by direction of the Acting Judge President and at the request of the City's legal team, be heard at the same time as the City's urgent interdict application on 16 May 2013.

Sanral's notice to the City that it intends to implement the N1-N2 Toll Road Project was received on the 6th March 2013 - a few days after the City instituted the High Court application to compel it to provide those documents that are absent from the record and which Sanral has refused to provide.

Sanral gave as the reasons for the sudden need to implement the toll road project: the need to upgrade and maintain the road and to address safety concerns.  Through our own investigation, those purported reasons have proven to be groundless and exaggerated.

We believe that the true reason for terminating the undertaking is to manufacture a situation where by the time the review application is heard the court will be presented with a fait accompli, as was the case in Gauteng.

We believe that the City's application to compel the disclosure of those missing documents triggered Sanral's notice to us.

Despite Sanral's claims that it is willing to engage with the City, the facts speak for themselves. Sanral is a public agency charged with the managing and maintaining South Africa's national road network. 

It is our view that Sanral's refusal to fully disclose all the relevant information on the Winelands Toll Road project to the City, and to the residents of Cape Town, places it in breach of its constitutional duty of accountability, responsiveness, openness, transparency and co-operative governance.

Sanral can have no legitimate reason for withholding any information relating to its decision to toll portions of the N1 and N2 or what the impact will be for the people of our city and our country. 

Its obstructive and secretive conduct is cause for alarm. Its alarmist and exaggerated claims that the N1 and N2 are in danger of falling apart unless the Toll Road project is implemented is shocking and opportunistic; and we condemn their manipulation of the facts for the purposes of advancing a toll road project that was initiated as an unsolicited bid by the preferred bidder consortium some 15 years ago.

On 7 October 2011 the City brought an urgent application for an interim interdict to prevent Sanral from taking any steps to implement or advance its proposed N1-N2 Winelands Toll Project pending a review application the City intended to bring. That first interdict application was postponed in December 2011 after Sanral gave the City an acceptable undertaking.

The City instituted its review application on 28 March 2012 in which we seek the review of the decisions taken by: (1) the Environmental Minister to grant an environmental authorisation for the toll road project; (2) the Transport Minister to approve the declaration of the specified portions of the highways as toll roads; and (3) SANRAL to declare the Highways a toll road. As indicated, the review application is still pending in the Western Cape High Court.

On the 6th March 2013, Sanral gave notice in terms of the undertaking given in December 2011 that it was terminating the undertaking and that it "intends to undertake steps to advance or implement the N1-N2 Winelands Toll Highway".

Statement issued by Councillor Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee Member for Transport, Roads and Stormwater, City of Cape Town, April 2 2013

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